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,

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,

A Faster Primal Network Simplex Algorithm

We present a faster implementation of the polynomial time primal simplex algorithm due to Orlin [23]. His algorithm requires O(nm min{log(nC), m log n}) pivots and O(n2 m ??n{log nC, m log n}) time. The bottleneck operations in his algorithm are performing the relabeling operations on nodes, selecting entering arcs for pivots, and performing the pivots. We show how to speed up these operations so as to yield an algorithm whose running time is O(nm. log n) per scaling phase. We show how to extend the dynamic-tree data-structure in order to implement these algorithms. The extension may possibly have other applications as well

Association of acculturation with cardiac structure and function among Hispanics/Latinos: a cross-sectional analysis of the echocardiographic study of Latinos.

OBJECTIVE:Hispanics/Latinos, the largest immigrant population in the USA, undergo the process of acculturation and have a large burden of heart failure risk. Few studies have examined the association of acculturation on cardiac structure and function. DESIGN:Cross-sectional. SETTING:The Echocardiographic Study of Latinos. PARTICIPANTS:1818 Hispanic adult participants with baseline echocardiographic assessment and acculturation measured by the Short Acculturation Scale, nativity, age at immigration, length of US residence, generational status and language. PRIMARY AND SECONDARY OUTCOME MEASURES:Echocardiographic assessment of left atrial volume index (LAVI), left ventricular mass index (LVMI), early diastolic transmitral inflow and mitral annular velocities. RESULTS:The study population was predominantly Spanish-speaking and foreign-born with mean residence in the US of 22.7 years, mean age of 56.4 years; 50% had hypertension, 28% had diabetes and 44% had a body mass index &gt;30 kg/m2. Multivariable analyses demonstrated higher LAVI with increasing years of US residence. Foreign-born and first-generation participants had higher E/e' but lower LAVI and e' velocities compared with the second generation. Higher acculturation and income &gt;20K were associated with higher LVMI, LAVI and E/e' but lower e' velocities. Preferential Spanish-speakers with an income <20K had a higher E/e'. CONCLUSIONS:Acculturation was associated with abnormal cardiac structure and function, with some effect modification by socioeconomic status

Book Reviews

Book Reviews by Charles S. Desmond, Godfrey P. Schmidt, Robert E. Sullivan, Louis C. Kaplan, and Paul C. Bartholomew