Application of a bias-corrected meta-frontier approach and an endogenous switching regression to analyze the technical efficiency of conservation tillage for wheat in South Asia.

Conservation tillage (CT) options are among the most rapidly spreading land preparation and crop establishment techniques globally. In South Asia, CT has spread dramatically over the last decade, a result of strong policy support and increasing availability of appropriate machinery. Although many studies have analyzed the yield and profitability of CT systems, the technical efficiency impacts accrued by farmers utilizing CT have received considerably less attention.

The influence of gender and product design on farmers' preferences for weather-indexed crop insurance.

Theoretically, weather-index insurance is an effective risk reduction option for small-scale farmers in low income countries. Renewed policy and donor emphasis on bridging gender gaps in development also emphasizes the potential social safety net benefits that weather-index insurance could bring to women farmers who are disproportionately vulnerable to climate change risk and have low adaptive capacity. To date, no quantitative studies have experimentally explored weather-index insurance preferences through a gender lens, and little information exists regarding gender-specific preferences for (and constraints to) smallholder investment in agricultural weather-index insurance.