Although Adam Smith (1776) and Alfred Marshall (1920) emphasized the gains from specialization that arise from the division of labor, their focus was on the manufacturing sector. Both saw farming as being on too small a scale and bereft of economies of scale, with a market that was too small and local, with too sharp a seasonality, and too quick a succession of tasks to support either the development of a division of labor over the tasks of a cropping season or of mechanization.

This study tested whether information on positive food additives and negative food additives had an effect on consumers’ risk perception and their willingness to accept (WTA) food with additives. Consumers’ WTA was examined via a random nth-price auction of exchanging freshly squeezed orange juice without additives for orange juice with additives. Results show that consumers’ WTA differs with the order in which information was provided. Consumers are generally more sensitive to negative than positive information on additives. Female, middle-educated consumers are more susceptible to additive information and their WTA is more likely to change, while postgraduate-educated consumers are less sensitive to additive information. Consumers with higher food-safety satisfaction have lower WTA than those who are not satisfied with food safety. However, their satisfaction is easily affected by the negative-information intervention. Interestingly, consumers with relatively good knowledge of additives had higher WTA than those with no such knowledge. This study provides insight on how to establish effective food-safety-risk communication. Government and non-government agencies need to timely and accurately eliminate food-safety scares through the daily communication and disclosure of food-safety information, as well as prevent the misguidance of negative food safety-risk information.

Proper nourishment is fundamental for satisfactory crop growth and production. However, for efficient crop production, it is important to understand the soil environment, to recognize the limitations of that environment, and to ameliorate them where possible without damaging the soil quality. Soil testing and fertilizer recommendation facilities (STFRF) can help farmers to achieve environmental and economic sustainability by assisting them in recognizing their soil condition, reducing agrochemicals usage, using an appropriate amount of fertilizer, minimizing input costs, and achieving higher yield. These facilities are not new in the context of Bangladesh, yet the adoption rate among farmers is low and its determinants have rarely been empirically tested based on microlevel data. Therefore, this study examined those factors underlying the adoption of soil testing and fertilizer recommendation facilities using field surveyed data of 176 individual farmers. Our evidence shows that young farmers with less farming experience are more likely to adopt these facilities. Additionally, being small-scale farmers, having higher education, having more farming income, and having more knowledge about these facilities and the fees of these facilities were found to have a significant effect on the adoption. On the other hand, gender, land ownership, and secondary income were found to be insignificant with regard to the adoption of soil testing and fertilizer recommendation facilities. Our results also revealed that most adopter farmers not only focused on profitability, but were additionally concerned with environmental well-being.

Insufficient rainfall in the dry season and scarcity of surface water has resulted in firms’ reliance on groundwater for agriculture in the northern part of Bangladesh. Most irrigation systems in the country are diesel or electric, which raises the cost and demand for energy and pollutes the environment. Utilizing the abundant sunshine and disseminating solar-based irrigation systems is expected to be a fittingly rewarding experience for irrigation purposes. Therefore, this study identifies the factors influencing the adoption of solar irrigation facilities (SIFs) and the impacts of their adoption on irrigation cost, return on investment (ROI), and production costs, using survey data collected from 405 rice farmers of Dinajpur district. The study employed three treatment effect estimators, namely inverse probability weighting (IPW), regression adjustment (RA), and inverse probability weighted regression adjustment (IPWRA), to address the potential selection bias issue. The results revealed that farming experience, knowledge, environmental awareness, soil fertility, and irrigation machinery ownership significantly influenced adoption decisions. The treatment effect model result indicated that farmers who adopted this method could minimize irrigation costs by 1.88 to 2.22%, obtain 4.48 to 8.16% higher ROI, and reduce total production cost by 0.06 to 0.98% compared to non-adopters. Our findings suggested that policy interventions targeting scaling up SIFs should consider focusing on government and stakeholders’ greater attention on designing more appropriate schemes through experimentation and multiple iterations.