Can the global drone revolution make agriculture more sustainable?

Rapid growth in drone use is upending expectations but also inducing trade-offs.

Smallholder farmers' willingness to pay for scale-appropriate farm mechanization: Evidence from the mid-hills of Nepal.

This paper analyzes smallholder farmers' willingness to pay (WTP) for the purchase of scale-appropriate farm mechanization in the hill ecologies of Nepal using the case of mini-tiller technology: a small, 5-7 horsepower two-wheel tractor primarily used for agricultural land preparation. Using primary survey data from 628 randomly-selected households, we find that farm size, local wage rates, out-migration, access to credit services, and associations with agricultural cooperatives positively influence the WTP for mini-tillers while the number of draft animals owned negatively influence the WTP for mini-tillers. On average, farmers were willing to pay 31% less than the actual price of a mini-tiller.

Scale-appropriate mechanization impacts on productivity among smallholders: Evidence from rice systems in the mid-hills of Nepal.

Smallholder farmers in the mid-hills of Nepal are facing an acute labor shortage due to out-migration which, in general, has affected the capacity to achieve timely crop establishment, harvest, and inter-cultural operations. These effects are more visible in the case of labor-intensive crops such as rice and promoting higher levels of rural mechanization has emerged as the primary policy response option. Nevertheless, quantitative evidence for the ability of mechanization to offset the adverse effects of shortages increasing labor prices in these systems is largely absent.

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