Rice market efficiency is important for food security in countries where rice is a staple. We assess the impact of rice quality on rice prices, food security, and environmental sustainability in Bangladesh. We find that while price varies as expected for most quality attributes, it is unaffected by a broken percentage below 24.9 percent. This reveals a potential inefficiency, considering the average 5 percent broken rate observed in the market. An increase in the broken rate of milled rice within the limits supported by our findings can, ceteris paribus, increase rice rations by 4.66 million a year, or conversely, yield the current number of rice rations using 170.79 thousand fewer hectares and cutting emissions by 1.48 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent. Thus, producing rice based on quality assessment can improve food security and its sustainability.

This study assesses the economic, social and environmental impacts of renewable and nuclear energy targets for global electricity generation by 2030. It examines different regions, as they might experience different impacts depending on the structures of their economies and their local natural resources, to understand the impact of these targets on their economics and well-being of their people. These regions are: Saudi Arabia, the United States (US), China, India, Europe and Rest of World (ROW). A well-known Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model, the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP), is modified and used to predict global economic shifts that would be triggered by two scenarios. The business as usual (BAU) scenario assumes that the current electricity mix remains unchanged until 2030. The Renewable and Nuclear Energy (RNE) scenario is based on the International Energy Outlook (IEO) 2016 prediction. The analysis shows that the GDP value of all regions, except India, is affected negatively. The study shows a loss of 4.45 million jobs worldwide in the RNE compared to the BAU. Finally, the implementation of planned renewable and nuclear energy slightly benefits the environment but not enough to mitigate rise in global temperature.

We review the experiences and challenges that researchers can face when conducting contingent valuation studies in developing countries. We discuss these challenges based on our own experiences of conducting field‐contingent valuation studies about genetically modified rice in five developing countries that represent different regions of the world and diverse cultures; we also base our discussion on results from a survey we conducted of agricultural and applied economists regarding their own experiences. The issues covered include the selection and training of local personnel, the recruitment of participants, sampling challenges, participants' compensation, survey methods and implementation, elicitation methods, the literacy rate of the population, and security/safety issues in developing countries. We also discuss the implications of our findings to other well‐established stated‐preference methods such as choice experiments.

For centuries, heirloom rice varieties have been grown on the terraces of the Cordillera Mountains of Luzon, Philippines, terroirs known for their significant historical, cultural, and aesthetic values. However, heritage heirloom rice farming is gradually being abandoned, mainly because of its lower productivity and the struggle of the sector to create a sustainable niche market for heirloom rice by branding its cultural, social, and nutritional values. We propose several demand-side intervention strategies for the valorization of heirloom rice. To support the development of a segmented marketing strategy for heritage farming, we provide evidence on urban consumers’ willingness to purchase heirloom rice. We interviewed 500 urban consumers from Metro Manila in July–August 2015, who placed a purchasing bid on a kilogram of heirloom rice. Consumers’ bids averaged PHP 72.61 kg⁻¹ (USD 1.60 kg⁻¹), which is less than half its current market price. This explains why heirloom rice struggles to gain market share in urban markets in the Philippines. Given this bid price, we estimate a potential market size of PHP 20.3 billion (USD 443 million) that could be created for heirloom rice and tapped into by heritage farmers. Findings further indicate that women, business owners, and consumers who buy packaged rice and eat pigmented rice are willing to pay more for heirloom rice. Finally, our evidence suggests that proper information framing will be necessary to create demand and support the valorization of heirloom rice to preserve cultural heritage and in situ biodiversity of rice landraces in the Philippines.