Pieter de Wolf

This collection features six peer-reviewed reviews on the economics of key agricultural practices. The first chapter assesses the economic impact of horticultural crops and integrated pest management programmes. The chapter highlights the importance of considering agricultural system design and the utilisation of novel control tactics. The second chapter considers the economic consequences of novel integrated weed management (IWM) strategies, as well as the different approaches used to assess the economics of IWM strategies. The third chapter reviews developments in methods to assess the economic value of agricultural biodiversity. The chapter also outlines the limitations of these methods and proposes a possible, novel way forward. The fourth chapter provides an overview of the economic barriers faced by smallholder farmers, including land, labour, capital and inputs, and their impact on farm profitability. The fifth chapter reviews the economics of soil health, focussing on the adoption of soil health management practices by farmers and the effectiveness of incentives. The final chapter examines the use of economic research as a tool to determine the profitability and adoption potential for a number of precision agriculture technologies.

This book features four peer-reviewed reviews on the economics of key elements of agriculture. The first chapter describes the economic potential for the widespread adoption of agricultural robotics worldwide, focussing primarily on adoption in low- and middle-income countries. The chapter also considers the broader implications of agricultural robotics adoption on the farm sector. The second chapter explores the large and diverse literature on the economics of nitrogen in agriculture and the economics of off-farm impacts from nitrogen fertilisation. The chapter also considers the over-application of nitrogen fertilisers and their contribution to nitrogen pollution. The third chapter summarises recent advances in the development of novel integrated weed management (IWM) strategies and the economic consequences of their use in farming systems. The chapter also reviews the economics of different IWM strategies and the contrasting approaches used to assess their efficiency. The final chapter discusses the use of groundwater for agricultural use and how unregulated overdevelopment of this key resource poses a threat to its sustainability. This chapter presents several approaches to groundwater governance and evaluates the appropriateness of each approach using socioeconomic theory.