1,720,981 research outputs found
Oil Palm Adoption, Household Welfare, and Nutrition Among Smallholder Farmers in Indonesia
No full textOil palm is one of the most rapidly expanding crops throughout the humid tropics. In Indonesia, the expansion is largely driven by smallholder farmers. While recent research has studied effects for the environment and climate change, socioeconomic impacts in the small farm sector have hardly been analyzed. Here, we address this research gap by analyzing effects of oil palm adoption on farm household living standards and nutrition in Sumatra. Using survey data and econometric models, we estimate average impacts, impact pathways, and impact heterogeneity. Results show that oil palm adoption improves household living standards and nutrition. Mean impacts on food and non-food expenditures, as well as on calorie consumption and dietary quality, are all positive and significant. A sizeable part of the total effects is attributable to oil palm adopters expanding their farm size rather than realizing higher profits per hectare. Oil palm has lower labor requirements than alternative crops (especially rubber), so that adopting farmers are able to manage larger land areas. Labor saved through switching from rubber to oil palm is also used to increase off-farm incomes. Impact heterogeneity is analyzed with quantile regressions. We find positive effects of oil palm adoption across the entire expenditure distribution. However, the absolute gains in total expenditures and non-food expenditures are larger for the better-off, suggesting that oil palm may contribute to rising inequality
Oil palm expansion among smallholder farmers in Sumatra, Indonesia
No full textMany tropical regions experience a rapid expansion of oil palm, causing massive land use changes and raising serious environmental and social concerns. Indonesia has recently become the largest palm oil producer worldwide. While much of the production in Indonesia comes from large- scale plantations, independently operating smallholders are increasing in importance and may domi- nate production in the future. In order to control the process of land use change, the micro level fac- tors influencing smallholder decisions need to be better understood. We use data from a survey of farm households in Sumatra and a duration model to analyze the patterns and dynamics of oil palm adoption among smallholders. Initially, smallholders were primarily involved in government-supported out-grower schemes, but since the mid-1990s independently operating oil palm farmers have become much more important. In addition to farm and household characteristics, village level factors determine oil palm adoption significantly. Independent smallholders adopt oil palm especially in those villages that also have contracts and out-grower schemes, leading to a regional path-dependency of former government policies
Oil Palm Expansion among Smallholder Farmers in Sumatra, Indonesia
No full textMany tropical regions are experiencing a rapid growth of oil palm cultivation. In Indonesia, the world's leading palm oil producer, in addition to large companies, smallholder farmers are increasingly engaged in the oil palm sector. Smallholder oil palm cultivation may contribute to income gains and socio-economic development. However, land-use decisions by smallholders are not well understood. Without appropriate policies, negative social and environmental consequences can also occur. To improve the knowledge base, we use data about present and past land-use decisions from a survey of farm households in Sumatra. Employing duration models, we analyse the determinants and dynamics of oil palm adoption among smallholders. We find that independently operating farmers are currently driving growth rates in the oil palm sector. Smallholder adoption decisions are mainly attributable to regional and village level factors. While the current adoption primarily occurs outside of contracts, previous contractual ties between companies and other farmers in the same village play an important role for individual decisions. Beyond initial adoption, we also analyse later expansion decisions. While expanding the oil palm area subsequent to initial adoption is common among all types of adopters, those without previous contracts are found to expand significantly faster. We conclude that the concessions the government has allocated to palm oil companies in the past have initiated oil palm adoption in the small farm sector, but that the ensuing land-use dynamics are mostly beyond government control. Some wider implications are discussed
Oil palm adoption, household welfare and nutrition among smallholder farmers in Indonesia
No full textThe recent expansion of oil palm in Indonesia is largely smallholder-driven. However, its socio-economic implications are under-examined. Analyzing farm-household data from Jambi Province, Sumatra, oil palm adoption is found to have positive consumption and nutrition effects. However, these effects are largely due to farm size expansion that is associated with oil palm adoption. Potential het- erogeneity of effects among oil palm adopters is examined using quantile regressions. While nutrition effects of oil palm adoption are found to be homogenous across quantiles, the effects on non-food expenditure are expressed more strongly at the upper end of the expenditure distribution
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Differential livelihood impacts of oil palm expansion in Indonesia
No full textIn this article, the impacts of oil palm adoption on livelihoods of smallholder farm households are analyzed. The study builds on survey data from Sumatra, Indonesia. Treatment-effects and endogenous switching regression models suggest that smallholder households benefit from oil palm adoption on average. Part of the benefit stems from the fact that oil palm requires less labor than rubber, the main alternative crop. This allows oil palm adopters to allocate more labor to off-farm activities and/or to expand their farmland. For households with a low land-to-labor ratio, rubber is typically a more lucrative crop than oil palm. Depending on various social and institutional factors, households’ access to land, labor, and capital varies, contributing to impact heterogeneity. Welfare gains associated with oil palm are more pronounced among households that have formal land titles and access to additional land to expand their farm size during the process of adoption
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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