Pricing agricultural inputs from biodiversity-rich ecosystems and habitats without input markets

Laura Onofri and Mario Volpe

African Journal of Economic and Management Studies, 2019, vol. 11, issue 1, 122-133

Abstract: Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to focus on the analysis of an understudied problem in the economic literature. It proposes a valuation methodology for inputs that come from biodiversity-rich ecosystems/habitats and are used in agro-food production at zero input cost because there is not a market for such inputs. Design/methodology/approach - Following Onofriet al.(2017), the authors computed the value of the marginal productivity of different inputs in three selected case studies (Angola, Mozambique and Brazil). Results are theory based and rigorous but show a strong contingency, case based, relative dimension that is captured, in the framework, by the “relativity ratio.” The ratio expresses the relative weight of the value generated by the input that comes from biodiversity-rich ecosystems/habitats in the per capita monthly available income of the farmer and aims at conveying additional insights to the economic valuation. Findings - In this paper, the assessment of agricultural inputs value (price) in the absence of inputs markets is done, with an application to three different case studies. The inputs are peculiar since they come from habitats and ecosystems that are very biodiversity-rich. Originality/value - The paper proposes a practical, though rigorous, methodology for the assessment of the value (price) of agricultural inputs in absence of inputs markets. Markets do not exist since the inputs come from biodiversity-rich habitats and ecosystems.

Keywords: Biodiversity; Agricultural input; Economic valuation; Marginal productivity of inputs; Missing markets (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:ajemsp:ajems-10-2018-0287

DOI: 10.1108/AJEMS-10-2018-0287

Access Statistics for this article

African Journal of Economic and Management Studies is currently edited by Prof John Kuada

More articles in African Journal of Economic and Management Studies from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().