(NON)COMPLIANCE WITH AGRICULTURAL CONSERVATION PROGRAMS: THEORY AND EVIDENCE

This paper introduces enforcement costs and farmer noncompliance into the economic analysis of the USDA conservation program on highly erodible lands. A model of heterogeneous producers is developed to determine the economic causes of farmer noncompliance with the provisions of the conservation program. In addition, the paper determines the enforcement policy design that can induce conservation compliance and examines the effectiveness of the current enforcement policy in deterring producer noncompliance. The implications of the theoretical model are tested empirically with data provided by USDA. The analysis shows that farmer compliance with the provisions of the conservation program is not necessarily the natural outcome of self-interest and complete deterrence of noncompliance is not feasible with the current enforcement policy of the government. Both theoretical and empirical results indicate that the use of farm program payments as a leverage against noncompliance is not sufficient for inducing full producer compliance. Unless the government alters its policy on fines for fraudulent behavior, enforcement of conservation compliance will remain imperfect and some degree of noncompliance with the provisions of the program on highly erodible lands will continue to persist.Land Economics/Use,

A Carrot-and-Stick Approach to Environmental Improvement: Marrying Agri-Environmental Payments and Water Quality Regulations

Agri-environmental programs, such as the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, provide payments to livestock and crop producers to generate broadly defined environmental benefits and to help them comply with federal water quality regulations, such as those that require manure nutrients generated on large animal feeding operations to be spread on cropland at no greater than agronomic rates. We couch these policy options in terms of agri-environmental "carrots" and regulatory "sticks," respectively. The U.S. agricultural sector is likely to respond to these policies in a variety of ways. Simulation analysis suggests that meeting nutrient standards would result in decreased levels of animal production, increased prices for livestock and poultry products, increased levels of crop production, and water quality improvements. However, estimated impacts are not homogeneous across regions. In regions with relatively less cropland per ton of manure produced, the impacts of these policies are more pronounced.Environmental Economics and Policy,

Multiple Environmental Externalities and Manure Management Policy

Livestock waste pollutes multiple environmental media along multiple dimensions. This study explores the economic and environmental implications of single-medium and coordinated multi-media policies for reducing manure-related externalities, with particular attention paid to tradeoffs that occur when policies designed to correct an externality in one medium ignore externalities in other media.Environmental Economics and Policy,

WHEN THE !%$? HITS THE LAND: IMPLICATIONS FOR US AGRICULTURE AND ENVIRONMENT WHEN LAND APPLICATION OF MANURE IS CONSTRAINED

Confined animal production in the U.S. and its associated discharge of manure nutrients into area waters is considered a leading contributor to current water quality impairments. A common option to mitigate these impairments is to limit land application of manure. This paper evaluates the implications of alternative land application constraints for U.S. agriculture and the environment at the regional and sector level. The results suggest that when these constraints are particularly binding, due to minimal acceptance of manure as a substitute for commercial fertilizer, potentially large and unanticipated changes in returns to agricultural production and water quality may occur. Furthermore, we find that some of the cost of meeting the land application constraints will be passed on to consumers through higher prices and to a portion of rural economies through lower production rates and labor expenditures.Environmental Economics and Policy, Livestock Production/Industries,

Internal Revenue Code - Statutory Interpretation - Tax Exempt Status

The United States Supreme Court has held that private schools which practice racial discrimination are not charitable organizations within the meaning of the Internal Revenue Code and thus do not qualify for tax exempt status under section 501(c)(3). Bob Jones University v. United States, 103 S. Ct. 2017 (1983)

An examination of the law relating to inherent vice in marine insurance

It is proposed in this thesis to analyse the law relating to inherent vice in South Africa and in so doing to develop a range of tests for application in instances where the defence of inherent vice is pleaded as an exclusion

Valuing Options in Water Markets: A Laboratory Investigation

Risk and reliability dominate water supply discussions in the arid western United States in light of increasing demand and finite, weather-dependant supply. Thus water agencies increasingly turn to contractual mechanisms such as dry-year options to manage supply risk in advance of need. Although a few water agencies across the West have implemented dry-year options, sufficient data for conventional econometric analysis do not yet exist. We thus utilize experimental economics to analyze the effect of annual dry-year options on water markets. We consider how market structure (competitive versus monopsony power) and option contract availability affect water price and allocation within a market and find that realized gains from trade are on average higher when options can be traded, by 46% in competitive markets and by 63% in dominant buyer markets. Important for the political feasibility of such markets, we also find that gains from trade, once an options market is available, are much more evenly distributed between the single buyer and the many sellers in the case of monopsony.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy, D23, L22, Q25,

Rheological Methods and Their Application To Biological Systems

Pectin is a major component of the primary plant cell wall and is known to play an important role in many physiological processes. It also has has many uses in the food and biomedical industries as it is abundant, mechanochemically versatile and non-toxic. However, the relationship between its chemistry and mechanical properties is not fully understood. In this thesis, pectin in vitro and the pectin-rich outer cells of Arabidopsis seedlings are studied using an AFM methodology adapted from the animal rheology literature. The effects of the degree of methylation, and degree of blockiness on the viscoelastic properties of pectin are explored. Elastic and viscous properties of pectin are found to be negatively correlated with its degree of methylesterification, whilst elastic properties are positively correlated with its degree of blockiness. Mixed gels, composed of pectin with differing degrees of methylesterification are also investigated and their parameters are found to scale in accordance with their volume fraction. In vivo mechanical properties observed in the Arabidopsis hypocotyl are harder to disentangle, but a number of interesting differences between transverse and axial cell walls are observed. A modelling approach is taken, and although a model based on exponentially decaying terms is found to be adequate for the two material types studied, a fractional viscoelastic model is found to be far superior for pectin in vitro. Fractional viscoelasticity is the use of fractional differential equations for the modelling of viscoelastic phenomena. In addition to its aforementioned use for pectin, its utility is evidenced here by re-analysis of data gathered from the biomechanical literature. In spite of the apparently simple qualitative behaviours they exhibit, there are a number of unique challenges associated with the selection and fitting of fractional viscoelastic models due to their mathematical complexity. This complexity may, in part, explain why fractional viscoelasticity has seen limited use thus far, even though it captures many of the qualitative behaviours commonly observed in biomaterials. This observation led to the development of an open-source rheology analysis software package, RHEOS, which has many of the common fractional and non-fractional viscoelastic models built-in. The architecture, features and implementation specifics of RHEOS are discussed

45000 years of hunter-gatherer history as seen from Umhlatuzana Rock Shelter

Bibliography: pages 124-137.Umhlatuzana Rock Shelter in Natal was excavated in 1985. A long and detailed sequence of stone artefacts was recovered. These artefacts covered the time range from the Middle Stone Age (MSA) to the Later Stone Age (LSA). The excavations generated important information on the MSA, MSA/LSA transition, the Late Pleistocene early microlithic bladelet assemblages, and the relationship between hunter-gatherers and farmers between AD 400-AD 800. The primary aim of this thesis is to describe the excavation and the results, showing how Umhlatuzana Rock Shelter contributes to a broader understanding of the southern African MSA and LSA technological evolution. The stone artefact sequence, animal and plant remains, worked bone tools, beads, pottery and ochre finds are described. Evidence is presented which shows that the change from the MSA to the beginning of the LSA .took place between 35 000 BP and 20 000 BP, while a true LSA industry occurred closer to 20 000 BP. No technological boundary exists between the MSA and the LSA: rather change was a gradual process beginning· in the MSA. The bladelet-rich assemblages recovered from Umhlatuzana Rock Shelter are the first of their kind to be positively identified in Natal. Pre-dating 18 000 BP and post-dating 12 000 BP, they show that assemblages of this nature were systematically produced earlier and later in Natal, than elsewhere in southern Africa. The metrical results for bladelet cores and bladelets show that there is a progressive decrease in the mean length sizes of. these artefacts from the MSA to the LSA, as well as within the LSA sequence. statistics show that the model for gradual change is corroborated. These results have significant implications for our understanding of the culture-history sequence in southern Africa. The results also raise questions regarding the nature of MSA and MSA/LSA assemblages, and the origins of the early microlithic assemblages of the southern African LSA