Our Research

Agricultural economics

The agricultural sector is of huge importance for New Zealand. Many significant public policy issues such as environmental protection, innovation, growth in GDP, management of financial risk, and land use and infrastructure have important agricultural dimensions.

To address this challenge we have established an Agricultural Economics programme at Motu. This aims to build an evidence base as a foundation for public discussion of some of the important issues.

Examples of specific issues that may be included in the research plan include:

  • The productivity gap across agricultural sectors and the factors/drivers affecting this
  • Linking agricultural productivity to regional wellbeing and economic growth
  • Adaptation and resilience of farmers under an uncertain changing climate
  • Increasing our understanding of farmers’ decision making towards insurance, investments, and adoption of new practices

However, even though we are currently building this capacity, we have already produced several documents directly related to agricultural issues, which can be found below. We also have a current research project that aims to understand the barriers that farmers might face when deciding whether or not to adopt new mitigation option that would have zero financial cost for the farm. 

Publications