The Scope for Increasing Biofuel Crop Production in Japan: An Analysis of Alternative Policies

経済学 / EconomicsIn 2010, concerns regarding Japan’s excessive dependence on imports for food and energy caused the Japanese government to introduce subsidies to stimulate biofuel crop production. In this paper, we study the viability of price subsidies and certain other policies with respect to increasing the production of biofuel crops. First, we estimate the elasticity of the supply of Japanese agriculture with respect to price (inclusive of the subsidy for each unit of production). For this purpose, we use a longitudinal database of 1822 municipalities that covers all 47 prefectures of Japan. This database includes information about the production of 116 crops and their respective revenues, including subsidies. Using panel data regression techniques, we determine that although the long-run supply of certain crops is highly elastic, this supply is highly inelastic if the production of other crops is held constant. Therefore, an increase in the demand for biofuel crops will cause substantial price increases of agricultural products, largely crowding out the demand for food crops. We then discuss the viability of encouraging various agricultural practices, such as multiple cropping and the cultivation of recently abandoned land. Instead of using abandoned land, which produces a lower yield and requires abundant labor, we recommend a multiple cropping system that involves the rotation of rice and wheat. Although these measures will increase biofuel crop production to a certain extent in the short run, full-scale biofuel crop production can only take place after substantial reforms are implemented to increase the production capacity of the Japanese agricultural sector.JEL Classification Codes: Q18, Q42, Q53http://www.grips.ac.jp/list/jp/facultyinfo/leon_gonzalez_roberto

No saturation in the accumulation of alien species worldwide

Although research on human-mediated exchanges of species has substantially intensified during the last centuries, we know surprisingly little about temporal dynamics of alien species accumulations across regions and taxa. Using a novel database of 45,813 first records of 16,926 established alien species, we show that the annual rate of first records worldwide has increased during the last 200 years, with 37% of all first records reported most recently (1970–2014). Inter-continental and inter-taxonomic variation can be largely attributed to the diaspora of European settlers in the nineteenth century and to the acceleration in trade in the twentieth century. For all taxonomic groups, the increase in numbers of alien species does not show any sign of saturation and most taxa even show increases in the rate of first records over time. This highlights that past efforts to mitigate invasions have not been effective enough to keep up with increasing globalization.© The Author(s) 201