Groene Wegenwacht, bouwsteen voor een sluitende kennisverspreiding

Dit rapport omvat een verkenning van de institutionele en financiële haalbaarheid van een Groene Wegenwacht als 'hulpdienst' bij ziekte-/plaaguitbraken in de plantaardige productie. Het doel van de Groene Wegenwacht is boeren/tuinders zelf te leren zoeken naar de oorzaken van ziekte-/plaaguitbraken op hun bedrijf, om daarmee toekomstige uitbraken en aanverwant middelenverbruik te voorkómen. De deelnemer krijgt in ruil voor een kennisinvestering een recept voor een curatief middel. De verkenning is toegespitst op de beheersing van de ziekte Phytophthora infestans in consumptieaardappelen. De uitkomst is veelbelovend. De premie die de deelnemer moet betalen, bedraagt in het ongunstigste geval hooguit 10% van de financiële meeropbrengst die hij kan behalen. This report entails an exploration of the institutional and financial feasibility of 'flying plant doctors' as an emergency service for pest and disease outbreaks in plant production. The objective of the flying plant doctors service is to educate farmers in recognising the causes of pest and disease outbreaks in their fields, and - by doing so - to prevent future outbreaks and to reduce future pesticide use. The farmer gets a prescription for a curative pesticide in exchange for an implicit investment in knowledge on how to prevent future outbreaks. The exploration was focused on the control of Phytophthora infestans in ware potatoes. The results are quite promising. Even under the most unfavourable conditions the farmer's marginal returns are more than ten times higher than the subscription fee of the flying plant doctors service

Introduction of quarantine pests related to international trade and design of an optimal phytosanitary inspection policy

Quarantine pests and diseases represent a significant threat to agricultural and horticultural production worldwide. Currently, it is recognised that international trade in agricultural products, and especially in plants and plant materials, is a major vector facilitating the spread of quarantine organisms. To provide the adequate level of phytosanitary protection, the responsible agencies should allocate their limited resources in the best way, so that phytosanitary risks associated with imported products are minimised. This is however a challenging task given the constantly growing volumes of imported products, their broad assortment and large number of exporting countries. This paper suggests an optimization framework that can be used for designing an optimal import inspection policy. A theoretical part of the paper considers the optimisation problem of the quarantine agency which is constructed as minimisation of the economic damage from pest introduction under given constraints. The latter are budget constraints and the acceptable level of risk (ALOR) of a given country. The results of the theoretical part of the paper present the conditions for the optimal allocation of the Agency¿s resources under constraints. In the second part of the paper a quantitative model for optimal allocation of resources for inspecting ornamental plants¿ imports to the Netherlands is presented. The model shows the optimal allocation of inspection resources given the expected phytosanitary risks associated with different commodities. More specifically, the model calculates the optimal inspection time and achieved level of quarantine protection under the varying levels of ALOR representing different risk attitudes of the protecting agencies. To the best of authors¿ knowledge both the setup and the results of the presented model represent a novel contribution in the field of economics of quarantine protection

Melken in Amerika

Resultaten van een Wagenings afstudeerproject, waarbij een vergelijking werd opgesteld om te bepalen welke bedrijfsontwikkelingsstrategie voor een Nederlandse melkveehouder het meest interessant is: blijven boeren in Nederland of emigreren naar de V.S. en zo ja, naar welk gebied

Nutrient management strategies on Dutch dairy farms: an empirical analysis

Key Words: MINAS; nitrogen surplus; phosphate surplus; nutrient efficiency; nutrient productivity; financial consequences; strategic management; perceived environmental uncertainty; nutrient management planning; dairy farming; The Netherlands.Agricultural nutrients are a possible pollutant of (ground)water bodies. For prevention and control purposes, the European Nitrate Directive (91/676/EC) was issued, which was implemented in The Netherlands by means of the Mineral Accounting System (MINAS). MINAS tracks nutrient flows on farms and taxes farmers with high nutrient surpluses. The taxes are such, that MINAS can pose a threat to the financial viability of individual farms. In order to prevent taxation, farmers will have to alter nutrient management on their farm in an economically sound manner. To assess the (financial) feasibility of the MINAS-surplus standards a project called 'Farm Data in Practice' (Project Praktijkcijfers in Dutch) was initiated by the Dutch government in co-operation with farm organisations. The research presented in this thesis describes an empirical analysis of the relationship between farm and farmer characteristics, the way nutrients are managed on the farm, and the financial consequences, based on the bookkeeping and survey data of specialised dairy farms collected by the FDP-project. The nutrient management changes that were implemented over the course of 1997-1999 and the nutrient management plans of 2000 to meet the nutrient surplus standards set in MINAS for 2003 were evaluated using statistical methods (e.g. LISREL and (tobit-) regression) Data Envelopment Analysis, and case-study research. The results of this thesis show that farm management is a more important factor in the improvement of nutrient efficiency and reduction of nutrient surpluses than farm structure. An improvement of nutrient management (either through efficiency or technology improvements) proved to be financially beneficial as well. Furthermore, farmer characteristics like education and perceived environmental uncertainty, and farm strategy (growth, diversification, and process-control) direct the course of change in nutrient management (both farm structure and farm management). Result-oriented policy measures like MINAS appear to be more effective than measure-oriented policies like the Nitrate Directive because the former allow farmers to find a fit between external en internal farm characteristics and give them the responsibility to find a solution for the environmental problem on their farm