Organic Farm incomes in England and Wales 2004-05(OF 0189)

Results from research work carried out for the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) by the Organic Research Group at the Institute of Rural Sciences, UWA on the economic performance of organic farms in 2004/05 are presented in this report. This report is the last of a series1 of four on organic farm incomes from 2001/02 through to 2004/05 as part of project OF0189. The main aim of this work is to assess the financial performance of organic farms differentiated by farm type, in order to inform DEFRA policy-making with respect to economics of organic farming, and to provide a basis for assessments by farmers, advisers and other interested parties of the farm-level implications of conversion to and continued organic farming. This research area builds on previous economics work on organic farming carried out by Institute of Rural Sciences, UWA (Project OF0190, covering 1995/96 to 1998/99). In this report, time series financial data are shown for an identical farm sample for the 2003/04 and 2004/05 financial years, covering seven organic farm types including cropping, horticulture, lowland and LFA dairy, lowland and LFA cattle and sheep and mixed farming systems. The identical farm samples comprise farms that are present in both 2003/04 and 2004/05. The total number of organic farms for 2004/05, also referred to as the full farm sample data, is shown alongside the identical datasets. Summarised and detailed financial input, output, income, returns to labour and capital, liabilities and assets and some physical performance measures are presented based on current Farm Business Survey (FBS) data collection and collation guidelines. The full samples of organic farms per robust farm type are sufficiently large to give some reasonable level of confidence in the data; however, it should be noted that the organic farm samples are not statistically representative of their type, although the results can be seen as a reasonable indication of farm income levels for comparable organic and conventional farms. Smaller identical farm samples should be treated more cautiously as there is a possibility for outliers (especially larger farms) to have some influence on the average results. An additional element of this work is the inclusion of comparable conventional farm data for the farm types shown. Each organic farm within this study was matched with an appropriate cluster of conventional farms based on the resource endowment indicators for individual organic farms. Broadly speaking, the indicators included farm type, FBS region, Less Favoured Area (LFA) status, utilisable agricultural area (UAA), milk quota holding (where applicable) and farm business size. The cluster farm data were averaged for each farm type to derive the comparable conventional farm (CCF) data based on the organic farms from the identical and full farm samples. Overall, the identical sample of organic farms showed a similar or higher level of net farm income for all farm types in 2004/05 than in 2003/04 with the exception of lowland dairy farms, which decreased over the period. On comparing the organic data with the comparable conventional data, the greatest differences in performance were seen in the cropping, lowland cattle and sheep and mixed farm types where organic farms performed significantly better in 2004/05. LFA cattle and sheep farm types performed similarly to the comparable conventional farm samples while LFA organic dairy farms achieved lower net farm incomes than the conventional comparison farms. The full sample datasets compared similarly to the identical datasets for both organic and conventional farms in 2004/05. Gross margin data are presented for organic dairy herds on a herd size and top five performing herd basis. Cattle and sheep gross margins are shown for lowland and LFA farm types. Crops shown include winter and spring wheat, spring barley, winter and spring oats, beans, ware potatoes, calabrese, cauliflower and cabbage crops. Where applicable, 2003/04 gross margin data are shown alongside the 2004/05 data. Benchmarking data are shown for organic milk, suckler store, finishing beef and lamb production enterprises. The results for the beef and lamb enterprises show the significance of support payments in making these enterprises viable, raising questions about the possible impact of the single farm payment on producer perceptions of their profitability

The 2008 R-ISEW (regional index of sustainable economic well-being) for all the English regions

This report presents new data calculated in 2008 for the years 1994–2006. The latest data, which also includes the updating of several sets of figures which previously had to be estimated for 2005, show that a 10-year increase in R-ISEW since 1994 has come to a halt, and that R-ISEW per capita actually began declining between 2004 and 2006 despite increasing GVA

Improving efficiency in radio surveys for gravitational lenses

Many lens surveys have hitherto used observations of large samples of background sources to select the small minority which are multiply imaged by lensing galaxies along the line of sight. Recently surveys such as SLACS and OLS have improved the efficiency of surveys by pre-selecting double-redshift systems from SDSS. We explore other ways to improve survey efficiency by optimum use of astrometric and morphological information in existing large-scale optical and radio surveys. The method exploits the small position differences between FIRST radio positions of lensed images and the SDSS lens galaxy positions, together with the marginal resolution of some larger gravitational lens systems by the FIRST beam. We present results of a small pilot study with the VLA and MERLIN, and discuss the desirable criteria for future surveys.Comment: Accepted by MNRAS. 9 pages, 5 figure

The 2009 R-ISEW (regional index of sustainable economic well-being) for all the English regions

This latest report presents new data calculated in 2009 for the years 1994–2007. The data, which also includes the updating of several sets of figures that previously had to be estimated for 2006, show that a nine-year increase in the English R-ISEW since 1994, began to peter out in 2003, such that total per capita growth between 2003 and 2007 was only 2.4%. Indeed, between 2005 and 2006, per capita R-ISEW fell slightly

The 2010 R-ISEW (regional index of sustainable economic well-being) for all the English regions

This is the fourth consecutive report presenting R-ISEW (regional index of sustainable economic well-being) calculations for the nine Government Office Regions (GORs) of England.1 New data available in the summer of 2010 allows a continuous time series from 1994 to 2008 – 15 years. Because of the nature of the data required for the R-ISEW, there is always a two-year lag before results for any given year can be completed

NICMOS and VLBA observations of the gravitational lens system B1933+503

NICMOS observations of the complex gravitational lens system B1933+503 reveal infrared counterparts to two of the inverted spectrum radio images. The infrared images have arc-like structures. The corresponding radio images are also detected in a VLBA map made at 1.7 GHz with a resolution of 6 mas. We fail to detect two of the four inverted radio spectrum components with the VLBA even though they are clearly visible in a MERLIN map at the same frequency at a different epoch. The absence of these two components could be due to rapid variability on a time-scale less than the time delay, or to broadening of the images during propagation of the radio waves through the ISM of the lensing galaxy to an extent that they fall below the surface brightness detectability threshold of the VLBA observations. The failure to detect the same two images with NICMOS is probably due to extinction in the ISM of the lensing galaxy.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, submitted to MNRA

Progressing diversity in HRD theory and practice

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Measuring gravitational lens time delays using low-resolution radio monitoring observations

Obtaining lensing time delay measurements requires long-term monitoring campaigns with a high enough resolution (< 1 arcsec) to separate the multiple images. In the radio, a limited number of high-resolution interferometer arrays make these observations difficult to schedule. To overcome this problem, we propose a technique for measuring gravitational time delays which relies on monitoring the total flux density with low-resolution but high-sensitivity radio telescopes to follow the variation of the brighter image. This is then used to trigger high-resolution observations in optimal numbers which then reveal the variation in the fainter image. We present simulations to assess the efficiency of this method together with a pilot project observing radio lens systems with the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope (WSRT) to trigger Very Large Array (VLA) observations. This new method is promising for measuring time delays because it uses relatively small amounts of time on high-resolution telescopes. This will be important because instruments that have high sensitivity but limited resolution, together with an optimum usage of followup high-resolution observations from appropriate radio telescopes may in the future be useful for gravitational lensing time delay measurements by means of this new method.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures, accepted by MNRA