Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1984, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Sociology

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2011, Agricultural, Environmental and Developmental Economics

Poor soil fertility and unreliable rainfall are associated with crop failures in Uganda. However, adoption of technologies in Uganda is among the lowest in Sub-Saharan Africa. The first essay examines the impact of production risk on farmers' simultaneous use of high yielding maize varieties (HYM) and fertilizers. The study is implemented in two steps: the first step uses the flexible moments based approach to generate lagged output moments as proxy measures of production risk, the second step incorporates the lagged output moments in a technology adoption model. Simultaneous technology adoption decisions are estimated using a multinomial probit estimator. Results show that the expected output, the variance, and the probability of crop failure (skewness) are important factors affecting the adoption of the technology package. Other important factors include scale of production, access to extension services, access to credit, household assets, and access to output markets. Rural incomes are highly vulnerable to income shocks. Previously, the effects of income shocks on household welfare in Africa have mostly been examined at the household level, yet impacts vary at the individual level. The second essay examines the impact of household income shocks on intrahousehold off-farm labor supply in rural Uganda. Bivariate Tobit estimators are adopted to correct for the interrelatedness of the couples' decisions to participate in the off-farm labor markets. Results show that women's intrahousehold bargaining power increases their participation in the off-farm non-agricultural labor sector. Results further show that women participate more in the off-farm sector when faced with some idiosyncratic income shocks, and participate less in the off-farm sector when faced with covariate income shocks. However, women's intrahousehold bargaining power has no impact on reducing the effects of covariate income shocks. Remoteness and the level of economic development of an area are also im (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: David Kraybill PhD (Advisor); Brent Sohngen PhD (Committee Member); Matthew Roberts PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Agricultural Economics

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2003, History

This thesis examines farmers' changing identity and rhetoric in response to the shifting structure of American agriculture in the mid to late 20th century and places the development of the American Agriculture Movement in historical context. Faced with increasingly competitive markets as a result of rising production, farmers turned to large-scale production for survival. A rapidly declining farm population with growing consumer political power led to concerns that the agrarian way of life—what many believed to be a vital part of America—was quickly dying and that farmers could do little to stop the process. These trends led to transformations in farm identity reflected in changes in farm protest group strategy and rhetoric of the National Farmers Organization of the 1960s to that of the AAM of the late 1970s. Non-farmers, while believing in the agrarian myth, did not see modern farmers as representative of old agrarian values.

Committee: Allan Winkler (Advisor) Subjects: History, United States