Impact Of Greenhouse Gas Abatement Targets On Agricultural Activity

As part of its continuing commitment to address the causes of climate change, the EU has agreed reduction targets for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to be achieved by 2020. In the case of Ireland the target is a reduction of 20 percent relative to the 2005 level. Agriculture is a major source of GHG emissions in Ireland, comprising 26.8 percent of total GHG emissions in 2007. Understanding the scale and cost of the decrease in agricultural production required to achieve this reduction in GHG emissions is particularly important, as is the comparison of the cost of this approach with a range of possible other means of achieving emissions reductions in the sector. This study finds that, even with reduced fertiliser usage and more extensive production practices, a very substantial decrease in the livestock population is required to meet the emission reduction targets by 2020. The paper concludes that a solution involving a mix of measures may ultimately be requiredagriculture, policy analysis, partial equilibrium modelling, baseline, scenario analysis, GHG, Kyoto, climate, Ireland, FAPRI, EU Gold Model, abatements, Environmental Economics and Policy, Q11, Q17, Q18, Q54,

THE EFFICIENCY OF THE FUTURES MARKET FOR AGRICULTURAL COMMODITIES IN THE UK

This paper uses cointegration procedures to test for agricultural commodity futures market efficiency in the UK. Cointegration between spot and futures prices is a necessary condition for market efficiency where these prices are characterised by stochastic trends (Lai and Lai 1991). In addition, acceptance of the 'unbiasedness hypothesis' requires that the spot and lagged futures prices are cointegrated with the cointegrating vector (1, -1). Alternatively, Brenner and Kroner (1995) use a no-arbitrage cost-of-carry model to argue that the existence of cointegration between spot and futures prices depends on the time series properties of the cost-of-carry. According to Brenner and Kroner (1995), a tri-variate cointegrating relationship (the BK hypothesis) should exist among the spot price, the lagged futures price and the lagged interest rate (that component of cost-of-carry most likely to be non-stationary). These variables should be cointegrated with a cointegrating vector (1, -1, 1). Kellard (2002) finds that both bi-variate and tri-variate cointegrating relationships are found in a sample from the wheat futures market in the UK, and thus the so-called "cointegration paradox" emerges. As Kellard (2002) points out this paradox exists because it is theoretically impossible for two variables to be cointegrated with each other while simultaneously being cointegrated with a third variable. Using a larger sample of wheat futures market prices from LIFFE both the 'unbiasedness hypothesis' and the 'BK hypothesis' are examined. The results indicate that the 'BK hypothesis' should be rejected.Marketing,

Linking Large Numbers of Individual National Models: The Case of the AGMEMOD Partnership

The AGMEMOD Partnership seeks to capture the inherent heterogeneity of the agricultural systems existing by combining individual country models of 27 EU Member States and several accession countries into one single model while still maintaining analytical consistency. Although this approach facilitates the comparison of the impact of a policy across different Member States, it generates challenges in practical implementation, ranging from high communication and administration requirements to aggregation and consistency issues. This contribution provides insights into the different challenges posed to the scientists and discusses the key issues for maintenance and further development of such a complex system. Specific attention is paid to technical devices and tools as well as to the design of institutional settings for avoiding inconsistencies.Linking Models, Policy Analysis, Partial Equilibrium Modelling, Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), Agricultural and Food Policy,

How to deal with the challenges of linking a large number of individual national models: the case of the AGMEMOD Partnership

The AGMEMOD Partnership seeks to capture the inherent existing heterogeneity of agricultural systems by linking together individual EU Member State models, an aggregated EU model and several accession countries into one single model, while still maintaining analytical consistency. Although this approach facilitates the comparison of the impact of a policy change across different Member States, it generates challenges in practical implementation, ranging from significant communication and administration requirements, to aggregation and consistency issues. This contribution provides insights into the different challenges posed to the scientists and discusses the key issues for maintenance and further development of such a complex system. Specific attention is paid to technical devices and tools as well as to the design of institutional settings to achieve consistency.linking models, policy analysis, partial equilibrium modelling, Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), Agricultural and Food Policy, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods,

Wavelet Radiosity

Radiosity methods have been shown to be an effective means to solve the global illumination problem in Lambertian diffuse environments. These methods approximate the radiosity integral equation by projecting the unknown radiosity function into a set of basis functions with limited support resulting in a set of n linear equations where n is the number of discrete elements in the scene. Classical radiosity methods required the evaluation of n2 interaction coefficients. Efforts to reduce the number of required coefficients without compromising error bounds have focused on raising the order of the basis functions, meshing, accounting for discontinuities, and on developing hierarchical approaches, which have been shown to reduce the required interactions to O(n). In this paper we show that the hierarchical radiosity formulation is an instance of a more general set of methods based on wavelet theory. This general framework offers a unified view of both higher order element approaches to radiosity and the hierarchical radiosity methods. After a discussion of the relevant theory, we discuss a new set of linear time hierarchical algorithms based on wavelets such as the multiwavelet family and a flatlet basis which we introduce. Initial results of experimentation with these basis sets are demonstrated and discussed.Engineering and Applied Science

MTR and the EU Commission Proposal for the WTO: - An analysis of their effect on the EU and Irish agricultural sector

Further information may be found at http://www.tnet.teagasc.ie/fapri/pubandrep2003.htmIn the short history of the FAPRI-Ireland Partnership there has been no shortage of policy proposals to analyse. As part of the Agenda 2000 process the CAP is undergoing significant reform following the agreement made at the European Council in Berlin in 1999. This agreement had widespread implications for agriculture in Ireland, particularly for the beef sector. The changes that were agreed at that time have not even been fully implemented and there is already another reform document on the table, containing even more radical proposals for reform

FAPRI-Ireland 2003 EU Baseline Briefing Book

For six years the FAPRI-Ireland Partnership has been producing analysis of agricultural policy for the EU, with a focus on the impacts for Ireland. The process that generates this analysis involves first developing a baseline, a set of figures produced under the assumption that current policies remain in place. In the case of Europe, this means that agricultural policy in the EU is that which prevailed in January 2003. The baseline does include the reforms that were agreed under Agenda 2000 that have yet to be implemented for the dairy sector, where intervention prices were scheduled to fall between 2005 and 2007, and provisions from the Uruguay round

Iterative Methods for Visualization of Implicit Surfaces on GPU

The original publication is available at www.springerlink.comInternational audienceThe ray-casting of implicit surfaces on GPU has been explored in the last few years. However, until recently, they were restricted to second degree (quadrics). We present an iterative solution to ray cast cubics and quartics on GPU. Our solution targets efficient implementation, obtaining interactive rendering for thousands of surfaces per frame. We have given special attention to torus rendering since it is a useful shape for multiple CAD models. We have tested four different iterative methods, including a novel one, comparing them with classical tessellation solution

CAP Reform and the WTO: Potential Impacts on EU Agriculture

Selected Paper prepared for presentation at the American Agricultural Economics Association Annual Meeting, Denver, Colorado.In 2003 an agreement was finalized to instigate arguably the most significant reform of the European Union's (EU) Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) since its inception. In the Luxembourg Agreement many of the direct payments that have been linked to production are decoupled and instead provided in the form of a land-based payment. The reforms did not include any significant changes to either EU border support or the ability of the EU to utilize export subsidies that have been widely criticized by other nations. Even though the reforms do not directly address trade in agricultural products it is argued that World Trade Organization (WTO) concerns played a significant role in the designs of the reforms. In this paper an analysis of the Luxembourg reforms and the European proposal for agriculture under the WTO is presented. The results are used as the basis for a discussion of the interaction of the WTO and CAP reform and the implications for the agricultural sector in the EU