Remittance inflow and smallholder farming practices. The case of Moldova

Simone Piras, Matteo Vittuari, Judith Möllers and Thomas Herzfeld

Land Use Policy, 2018, vol. 70, issue C, 654-665

Abstract: In the Republic of Moldova, a large number of households that received land shares after the break-down of the collective farm structure currently focus on semi-subsistence agriculture. Often, one or more members of these households have migrated abroad. This paper aims at assessing the impact of remittances on their agricultural production practices and investments. The authors rely on the rotating panel dataset of the Household Budget Survey for the period 2007–2013, and on an original survey carried out on a sample of 126 households in 2015. To test if remittance recipients replace family labour and self-produced inputs with mechanisation services and purchased inputs, a shadow agricultural wage is estimated. Logistic regressions are used to assess whether the occurrence of investments (farmland, machinery, or dairy cattle) is more probable in the case of remittance inflow. The results show that recipient households reduce their drudgery by substituting family labour and self-produced seeds and feed with mechanisation services and purchased inputs, without necessarily increasing production efficiency. The relationship between remittances and agricultural investments is very weak or negative. However, qualitative insights demonstrate that many investments (greenhouses, rototillers, walnut orchards, etc.) were possible thanks to remittances. Although most recipients do not invest in agriculture, the minority that does invest has access to remittances.

Keywords: Smallholders; Remittances; Investment decisions; Farming practices; Republic of Moldova (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264837717310487
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Journal Article: Remittance inflow and smallholder farming practices: The case of Moldova (2018)
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:eee:lauspo:v:70:y:2018:i:c:p:654-665

DOI: 10.1016/j.landusepol.2017.10.050

Access Statistics for this article

Land Use Policy is currently edited by Jaap Zevenbergen

More articles in Land Use Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joice Jiang ().