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Autonomous machines have the potential to maintain food production and agroecological farming resilience. However, autonomous complex mixed cropping is proving to be an engineering challenge because of differences in plant height and growth pattern. Strip cropping is technically the simplest mixed cropping system, but widespread use is constrained by higher labor requirements in conventional mechanized farms. Researchers have long hypothesized that autonomous machines (i.e., crop robots) might make strip cropping profitable, thereby allowing farmers to gain additional agroecological benefits. To examine this hypothesis, this study modeled ex‐ante scenarios for the Corn Belt of central Indiana, using the experience of the Hands Free Hectare‐Linear Programming (HFH‐LP) optimization model. Results show that per annum return to operator labor, management, and risk‐taking (ROLMRT) was$568/ha and $ 163/ha higher for the autonomous corn (Zea mays L.) and soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.] strip crop farm compared to the whole field sole crop and the conventional strip crop farms, respectively, that were operated by human drivers. The conventional strip cropping practice was found challenging as this cropping system required four times more temporary hired labor than autonomous strip cropping and three times more than whole field sole cropping. Even if autonomous machines need 100% human supervision, the ROLMRT was higher compared to whole field sole cropping. Profitable autonomous strip cropping could restore and improve in‐field biodiversity and ecosystem services through a sustainable techno‐economic and environmental approach that will address the demand for healthier food and promote environmental sustainability. Core Ideas Autonomous machines enable use of alternative mixed crop geometries. Autonomous strip cropping has higher economic payoffs than sole and conventional strip cropping. Even with lower grain prices and full‐time supervision, swarm robots have economic benefits. Autonomous machines could reconcile economic and agroecological goals.

Promoting high-quality rice cultivation is pivotal for ensuring national food security and advancing agricultural modernization. Given the mounting pressures of rising production costs, fluctuating grain prices, and increased natural disasters, it is crucial to examine whether policy-supported rice insurance promotes high-quality rice cultivation by professional grain farmers. This study focuses on the perspective of professional grain farmers, a micro-level entity in rice management. Using survey data from 511 professional grain farmers across 17 counties in Jiangxi Province, China, this study employs Tobit regression, mediation effect, and moderation effect models to examine how policy-supported rice insurance influences high-quality rice cultivation by professional grain farmers. Our results demonstrate that policy-supported rice insurance significantly promotes the adoption of high-quality rice cultivation among professional grain farmers. When other factors remain unchanged, for every one-unit increase in the level of policy-supported rice insurance, the proportion of high-quality rice planted by farmers will increase by 0.339 units. Mediation analysis reveals that policy-supported rice insurance facilitates high-quality rice cultivation by increasing farmers’ hired labor level. Moderation analysis shows that government subsidies negatively moderate the relationship between insurance and cultivation practices, suggesting a potential substitution effect between the two policy instruments. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the promoting effect of policy-supported rice insurance on high-quality rice cultivation is more significant among professional grain farmers with higher degrees of land contiguity and more years of rice cultivation. These findings have policy implications for increasing the coverage level of policy-supported rice insurance and farmers’ enrollment, introducing differentiated insurance schemes, improving the matching mechanism in the rural labor market, and strengthening coordination between policy-supported rice insurance and other subsidy policies.

Diversification of smallholder rice-based cropping systems has the potential to increase cropping system intensity and boost food security. However, impacts on resource use efficiencies (e.g., nutrients, energy, and labor) remain poorly understood, highlighting the need to quantify synergies and trade-offs among different sustainability indicators under on-farm conditions. In southern coastal Bangladesh, aman season rice is characterized by low inputs and low productivity. We evaluated the farm-level impacts of cropping system intensification (adding irrigated boro season rice) and diversification (adding chili, groundnut, mungbean, or lathyrus) on seven performance indicators (rice equivalent yield, energy efficiency, partial nitrogen productivity, partial potassium productivity, partial greenhouse gas footprint, benefit-cost ratio, and hired labor energy productivity) based on a comprehensive survey of 501 households. Indicators were combined into a multi-criteria performance index, and their scope for improvement was calculated by comparing an individual farmer’s performance to top-performing farmers (highest 20%). Results indicate that the baseline system (single-crop aman season rice) was the least productive, while double cropped systems increased rice equivalent yield 72–217%. Despite gains in productivity, higher cropping intensity reduced resource use efficiencies due to higher inputs of fertilizer and energy, which also increased production costs, particularly for boro season rice. However, trade-offs were smaller for diversified systems including legumes, largely owing to lower N fertilizer inputs. Aman season rice had the highest multi-criteria performance index, followed by systems with mungbean and lathyrus, indicating the latter are promising options to boost food production and profitability without compromising sustainability. Large gaps between individual and top-performing farmers existed for each indicator, suggesting significant scope for improvement. By targeting indicators contributing most to the multi-criteria performance index (partial nitrogen productivity, energy efficiency, hired labor energy productivity), results suggest further sustainability gains can be achieved through future field research studies focused on optimizing management within diversified systems.

This paper investigates the potential labour efficiencies and socio-cultural benefits of agroforestry for coffee smallholders practising low input production strategies. Employing both qualitative and quantitative methods, our case study of coffee smallholders in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, shows that despite managing very small holdings of coffee trees (< 500 trees), productivity is challenged by labour shortages and by very low levels of farm inputs. Constraints on labour supply include barriers to mobilising women’s labour; competition for labour from alternative livelihoods; the absence of a market in hired labour; and the time, labour and income demands of the indigenous socio-economy. The indigenous social economy draws heavily on smallholders’ time, labour and coffee income, to the extent that there is little labour for coffee garden maintenance and little coffee income invested in other farm inputs. To address these input shortfalls we explore the potential of ecosystem services from shade-grown coffee to generate labour efficiencies to partly fill some of the unmet maintenance requirements of coffee gardens and to partly fill the role of other farm inputs. Coffee extension must become more holistic and consider smallholder families’ diverse livelihoods and recognise the enduring nature of the low input production strategy, its socio-cultural value, its role in determining life quality, and thus its resistance to change. Extension must align with, rather than challenge, the low input production strategy to promote the potential labour efficiencies and benefits of agroforestry to create more resilient, sustainable and culturally-enriching coffee-based farming systems.

This paper examines the farm income differences, income inequality of farm households, parameters of income variability that ascertain vulnerability levels, and cost-income variability of agricultural crops in four districts of Mymensingh division in Bangladesh. Six hundred farm households from Mymensingh division were used as the source of data for the current study. The results of the analysis show that per capita income difference is significant in farm household among the districts, and agricultural income variation play an important role in per capita income. Higher income from agriculture contributed lower income inequality in the districts, even though employment income is dominant in most of the districts and highest income inequality is found in Netrokona district. Rice is the leading crop in most of districts, except Mymensingh where income share of other crops is high in the total agricultural income. Remittance income shows the higher income inequality among the districts that are lowest in employment and then agriculture. Agriculture is a primary contributor of inducing income disparity of farm households. In this context, we found that the key variation of agricultural income comes from aman HYV and boro HYV rice crops. The cost and income of these rice crops was largely calculated based on the enhanced yields, higher irrigation, and chemical fertilizer and hired labor use per hectare land. By using the lognormal distribution under two scenarios (baseline, yield loss), we estimated the poverty rates resulted from the yield loss of rice production due to potential climate change impact in different districts. The unexpected yield loss of rice by climate change impact leads to the projection that poverty rates in Jamalpur and Netrokona districts would increase. It is, therefore, recommended that proper management of agricultural farms, crop diversification, and appropriate technology interventions are necessary to reduce income inequality and losses of farm income from climate change impact.

Certification of banana plantations is widely used as a device for protecting and improving socio-economic conditions of wageworkers, including their incomes, working conditions and—increasingly—voice [related to labour relations and workplace representation]. However, to date, evidence about the effectiveness of certification in these domains is scarce. We collected detailed field data on (1) economic benefits for improving household income, (2) social benefits for labour practices, and (3) the voice of wageworkers focusing on identity and identification issues amongst wageworkers at Fairtrade certified banana plantations and comparable, non-certified plantations in the Dominican Republic. We used different types of regression models to identify significant relationships. Econometrical analysis of survey results complemented by field observations and outcomes from in-depth stakeholder interviews indicate that the impact of Fairtrade certification on wageworkers’ economic benefits is rather limited. However, the impact on the voice of wageworkers (job satisfaction, sense of ownership, trust), is more evident. On Fairtrade certified plantations workers are more satisfied with the course of life and better represented. Thus while the additional value of Fairtrade certification on primary wages seems limited, Fairtrade has relevant positive effects on the labour force, particularly by delivering in-kind benefits, offering a sense of job-security, improving voice and enabling private savings. Benefits of (Fairtrade) certification, but also other interventions with a similar purpose, might therefore not be discerned in terms of economic benefits such as wages or basic labour conditions that are under direct control of (inter)national law, but they should be identified in terms of social benefits and improved norms of conduct for wageworker engagement.

The aging of the agricultural labor force is an irreversible trend that has become an important issue in China’s economic transformation. Previous studies on the effects of an aging population in developing countries on agriculture mainly focused on food crops, and the conclusions were mixed. Using data for apple growers in Shaanxi Province, China, we used ordinary least squares (OLS), stochastic frontier production function (SFA), and truncated regression to investigate how rural aging affects apple production under different landform conditions. We provided evidence that (i) aging leads apple growers to use hired labor to replace family labor in the flatlands, but not in mountainous and hilly areas, due to landform constraints on the factor substitution; (ii) aging has no significant impact on mechanical inputs in either the plains or the mountains, indicating that machinery cannot effectively replace the labor force; (iii) limited by a shortage of labor quantity and quality, apple growers respond to aging by reducing agricultural inputs in mountainous and hilly areas; (iv) changes in input structure cause aging to have little influence on yield and technical efficiency in flatlands, while aging significantly reduces yield in mountainous and hilly areas; (v) there is a nonlinear relationship between aging and technical efficiency and yield; and (vi) because the overall mechanization level of China’s apple industry is low, mechanical substitution for labor is not common in apple production.

This study intends to build a theoretical mechanism of agricultural socialization services for the eco-efficiency of agricultural land use from two paths, namely the agricultural division of labor and technological progress, and empirically calibrate the Tobit model based on the data of the China Family Tracking Survey (CFPS) for 4453 farming households in 23 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities) across China. The results of the study show the following: (1) Agricultural socialization services can significantly improve the eco-efficiency of agricultural land use. (2) Hired labor services are more likely to promote eco-efficiency in agricultural land use than farm machinery leasing, especially in major food-producing areas; however, in non-major food-producing areas, the effectiveness of farm machinery leasing services is limited or affected by regional policy differences. (3) In the analysis of the mechanism of agricultural socialization services on the eco-efficiency of agricultural land use, the division of labor in agriculture plays an intermediary role, and the intermediary effect accounts for about 11.4%; however, there is a masking effect of technological progress. This means that China should further develop the role of agricultural socialized services in promoting the ecological efficiency of agricultural land use by developing agricultural socialized service organizations, accelerating the integration of farmers into the modern agricultural division of labor, and promoting the application of green agricultural machinery, among other measures.

Large-scale farming is crucial to improving agricultural competitiveness and increasing farmers’ income. With the rapid development of the digital economy, applying digital technology in agricultural production is regarded as a new source of enhancing agricultural competitiveness. However, few studies have discussed the potential link between the application of digital production technology and large-scale farming from a micro-perspective. Based on survey data from rice farmers in Jiangsu Province, China, in 2023, this study uses an endogenous switching model to analyze the impact of digital production technology on large-scale farming and its potential mechanisms. The results show that applying digital production technology significantly promotes large-scale farming at both the farm and plot levels. These findings remain robust after a series of robustness tests, including changing estimation methods and redefining dependent variables. Mechanism analysis reveals that digital production technology promotes large-scale farming through three pathways: reducing labor costs, mitigating disaster risks, and enhancing managerial capabilities. The heterogeneity analysis indicates that the impact of digital production technology on large-scale farming is more pronounced among farmers with high digital literacy or those in regions with advanced digital finance. This study emphasizes that promoting digital production technology is feasible for achieving large-scale farming.

A growing number of multi-stakeholder initiatives seek to improve labor and environmental standards through third-party certification. Fairtrade, one of the most popular third-party certifications in the agro-food sector, is currently expanding its operations from its traditional base in commodities like coffee produced by peasant cooperatives to products like flowers produced by hired labor enterprises. My analysis reveals how Fairtrade’s engagement in the hired labor sector is shaped by the tensions between (1) traditional market and industrial conventions, rooted in price competition, bureaucratic efficiency, product standardization and certification and (2) alternative domestic and civic conventions, rooted in trust, personal ties, and concerns for societal wide benefits. At the global level, these tensions shape Fairtrade’s global standard setting as reflected in Fairtrade’s recently revised labor standards. At the local level, these tensions shape the varied impacts of certification on the ground as revealed through a case study of certified flower production in Ecuador.