Intensified small-scale livestock systems in the Western Brazilian Amazon.

This chapter examines three basic questions regarding the use of more intensive livestock technologies by small-scale farmers in the western Brazilian Amazon

Corporate Interests: How the News Media Portray the Economy

This study examines contradictory claims about the news media's coverage of the economy. After discussing various sociological perspectives on news media, I compare the objective performance of California's economy, as measured by statistical indicators, to accounts of the economy found in the state's largest newspaper—the Los Angeles Times. The data reveal that, despite growth patterns that overwhelmingly favored economic elites, the negative news about the economy disproportionately depicted events and problems affecting corporations and investors instead of the general workforce. When the Times did discuss problems affecting workers, the articles were relatively short, most often placed in the back sections of the newspaper, and rarely discussed policy alternatives to the status quo. Moreover, unlike the viewpoints of business leaders and government officials, the viewpoints of workers or their spokespersons were rarely used as sources of information. These findings provide qualified support for existing scholarship purporting that the news media, when reporting on the economy, privilege the interests of corporations and investors over the interests of the general workforce

A review of low carbon fuel policies: Principles, program status and future directions

A low carbon fuel standard (LCFS) is a market-based policy that specifies declining standards for the average lifecycle fuel carbon intensity (AFCI) of transportation fuels sold in a region. This paper: (i) compares transportation fuel carbon policies in terms of their economic efficiency, fuel price impacts, greenhouse gas emission reductions, and incentives for innovation; (ii) discusses key regulatory design features of LCFS policies; and (iii) provides an update on the implementation status of LCFS policies in California, the European Union, British Columbia, and Oregon. The economics literature finds that an intensity standard implicitly taxes emissions and subsidizes output. The output subsidy results in an intensity standard being inferior to a carbon tax in a first-best world, although the inefficiency can be corrected with a properly designed consumption tax (or mitigated by a properly designed carbon tax or cap-and-trade program). In California, from 2011 to 2015 the share of alternative fuels in the regulated transportation fuels pool increased by 30%, and the reported AFCI of all alternative fuels declined 21%. LCFS credit prices have varied considerably, rising to above $100/credit in the first half of 2016. LCFS programs in other jurisdictions share many features with California\u27s, but have distinct provisions as well. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Carbon Accounting and Economic Model Uncertainty of Emissions from Biofuels-Induced Land Use Change

Few of the numerous published studies of the emissions from biofuels-induced “indirect” land use change (ILUC) attempt to propagate and quantify uncertainty, and those that have done so have restricted their analysis to a portion of the modeling systems used. In this study, we pair a global, computable general equilibrium model with a model of greenhouse gas emissions from land-use change to quantify the parametric uncertainty in the paired modeling system’s estimates of greenhouse gas emissions from ILUC induced by expanded production of three biofuels. We find that for the three fuel systems examined—US corn ethanol, Brazilian sugar cane ethanol, and US soybean biodiesel—95% of the results occurred within ±20 g CO2e MJ−1 of the mean (coefficient of variation of 20−45%), with economic model parameters related to crop yield and the productivity of newly converted cropland (from forestry and pasture) contributing most of the variance in estimated ILUC emissions intensity. Although the experiments performed here allow us to characterize parametric uncertainty, changes to the model structure have the potential to shift the mean by tens of grams of CO2e per megajoule and further broaden distributions for ILUC emission intensities

Socioeconomics issues linked to Best Bets - "Modeler's Workshop".

Questões e críticas sobre os impactos da agricultura no meio ambiente são cada vez mais frequentes. Entretanto, ainda não existe informação quantitativa que permita associar atividades agrossilvipastoris com mudanças no estoque de recursos naturais ou para comparar os retornos financeiros entre atividades alternativas. Assim, atualmente não é possível diferenciar as alternativas sob a ótica de retornos privados e sociais. Tal informação com enfoque social é crucial para a geração de políticas adequadas para a região. Para preencher esta lacuna de informação e metodologia, a Embrapa em parceria com o IFPRI e outros orgãos nacionais e internacionais, está desenvolvendo um programa de pesquisa visando a coleta de informação na área biofísica e socioeconômica, necessárias para avaliar os retornos privados e sociais de atividades de alternativas e organizar as informações de maneira prática para a formulação de políticas.bitstream/item/223160/1/cpafro-6999-doc35.pd

ARE Update Volume 5, Number 5

Grocery Retailer Pricing and Its Effects on Producers: Evidence for California Fresh Produce; Agriculture and the Environment in the Brazilian Amazon; Giannini Conference Brings Water Stakeholders Together to Discuss the Future of the West Sid