Rico Ihle

Wageningen University & Research | WUR · Department of Economics

Policy interest often focuses on specific instruments that effectively enhance household resilience to food security shocks. Based on microeconomic household demand and resilience theory, this paper investigates to what extent increased household resilience capacities result in household food consumption being more robust to adverse food price and...

Sustainable forest management in South-East Asia is challenged by smallholder livestock husbandry as farmers supplement insufficient on-farm forage with resources extracted from forests. This study assesses which de- terminants affect forest resource extraction by investigating teak forest usage by Indonesian cattle farmers. Based on a survey of 60...

The understanding of the role of using forest resources in the livelihood strategies of smallholder farmers is limited. Rural household surveys often omit this aspect. From a survey of 600 Indonesian cattle farmers, we apply the sustainable livelihood framework to investigate the role extracting forest resources has in livelihood strategies and hou...

Amartya Sen defines entitlement as command over resources that permits a household to have access to essential goods and services to sustain life within the legal and established social norms and practices. Entitlement failure occurs when a household's command over all available combinations of resources does not ensure sufficient provisions of foo...

In the absence of governmental welfare support, assets have an important role in determining the capacity of vulnerable households of being resilient against economic shocks affecting their food needs. By focusing on the context of Sub-Saharan Africa, this paper analyses household responses in food demand to shocks affecting their food purchases. W...

The Russian Federation’s efforts to expand its regional political influence culminated in launching a full‐scale war of aggression on Ukraine on 24 February 2022. As both countries are large exporters of commodities crucial for global food and energy security, the resulting abrupt supply chains disruptions created substantial uncertainty in commodi...

Smallholder farmers in developing countries often lack resources. They rely mostly on extensive production approaches, such as cattle keeping and resort more to extracting forest resources at no charge. Our objective is to assess the relationship between the diversification of income sources, poverty and livelihood capital for smallholder farm hous...

The Green Moroccan Plan (GMP) is a national long-term strategy launched by the Moroccan government to support the agricultural sector as the main driver of social and economic development. The GMP involves a labeling strategy based on geographical indications, aimed at protecting and promoting the marketing of locally produced food specialties and...

Simultaneous spikes in global prices of many agricultural commodities in recent years have induced an interest in quantifying the degree of synchronisation of these movements. We suggest a conceptual framework explaining why temporally varying price synchronisation may happen and propose the concordance index for the empirical measurement of the in...

Origin labelling is one of the most prominent approaches in the Green Morocco Plan with which the Moroccan government aims to support the marketing of domestically produced food and then improve the income of smallholder farmers. We analyse the preferences and attitudes of Moroccan consumers towards the recently established Protected Geographical I...

Feeding the quickly growing population in Africa remains a global challenge. As the demand for food increases, climate change, on the other hand, poses more challenges to agricultural productivity, implying that the provision of sufficient quantities and qualities of food is threatened. Traditional leafy vegetables (TLVs) in Africa are resilient to...

Agricultural policies can only be effective if intended beneficiaries are sufficiently aware of them. This basic condition for policy success is substantially challenged by smallholder farmers’ lack of awareness of existing support schemes. We studied the perceptions of 600 farmers of preservation policies for the traditional Indonesian Ongole catt...

Prices of agricultural products often vary in relatively stable patterns around their long‐run trends. These variations translate into fluctuations of selling prices as well as farm revenues. We provide an overview of the current literature on agricultural price cycles. Using a transparent and reproducible model selection process and the Kalman fil...

Agglomerations of agricultural activity yield a number of institutional and infrastructural benefits for farmers. However, these regional concentrations also increase competition between farmers. We quantify to what extent competitive pressure affects farmers’ behaviour in agro-clusters analysing a survey of 1,250 farmers in West Java. This assessm...

Agriculture-based livelihoods in developing countries are often challenged by a multitude of unforeseeable shocks, but economic research mostly focuses on single shocks. This paper investigates how climate, health, pest and price shocks individually and in combination relate to farm households’ coping strategy choices. First, we use binary probit m...

As these lines were written, the Covid-19 pandemic crisis was continuing to threaten countries around the globe. The worldwide consensus that physical distancing is an effective instrument for mitigating the spread of the virus has led policymakers to temporarily limit the freedom of movement of people between and within countries, cities, and even...

The economic impacts of animal disease outbreaks have been widely discussed in the literature. Most authors have centred their attention on estimating the direct costs. Recent studies have shown that the indirect economic effects might lead to equal or even higher welfare losses. This study aims to contribute to this field of research by assessing...

Violent political conflict has been documented to have comprehensive adverse effects on economic activity and, thus, substantially harm social welfare. As conflict escalations are often reported to fragment economic space, we suggest an empirical framework which allows for estimating changes in the size of markets often split by frontlines. This ap...

Collective action in geographically concentrated farming regions can lead to improvements in farmer income. We model farmer cooperation inside such agro‐clusters as a two‐stage decision process. From 1,151 completely filled‐in questionnaires, we find that being located in an agro‐cluster increases farmers' likelihood to cooperate as well as enhance...

Political instabilities and violent political conflict have in recent years risen substantially throughout the world. Especially in the Middle East and North Africa they have grown to decisive factors permanently challenging the livelihoods of millions. We assess whether and to what extent varying intensities of conflict impact economic activity in...

Much attention has been devoted in the literature to the analysis of price transmission along food supply chains. Price transmission analysis has traditionally focused on applying econometric methods to assess price dynamics and interrelationships. However, the exclusive application of econometric methods without considering the market’s institutio...

The way economic studies conceptualize and measure resilience is very heterogeneous. This does not only challenge scientific progress, but also raises the question of whether they measure one identical concept with different methods or whether they measure different understandings of resilience. This paper provides a review of concepts, methodologi...

Violent political conflict results in socioeconomic fragmentation and hampers economic development. In contrast, trade crucially depends on cooperation. The article empirically analyses at the micro-level whether economic interactions affect political attitudes. Trading relations between Israelis and Palestinians are found to be extensive despite t...

The ‘Arab Spring’ spilled over to Egypt from neighbouring Arab countries in the first half of 2011. General chaos during the political instabilities suddenly caused high uncertainty for consumers and traders, and temporarily rendered institutions dysfunctional. This eventually might have led to a negative market shock, impeding economic activity in...

Feeding the quickly growing population in Africa remains a global challenge. As the demand for food increases, climate change, on the other hand, poses more challenges to agricultural productivity, implying that the provision of sufficient quantities and qualities of food is threatened. Traditional leafy vegetables (TLVs) in Africa are resilient to...

Violent political conflict shows patterns of varied intensity and persistence. These patterns may induce changes in human behavior in various temporal dimensions. In order to study these effects, empirical research needs a suitable way to measure conflict intensity. This paper suggests and illustrates a method of aggregating raw data on violence in...

Neighbouring economies are likely to influence one another. The concentration of farming activities referred to as an agro-cluster generates opportunities for income and employment in a given region and its surrounding area. We analyse the link between poverty rates and agro-clusters by accounting for spatial perspective. To quantify agro-clusters,...

Neighbouring economies are likely to influence one another. The concentration of farming activities referred to as an ‘agro-cluster’ generates opportunities for income and employment in a given region and its surrounding area. We analyse the link between poverty rates and agro-clusters by accounting for spatial spillovers. To quantify agroclusters,...

Temporally and spatially disaggregated market price data most useful for analysis, but data problems common, such as missing observations, outliers, short and incomplete series, etc. Cointegration not possible in such a case. Instead of adapting data to suit methods, we propose to adapt method to suit data.

The cattle sector is of great economic importance within the EU agricultural sector. Productivity of the sector is very heterogeneous. In the near future, a further increase in milk and bovine meat supply can be expected. To avoid a decline in farm gate prices, further product differentiation at the EU level, an increase in export opportunities as...

Annexes of report IPOL_STU(2017)585911_EN

The geographical concentration of farming activities can promote institutional innovations for farmers. Sharing resources, knowledge, and markets in clustered regions lead to the income improvements of farmers. We explore such advantages for smallholder farmers in West Java of Indonesia by accounting for their behaviors toward horizontal cooperatio...

Agro-clusters would allow farmers to acquire positive and negative externalities. On one hand, smallholder farmers in spatial proximity are likely to benefit from this concentration; on the other hand, they incur high competitive pressure from other neighboring farmers. We examine the link between this pressure and agro-clusters by controlling for...

Over the past decades, consumer awareness of quality and safety of food has considerably increased. The German media landscape, conscious of their duty to provide information to society, cater for this interest and report extensively on cases of food contamination and other problems concerning food hygiene or food quality. In the course of this inc...

In den vergangenen Dekaden hat das Verbraucherbewusstsein hinsichtlich der Qualität und Sicherheit von Lebensmitteln stark zugenommen. Die deutsche Medienlandschaft hat dieses Interesse im Bewusstsein seiner Informationsaufgabe für die Gesellschaft aufgenommen und berichtet ausführlich über Fälle von Verunreinigungen von Lebensmitteln und weiteren...

Agricultural exports. Sales of European farm products to Russia have collapsed. Could there be an alternative market for our agricultural goods in Iran? Demand is growing there for processed foods as well as unprocessed commodities and feeds.

Die Agrarexporte nach Russland sind eingebrochen. Neue Absatzchancen eröffnen sich hingegen im Iran, denn sowohl nach verarbeiteten Lebensmitteln als auch nach Rohwaren und Futtermitteln steigt die Nachfrage. Quelle: http://dlg-mitteilungen.de/rubriken/heftausgabe/p/e-magazin-7/ Translation in English: http://www.agrifuture.com/fileadmin/agrifutur...

For rural households in the north of Vietnam, maize cropping is the main source of income. In the face of the world market price increases of the recent past, we analyze the regional marketing chain of this commodity qualitatively and econometrically investigating to what extent smallholder farmers in developing countries are affected by internatio...

Recent global food price developments have spurred renewed interest in analyzing integration of local markets to global markets. A popular approach to quantify market integration is cointegration analysis. However, local market price data often has missing values, outliers, or short and incomplete series, making cointegration analysis impossible. I...

Organic agriculture, which produces commodities that can be qualitatively differentiated from conventional food products, has grown into an important market in many countries. The dynamics of commodity prices in both sectors are partly interdependent, but are also shaped by independent determinants and have rarely been studied. We analyze organic f...

Recent global food price developments have spurred renewed interest in analyzing integration of local markets to global markets. A popular approach to quantify market integration is cointegration analysis. However, local market price data often has missing values, outliers, or short and incomplete series, making cointegration analysis impossible. I...

World market prices of rice have been subject to large fluctuations in recent years. In mid 2008, prices reached levels never seen before. Vietnam is a major exporter of rice and rice is also the main staple food of the country. Given the importance of rice for domestic food security, the Vietnamese government is intervening in its international tr...

Recent global food price developments have spurred renewed interest in analyzing integration of local markets to global markets. A popular approach to quantify market integration is cointegration analysis. However, local market price data often has missing values, outliers, or short and incomplete series, making cointegration analysis impossible. I...

Milk has become one of the most volatile agricultural commodities in the international market. High volatility of commodity prices and their implications for food security are clearly among the most important issues facing policy makers today. Thus, a deeper understanding of the magnitude, speed, and symmetry to which global milk prices are being t...

Eine Studie des Lehrstuhls für Agrarpolitik der Georg-August Universität Göttingen hat die Zusammenhänge zwischen den Preisen von ökologisch und konventionell erzeugtem Backweizen in Deutschland zwischen 1998 und 2012 untersucht. Im Fokus der Studie standen die Fragen, ob und wie sich diese Beziehungen verändert haben. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass d...

Organic agriculture, which produces commodities that can be qualitatively differentiated from conventional food products, has grown into an important market in many countries. The dynamics of commodity prices in both sectors are partly interdependent, but are also shaped by independent determinants and have rarely been studied. We analyze organic f...

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has resulted in societal alienation between both conflicting parties. In some contexts, such as trade, cooperation continues. We provide a micro-level analysis of economic interactions between Israeli and Palestinian fruit and vegetable traders in order to shed light on how institutions in agricultural markets and f...

The bioeconomy of developing countries largely focuses on the production and distribution of food given limitations in production inputs and infrastructure. Food security remains a central challenge for development. Additionally, many developing countries in Africa and Asia suffer from recurring politicial instabilities of varying intensity which p...

We investigate whether hostile international relations in the framework of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict has an effect on pricing and consumption patterns of different varieties of apples marketed in Palestine. For this purpose, we employ a discrete choice equilibrium model with product differentiation. Results suggest that the intensity...

Israel's imposition of military security measures in the Palestinian territories as a consequence of the long-lasting violent conflict between them has negative economic effects on all parties concerned. One crucial outcome is the limited ability to carry out trade, which brings about welfare losses. Conflict-induced policies such as security measu...

Changing linkages between agricultural and energy markets have attracted considerable attention in research and policy discussions during recent years. As one of the largest biofuel markets worldwide, the German biodiesel market is of particular interest. It has grown rapidly since the beginning of the new millennium, with this growth being driven...

This paper ... is concerned with interdependencies between organic and conventional wheat prices at the producer level. The analysis is carried out by means of cointegration analysis, that is, the estimation of a vector error correction model considering the two price series. With such a model, empirical evidence on the integration of both markets...

European cattle markets have recently undergone significant change. We explore the simultaneous impacts of agricultural policy reform and the occurrence of an animal health crisis on spatial interdependencies of calf prices of four major European Union markets. The markets are found to be integrated. Price shocks are rapidly absorbed. We find that...

Israel’s imposition of military security measures in the Palestinian territories as a consequence of the long-lasting violent conflict yields depressing economic effects to all parties involved. One crucial implication is the limited ability to carry out trade which brings about welfare losses. This paper assesses the consequences of the Israeli-Pa...

Ethical aspects of food products have become increasingly important for Western European consumers. One example of such ethical consumption attributes are “peace products”, commodities produced in peaceful economic cooperation between members of conflicting parties in areas of political conflict. In the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,...

In face of the global food crisis of 2007–2008, severe concerns arose about how developing countries would be affected by the extreme short-term fluctuations in international commodity prices. We examine the effects of the crisis on Bolivia, one of the poorest countries of the Americas. We focus on the effectiveness of the domestic policy intervent...

This analysis employs cointegration methods and semiparametric regression in order to assess the integration of maize markets and the factors determining national and cross-national transmission of price signals in Sub-Saharan Africa. We use a rich dataset of 16 series of wholesale maize prices between 2000 and 2008 for Kenya, Tanzanian and Uganda....

Imposing military security measures as a consequence of violent conflict may lead to depressing economic effects for all parties involved. One implication is the limited ability to conduct trade, which in turn brings about welfare losses to the economic agents involved and may threat livelihoods and food security. This paper focuses on the conseque...

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict constitutes a prominent example of a long-lasting political conflict which has major consequences for the livelihoods of the people on both sides. The agricultural sectors of the Palestinian and Israeli economies are tightly connected. However, various security measures occasionally implemented in consequence of the...

Markets Integration With and Without Direct Trade Flows: The Tomato in Ghana Spatial market equilibrium theory views trade flows as the driving force behind market integration. We assess the price linkages between five major tomato markets in Ghana to ascertain whether spatial price transmission depends solely on direct trade between markets, or wh...

Spatial market equilibrium theory views trade flow as the driving force behind market integration. We assess spatial price transmission between domestic tomato markets in Ghana to ascertain whether spatial price transmission veritably depends on direct trade between markets, or whether other forces drive market integration. We analyze a unique data...

In recent years, agricultural commodity prices were subject to vast fluctuations on the world market. To understand the effects of international price fluctuations on rural households, the study of the transmission of world market prices to local markets which are most relevant for small-holder farmers and households offers important insights. Cove...

Maize is a major staple food in Sub-Saharan Africa. Monthly maize prices in Tanzania are analyzed since the country is an important maize producer and exporter in East Africa. We analyze price transmission between the five most important urban regions of Tanzania between 2000 and 2008 which correspond to major maize production or consumption areas....

We assess market integration and price transmission of perishable agricultural produce in Sub-Saharan Africa by studying Ghanaian tomato markets which are characterized by pronounced seasonality in production and trade flows. We analyse the tomato markets of Ghana by simultaneously regarding its five most important markets, Navrongo, Techiman, Kuma...