5,271 research outputs found
FUTURE DIRECTIONS FOR THE GOVERNMENT IN AGRICULTURE
The 1996 Farm Bill marks a new direction for the government in agriculture. By decoupling payments from price levels for crops, it undermines long-run political support for programs. Dairy price supports will end in 2000, and nutrition programs will be on a separate reauthorization schedule from farm programs. Together, these actions should weaken the farm bill coalition, making the remaining programs much more difficult to reauthorize than in earlier years. The 1996 Farm Bill may be the last farm bill of its kind and the beginning of the end to active government involvement in agricultural markets.Agricultural and Food Policy,
Entomogenic Climate Change
Rapidly expanding insect populations, deforestation, and global climate
change threaten to destabilize key planetary carbon pools, especially the
Earth's forests which link the micro-ecology of insect infestation to climate.
To the extent mean temperature increases, insect populations accelerate
deforestation. This alters climate via the loss of active carbon sequestration
by live trees and increased carbon release from decomposing dead trees. A
positive feedback loop can emerge that is self-sustaining--no longer requiring
independent climate-change drivers. Current research regimes and insect control
strategies are insufficient at present to cope with the present regional scale
of insect-caused deforestation, let alone its likely future global scale.
Extensive field recordings demonstrate that bioacoustic communication plays a
role in infestation dynamics and is likely to be a critical link in the
feedback loop. These results open the way to novel detection and monitoring
strategies and nontoxic control interventions.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure; http://cse.ucdavis.edu/~chaos/chaos/pubs/ecc.ht
Agricultural Nonpoint Source Pollution Control in Theory and Practice
The theory of efficient policy instruments for agricultural pollution control has been evolving. Some new developments suggest that policies using financial incentives to encourage desirable farming practices are superior to those focusing on runoff directly or restrictions on farming practices. However, the theoretical models used to derive such results make assumptions about conditions that may not hold. As a result, implementation of the findings of such models is not necessarily routine. This article attempts to summarize these studies and interpret their implications for agricultural nonpoint source pollution control for the Chesapeake Bay.Environmental Economics and Policy, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,
Investigating the Potential of Fee-Based Recreation on Private Lands in the Lower Mississippi River Delta
Private landowners may be willing to allow public access for fee-based wildlife-associated recreation. A survey and econometric techniques are proposed to determine what characteristics may influence the probability to decide to offer recreation, what organizational form landowners may prefer to manage and market fee-based recreation, and how liability concerns and other possible disincentives collectively influence landowners' access decisions.wildlife-associated recreation, liability perceptions, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,
CANONICAL CORRELATION ANALYSIS OF SELECTED DEMOGRAPHIC AND HEALTH PERSONNEL VARIABLES
Labor and Human Capital,
CHANGES IN TRANSPORTATION COSTS AND INTERREGIONAL COMPETITION IN THE U.S. APPLE INDUSTRY
An interregional competition model of the U.S. apple industry is constructed. This model includes the consumer products of fresh apples, applesauce and apple juice. The validation of the model showed that it did a good job of estimating consumer's quantity demanded and prices and a reasonable job of estimating utilization. This model was used to study the effects of transportation cost changes on the industry in the short- and intermediate run. The total production and consumption levels changed by moderate amounts with changing transport costs while the utilization of a region's crop was quite sensitive to such changes.Crop Production/Industries,
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