Estimated Contribution of Four Biotechnologies to New Zealand Agriculture

The impact of biotechnology is an important consideration for New Zealand. The country depends significantly on agricultural production and exports (Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, 2004), and has relied in part on modern biotechnology for productivity increases over the last 20 years (Evenson & Gollin, 2003; Jacobsen & Scobie, 1999; Ovenden, Anderson, Armstrong, & Mitchel, 1985). A recent survey of individuals in agriculture and biotechnology generated a comprehensive list of products and processes that are derived from four specific biotechnologies and are commercially significant in agriculture (Kaye-Blake, Saunders, Emanuelsson, Dalziel, & Wreford, 2005). This innovative research generated primary data on the actual impacts that biotechnology is currently having on agricultural production and produced a unique dataset of biotechnology products and processes and their value to New Zealand agriculture. Analysis found that these four biotechnologies are contributing approximately 206 million per year to agriculture. This analysis, however, assumed perfectly elastic international prices, and thus that New Zealand agricultural producers would capture the benefits of increased productivity. Literature on the impacts of productivity increases suggests that the distribution of benefits from increased productivity depends on how widely a technology is adopted. For example, genetic improvements in the crops of one country can allow domestic producers to increase producer surplus at the expense of producers in the rest of the world (Frisvold, Sullivan, & Raneses, 2003). By contrast, domestic farmers may be worse off if innovations are adopted in both the home country and the rest of the world (Moschini, Lapan, & Sobolevsky, 2000). The literature also suggests that specific impact of a novel technology is important to its impacts on agricultural producers. For example, technology that increases yields may be less beneficial for farmers than technology that reduces costs (Moschini et al., 2000). In addition, innovations that increase productivity of commodity products with low price elasticities of demand may not benefit farmers as much as innovations that increase consumer demand for agricultural products (Saunders & Cagatay, 2003). These findings are relevant because some features of New Zealand's primary sector suggest that international price impacts may be important. New Zealand is an open economy (Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF), 2004) and a significant exporter on world markets, particularly in pastoral products (Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF), 2004; Saunders & Cagatay, 2003). Modelling the movement of international prices may be done in several ways. The general equilibrium GTAP model (Hertel, 1997), for example, has been used to examine the potential impacts of biotechnology on producer and consumer welfare assuming different levels of adoption and consumer acceptance (e.g., Anderson & Jackson, 2005; Stone, Matysek, & Dolling, 2002). These impacts have also been analysed with partial equilibrium models, in particular models derived originally from the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations (Roningen, 1997), such as SWOPSIM (Frisvold et al., 2003; Roningen, Dixit, Sullivan, & Hart, 1991) and LTEM (Saunders & Cagatay, 2003). Partial equilibrium models are particularly appropriate for analysing impacts on a single sector of the economy: they allow substantial disaggregation by commodity and examination of the linkages that lead to model results (Gaisford & Kerr, 2001). In order to investigate the possible impact of biotechnological innovations on commodity prices and agricultural producers, the results of the original findings based on elastic prices were incorporated into a partial equilibrium model of world agricultural commodity trade (Cagatay & Saunders, 2003; Saunders & Cagatay, 2003). The model contained 19 commodities, including the major trade commodities for New Zealand (dairy products and meat). World trade was divided into 17 countries and the rest of the world, including New Zealand as a separate entity as well as the US, EU, Australia, Japan and others. As a partial equilibrium model, it examined the agricultural sector in isolation from other sectors of the economy. The base year was 2000, and impacts were modelled to 2005. The base solution modelled current production, which included biotechnological innovations. Alternative scenarios modelled the impact of the absence or loss of biotechnological innovations. The first scenario modelled the absence of innovations in all countries, while the second scenario examined the impact of innovations specific to New Zealand. The contribution of biotechnology to productivity was assessed separately for each commodity, using the original dataset (Kaye-Blake et al., 2005). For each commodity in the model, the analysis calculated the change in producer prices and total producer returns (price x quantity). The modelling results conformed to expectations. In the first scenario, a worldwide reduction in productivity in the primary sector led market prices to adjust upward in response to the lower production. For the second scenario, the price impacts were smaller for sectors with innovations specific to New Zealand. These changes were then combined with the original, constant-price estimate to calculate price-adjusted figures. The constant price analysis found that the contribution of the biotechnologies was 206 million. The first modelling scenario found that the economic benefit of the biotechnologies was only $19 million because increased productivity reduced commodity prices. The second scenario yielded an economic benefit of$191 million, suggesting that adopting New Zealandspecific innovations might not have a large impact on aggregate trade and might have allowed domestic producers to capture much of the increased welfare from innovations. Economic impacts, however, were spread unevenly across the commodities. In both trade scenarios, dairy producers increased producer returns through biotechnology, regardless of how widely the innovations were adopted. Meat producers, on the other hand, improved their returns when the innovations were specific to New Zealand, but were somewhat worse off when the innovations were available worldwide. This research contributes to understanding of the impacts of biotechnology in several ways. First, the productivity impacts were based on empirical findings regarding estimated impacts of actual commercially released biotechnologies; these were estimates of impacts that have actually occurred. Secondly, the productivity effects varied by commodity in the model, so that the impacts on different commodities could be estimated. Finally, by using a disaggregated, multi-commodity model, the cross-effects from resources shifting into other agricultural uses could be captured.Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,

Modelling Climate Change Impacts on Agriculture and Forestry with the Extended LTEM (Lincoln Trade and Environment Model)

In the land-based sectors, agricultural production generally is a source of carbon, while forestry may be thought to act as a sink. This paper focuses on new research examining the interaction of the two. The core of the research is the Lincoln Trade and Environment model (LTEM), a partial equilibrium model which links trade in NZ with the main trading countries overseas, through to production and associated environmental consequences . This paper reports on research expanding the model to include forestry from incorporating the capabilities of the Global Forest Products Model (GFPM) into the LTEM and hence producing an integrated model of agricultural and forestry land-uses for NZ and overseas. The paper extends the environmental modelling capabilities of the LTEM to include the impacts of climate change. The paper thereby reports on the development of a model of international trade that encompasses major agricultural commodities and forestry, complete with linkages and feedback with the environment and differentiated international markets. The paper then presents results of scenarios around changes in consumer behaviour and production using the new model.Environmental Economics and Policy,

Trial without Error: Towards Safe Reinforcement Learning via Human Intervention

AI systems are increasingly applied to complex tasks that involve interaction with humans. During training, such systems are potentially dangerous, as they haven't yet learned to avoid actions that could cause serious harm. How can an AI system explore and learn without making a single mistake that harms humans or otherwise causes serious damage? For model-free reinforcement learning, having a human "in the loop" and ready to intervene is currently the only way to prevent all catastrophes. We formalize human intervention for RL and show how to reduce the human labor required by training a supervised learner to imitate the human's intervention decisions. We evaluate this scheme on Atari games, with a Deep RL agent being overseen by a human for four hours. When the class of catastrophes is simple, we are able to prevent all catastrophes without affecting the agent's learning (whereas an RL baseline fails due to catastrophic forgetting). However, this scheme is less successful when catastrophes are more complex: it reduces but does not eliminate catastrophes and the supervised learner fails on adversarial examples found by the agent. Extrapolating to more challenging environments, we show that our implementation would not scale (due to the infeasible amount of human labor required). We outline extensions of the scheme that are necessary if we are to train model-free agents without a single catastrophe

Does Facebook’s interface employ narcissism to maximise usage? a critical comparison of the 2008 and 2015 facebook interfaces

A research report submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the field of Digital Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2016Facebook has become a part of over a billion people’s daily lives, but the mechanisms used by Facebook to keep people using its service may be playing off negative personality traits, one such being narcissism. Studies up to now have not looked at the design of the interface in relation to narcissism and whether or not Facebook is actively exploiting narcissism for its own ends. This study will analyse whether Facebook is deliberately designing an interface that exploits people’s narcissism by reviewing the current research on Facebook and narcissism and then doing a case study that will compare the 2008 interface with the 2015 interface. It will analyse how narcissism is involved in the persuasion strategies employed in each interface by using these four persuasion goals: 1. Create personal profile page 2. Invite friends 3. Respond to other’s contributions 4. Return to the site often The study will compare the features that use design for behavioural change and show whether or not Facebook is continuously designing features that exploit people’s narcissism.GR201

History, College of Medicine: 1959-1968. Chapter 11: Department of Otolaryngology

Prepared for the Centennial of The Ohio State University

Capital Based Sustainability Indicators as a Possible Way for Measuring Agricultural Sustainability

This paper takes the capital based approach to sustainability and applies this to examine the sustainability of different farming methods. The capital based approach argues that for future generations to be as well off as the present than the capital base should at least be maintained. The paper explores some of the issues around this approach such as the definition of capitals, their measurement and weakness in the approach which do not account for the resilience of system and/ or the substitutability of capitals. The paper outlines how this could be applied to agriculture and show sustainability across different farming methods. The data used is from the ARGOS (Agricultural Research Group on Sustainability) project which has collected data on social, economic and environmental factors from kiwifruit orchards green, green organic and gold, for five years. The results show little significant differences across orchard types. This may be due to the homogeneity of kiwifruit orchards and it is intended to expand this to the sheep sector to examine this further.Agricultural and Food Policy,

Process versus product: which determines consumer demand for genetically modified apples?

One debate in the literature regarding consumers’ reactions to genetically modified food (GMF) centres on whether consumers react to the process of gene technology or to the specific GMF products. Results from a choice experiment survey in New Zealand indicate that consumers are heterogeneous with regard to GMF and that some modifications are viewed more positively than others. These findings suggest that for some consumers the process of gene technology is the decisive factor in evaluatingGMF, while for others the different potential GMF products are valued according to their enhanced attributes.choice modelling, consumer surveys, food, genetic modification, preferences, Consumer/Household Economics, Demand and Price Analysis,

A STUDY OF GRADUATES WITH MAJORS IN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION FROM KANSAS STATE TEACHERS COLLEGE, PITTSBURG, FROM 1949 TO 1955

The findings of this study include the status and location of the graduates, courses which have been the most helpful, and their suggestions or acknowledgements to the Industrial Education and Art Department of Kansas State Teachers College, Pittsburg, Kansas. The information which was used in developing this study was obtained by sending questionnaires to all graduates of the Department from 1949 to 1955