Projecting Livestock Numbers

The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF) undertakes forecasts and projections of livestock numbers as part of the twice yearly contribution to The Treasury’s economic and fiscal updates. MAF’s Pastoral Supply Response Model (PSRM) was recently re-developed and used for the first time in the Budget Economic and Fiscal Update round of 2004. The PSRM projects annual inventory numbers as at 30 June, births and livestock numbers for slaughter. The paper discusses the PSRM, the post-model adjustments process, and the feed through to a simplistic assessment of land use changes within pasture areas.Livestock numbers, forecasting, supply response, Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy, Crop Production/Industries, Environmental Economics and Policy, Farm Management, Land Economics/Use, Livestock Production/Industries, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

E-access, e-maturity, e-safety: a learner survey

The report explored young people's access to technology in school and at home and the skills, knowledge and confidence of learners when using technology for learning.In addition, the project has sought to identify any links between learner attitudes, school characteristics, and learners' technological skills, e-confidence and levels of e-maturity. The NFER conducted a large-scale national survey with primary and secondary school learners in England. The survey was administered between November and December 2008, and was completed by over 4,000 learners: 1,990 learners in primary schools (in Year 6) and 2,061 learners in secondary schools (in Year 10)

Productivity in the New Zealand primary and downstream sectors

In New Zealand, there has been increasing interest in productivity growth, both at economywide and sector levels. The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry maintains a total factor productivity series for the primary sectors. As part of the ministry's flagship project on growth and productivity, we are reviewing the methodology and extending productivity derivation to downstream industries. This paper presents our research results to date.total factor productivity, New Zealand, agriculture, forestry, downstream sectors, Productivity Analysis,

THE PACIFIC RIM BEEF TRADE: IMPACTS OF LIFTING FOOT-AND-MOUTH DISEASE TRADE BARRIERS

International Relations/Trade,

Salinity risk mapping for assessing Carbon Farming Initiative proposals: decision support and data requirements

The Clean Energy Legislation passed by the Australian Parliament on 8 November 2011 links the carbon price to the Carbon Farming Initiative (CFI). Under the Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative) Act 2011 (the Act), proponents need to consider regional natural resource management (NRM) plans to ensure that tree plantings for carbon bio-sequestration maximise environmental benefits and avoid unintended adverse effects on biodiversity, water and agricultural production systems

Semiclassical theory of cavity-assisted atom cooling

We present a systematic semiclassical model for the simulation of the dynamics of a single two-level atom strongly coupled to a driven high-finesse optical cavity. From the Fokker-Planck equation of the combined atom-field Wigner function we derive stochastic differential equations for the atomic motion and the cavity field. The corresponding noise sources exhibit strong correlations between the atomic momentum fluctuations and the noise in the phase quadrature of the cavity field. The model provides an effective tool to investigate localisation effects as well as cooling and trapping times. In addition, we can continuously study the transition from a few photon quantum field to the classical limit of a large coherent field amplitude.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figure