Download or read book Three Essays in Environmental and Agricultural Issues written by Sanchita Sengupta and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 117 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Three Essays In Environmental And Agricultural Economics written by Biswo Nath Poudel and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation probes three issues of current interest in environmental and agricultural economics. The first paper provides an in-depth analysis of sedimentation management issue in large reservoirs. The paper provides a new model of sedimentation management and conditional on assumed primitives of the model, analyses different scenarios under which sedimentation removal may increase or decrease. The paper also provides insights on how temperature fluctuation, increased sedimentation arrival in the reservoir and change in the perception of large reservoirs among the public may affect the sustainability and management of the large reservoir. The second paper looks at the data from the Latin American countries to search for the presence of Environmental Kuznets Curve(EKC) in Latin America. The paper is also one of the earliest papers to use forestry data and semiparametric approach in finding EKC. The paper finds no evidence of EKC in Latin America as a whole, and in general finds that EKC is sensitive to the region of choice. The third paper carries out an an empirical investigation to test for the convergence of total factor productivity(TFP) of agricultural sector in the United States. The investigation does not find any evidence of convergence while looking at the U.S. state-level agricultural TFP at the aggregate level. However, it finds support for convergence within some of the clusters or within some of the regions. The paper takes a new approach in grouping states, which makes it different from other papers where ad hoc grouping of states was done. In this paper, such approach is abandoned in favor of a cluster analysis approach that relies on data to form "clusters". Cluster analysis approach finds that convergence in the regional level (cluster) does not improve significantly compared to the findings by a wellknown previously published study which didn't use cluster analysis approach.

Download or read book Agricultural Trade and Environmental Concerns written by Loretta Marie Lynch and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Three Essays on Environmental and Agricultural Economics written by Jayash Paudel and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The dissertation gathers empirical evidence from several data sources in the United States and Nepal to provide a better understanding of the linkage between agriculture and the environment. The first essay examines the impact of fertilizer use on water quality using over 2.9 million pollution readings on nitrogen and phosphorus concentrations in water sites across the U.S. Findings show that a 10% increase in the use of nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizers leads to a 1.47% increase in the concentration of nitrogen and a 1.68% increase in the concentration of phosphorus, respectively. Results also indicate that there exists heterogeneity in nutrient pollution elasticity estimates across 18 water resource regions. The second essay presents empirical evidence that farmers adjust fertilizer application in response to variation in temperature and precipitation trends during the growing season in the corn belt of the United States. Estimates indicate that farmers increase nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizer use by 0.172% and 0.238% in response to moderate heat. However, farmers decrease nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizer application by 0.260% and 0.323% in response to temperature exceeding a threshold that leads to damaging effects on crop production. I further find that farmers will apply 37.41% more nitrogen fertilizers by mid-century when compared to a world without climate change, leading to deterioration of water quality. I show that the resulting nutrient runoff will increase nitrogen and phosphorus pollution by 9.72% and 12.91% under a business-as-usual scenario. The final essay studies the impact of a fertilizer subsidy program in the Hills region of Nepal that aims to enhance agricultural yields of smallholder farmers. Using data from household surveys conducted before and after the program, I apply difference-in-differences estimation to show that the subsidy, on average, leads to a 38.7% increase in fertilizer use among eligible households. However, compared to farmers with larger plot sizes, smallholder farmers experience a 12.1% decrease in the use of chemical fertilizers and a 21.2% decrease in agricultural yield after the subsidy program. I discuss how fertilizer supply shortages and varying access to the subsidy contribute to the negative impact of the subsidy program among smallholder farmers.

Download or read book Three Essays on Environmental and Agricultural Policy Under Asymmetric Information written by Brent Michael Hueth and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Institutions and Sustainability written by Volker Beckmann and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2009-02-07 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the first vague idea to use Konrad Hagedorn’s 60th birthday as an inspi- tion for taking stock of his vibrant academic contributions, this joint book project has been a great pleasure for us in many ways. Pursuing Hagedorn’s intellectual development, we have tried to reflect on the core questions of humanity according to Ernst Bloch “Who are we?”, “Where do we come from?” and “Where are we heading?” In this way, and without knowing it, Konrad Hagedorn initiated a c- lective action process he would have very much enjoyed ... if he had been allowed to take part in it. But it was our aim and constant motivation to surprise him with this collection of essays in his honour. Konrad Hagedorn was reared as the youngest child of a peasant family on a small farm in the remote moorland of East Frisia, Germany. During his childhood in the poverty-ridden years after the Second World War, he faced a life where humans were heavily dependent on using nature around them for their livelihoods; meanwhile, he learned about the fragility of the environment. As a boy, he - tended a one-room schoolhouse, where his great intellectual talents were first r- ognised and used for co-teaching his schoolmates. These early teaching expe- ences might have laid the foundations for his later becoming a dedicated lecturer and mentor.

Download or read book Three Essays on Issues of Agricultural Sustainability written by Cheryl Lynn Brown and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Essays on Environmental Economics written by Qu Tang and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 97 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abstract Essays on Environmental Economics by Qu Tang Doctor of Philosophy in Agricultural and Resource Economics University of California, Berkeley Professor Gordon C. Rausser, Chair This dissertation is comprised of three essays that apply microeconomics theory and econometric methods to study important issues in environmental economics. In the first essay, I investigate the impacts of imposing inter-state trade restrictions on the compliance costs of coal-fired electric generating units (EGUs) in the context of a U.S. SO2 emissions trading program (the Acid Rain Program). Over the past decade, tremendous efforts have been devoted to modifying emissions trading programs to address cross-state air pollution problems. The modification involves imposing more restrictions on emissions trading across geographical areas. The empirical question is how severe trade restrictions affect the regulated firms' compliance costs. Using rich data from the Acid Rain Program, this essay developed a discrete-continuous model to estimate electric generating units' compliance strategies and marginal abatement costs associated with the nationwide uniform emissions trading as the program was implemented in practice. Based on the estimation results, this essay then simulated units' compliance behaviors and the corresponding compliance costs if interstate trading had been prohibited. The results show that the aggregate compliance costs would increase more than one and a half times for the same emissions reduction goal due to the narrower trading markets in the counterfactual policy design with trade restrictions, and the costs would vary dramatically across space. Combined with the analysis on the benefit side, the results of this essay could be used to predict welfare impacts associated with trade restrictions at both national level and state level. And it may shed light on the future modification and implementation of EPA's cross-state air pollution regulations. The second essay applies an equilibrium sorting model to a brand-new housing market in Beijing, China to estimate household preferences for neighborhood public goods provision, including public transportation services, public primary schools, and environmental amenities. The equilibrium sorting model is based on a discrete choice model of household residential location decisions. Relying on a unique, detailed data set on housing location, price, and other household characteristics, I estimate the model following the two-step BLP method, taking into account the heterogeneity of household preferences, incorporating neighborhood-specific unobservable characteristics, and addressing the endogeneity of housing prices using instrumental variables. The results suggest that in general, lower housing price, better environmental amenities, and being closer to job centers will increase the choice opportunity of a neighborhood, and public transportation systems play a more important role in the neighborhoods far away from urban centers. Moreover, different households show varying preferences for these public goods. A distinct fact is that in addition to income, people's preferences vary greatly with generation (head age of households) and job type (whether there are public employees), which reveal the significant differences between generations and illustrate the welfare for public employees within the context of the transitional economy in China. This preference heterogeneity implies that future policies should be more geographically asymmetric, locally targeted and tailored based on specific socio-economic characteristics. The third essay estimates the impact of climate change on the crop yields in China. I use a 11-year county-level panel data set covering more than 1,000 counties to estimate the effects of random year-to-year variation in weather on three major crops yields, including rice, wheat, and corn. Because it is not easy for small-scale farmers to adapt to climate change quickly in short time, these estimates could be used to plausibly predict the short to medium-run impacts of climate change on crop yields in China. The essay finds that over the period 2040-2060, projected climate change would reduce rice yield by 1.18% under a comparatively high emission scenario and by 0.08% under a medium-low scenario, reduce corn yield by 2.21% and 1.64% under the two emission scenarios, respectively, and increase wheat yield by 6.68% and 5.48% under the two emission scenarios, respectively. These findings may shed light on future policy designs to enhance the adaptive capacity of agriculture in China and thus ensure food security in the context of climate change.

Download or read book Three Essays on the Economics of Agricultural Production Behavior Renewable Natural Resources and Welfare Dynamics written by Steven Wayne Wilcox and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The proportion of the world's population that directly interacts with agriculture and natural resources for their daily bread is declining amidst structural transformation (Timmer et al. 2009). Commensurately, the expectations and hopes placed on the remaining food and fiber producers in the world seems to ever increase, not only in terms of the provision of food and fiber, but increasingly in terms of environmental management and the conservation of intersecting natural resources (Blundo et al. 2018, Messerli et al. 2019, Wunder et al. 2020, Baylis et al. 2022). It is not a stretch to declare that there is a lot riding on the welfare of the food and fiber producers of the world (e.g., food security), and on the extent to which conditions that enhance the welfare of the farmer (gatherer) also enhance general welfare in matters beyond the direct provision of food and fiber (e.g., climate change, pollution control, and biodiversity conservation). To manage this state of affairs, the economics underpinning the production behavior of food and fiber producers and associated realized outcomes, are paramount to understand theoretically and to test empirically. In what follows, three applications are studied, each with a focus on a renewable natural resource of concern and an intersecting agricultural production sector where little to no empirical work has be done. The settings and questions are each broadly important and timely: * Do food price shocks cause deforestation, and if so how? * How do farmers decide whether to use managed pollination service markets, and are observed use patterns optimal? * Does the provision of index-based agricultural insurance lead to resource degradation, or improvement? Although on one level these topics are unrelated, the reality is that there are similar archetypal economic problems at the root of each of these questions, where the welfare of an agricultural agent, and the impacts from their production behavior, may or may not coincide with a social optimum. In chapter 2, evidence is presented that food price shocks, particularly for staples, can have significant impacts on deforestation (particularly through increases in price levels), that such shocks can drive smallholders to expand production broadly to address internal shocks to consumption and production, and that such land use change patterns can be casually miss-attributed to cash crop markets. In chapter 3, it is demonstrated that pollination dependent farmer's crop pollination behavior may be less static than has been presumed, that crop pollination behavior and production outcomes are influenced by adjacent land use and landscape heterogeneity, that there are diminishing returns to managed pollination use, and that reliance on pollination service markets is intimately related to the farmers production technology. In chapter 4, the roll-out of a successful index-based agricultural insurance product is studied at-scale, which theoretically might lead to resource degradation, or improvement (in this case for rangeland quality), and evidence is presented that resource degradation concerns may be over-blown, lending credence to the idea that addressing missing financial markets can enhance productivity and agent's welfare without degrading fundamental natural resource stocks.

Download or read book Three Essays in Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics written by Dallas Wayne Wood and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Essays on Agricultural Productivity Environment and Household Efficiency written by Qinan Lu and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Poverty and food security are long-standing concerns for policymakers all over the world, especially those in developing countries. To address this issue, farmers, researchers, and governments have devoted their time and efforts to increasing agricultural productivity and household production efficiency for thousands of years. While technological advancement has played a crucial role in the process, especially since the Green Revolution in the 1960s, environmental stress factors and how to adapt to environmental changes remain a challenge for agricultural production. Technology, crop genetics, and farm management practices may interact in complicated ways affecting crop productivity and farm household efficiency. For example, one potential mechanism to offset the adverse impacts of environmental stressors such as infestation could be through biotechnology, such as genetically engineered biotech crops. But it is less clear how such biotechnology may interfere with crops' ability to deal with weather and climate change stressors. Enhancing agricultural productivity can be done through the appropriate use of agricultural inputs and the adoption of agricultural technologies. Agricultural mechanization services (AMS), as another example, have emerged as a viable and effective solution for helping farmers gain access to machinery equipment in developing countries, overcoming their poor affordability for self-purchase. This dissertation aims to contribute to the understanding of these issues through three essays on agricultural productivity, environment, and household efficiency. It may shed light on the new challenges facing agriculture and rural households and provide insights that are useful to policymakers in designing effective policies to address such challenges. The first essay examines the effects of agricultural mechanization services (AMS) on agricultural productivity. AMS have emerged as a viable solution for helping farmers gain access to machinery equipment in developing countries. The chapter investigates the simultaneous decision-making regarding multiple mechanization services and the causal impacts of AMS on land productivity. The study finds that the ratio of off-farm wage to AMS price has a significant positive effect on AMS adoption, and the sequential adoption of AMS starts with power-intensive, followed by control-intensive production tasks. Furthermore, switching to AMS in plowing, transplanting, and harvesting increases rice yield, while AMS of pesticide spraying significantly decreases yield. The chapter highlights the potential moral hazards associated with AMS when monitoring is costly and suggests that increased AMS adoption can significantly enhance food security in China. The second essay investigates the impact of biotechnology and environmental stressors on agricultural productivity. Despite the widespread adoption of biotech crops in the United States, little is known about their interaction with environmental factors. The chapter utilizes observational data from U.S. county-level agricultural production, along with remotely sensed ozone estimates, to estimate a fixed-effects model with instrumental variables for local ozone concentration. The findings suggest that while biotech adoption reduces yield distribution risks, biotech crops may have a disadvantage in dealing with ozone pollution. The chapter highlights the importance of breeding efforts that consider environmental stress, especially climate change-sensitive factors such as ozone pollution. Improving the welfare of poor people, particularly those living in remote rural areas, is another classic challenge faced by policymakers in less developed countries/communities. Residential relocation is considered a solution for lifting these poor households in remote areas out of the poverty trap. The third essay examines the impact of residential relocation on rural household efficiency. The study uses micro-panel data to investigate the effects of residential relocation on households' allocation and technical efficiency. Results suggest that residential relocation leads to a significant increase in households' allocation efficiency, but it reduces households' technical efficiency. The study identifies disparities in the relocation effects on household efficiency between ethnic minority and Han Chinese households. The results underscore the need to address the negative impacts of residential relocation on agricultural production technology efficiency and the resulting food security issues.

Download or read book Three Essays in Environmental and Development Economics written by Solène Masson and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Deforestation in Brazil has been a growing phenomenon since the 1970s', whose acceleration is mainly due to the agricultural expansion and infrastructure development such as roads. In order to reduce incentive to deforest, authorities promoted several sets of environmental conservation programs.Understanding the effects of such policy interventions both on environmental (intensity of deforestation, economic mechanisms) and socio-economic issues (effect on poverty, effect on local population development) is essential if public policies are to be put in place in an efficient way.Nevertheless, access to spatial, economic and social data due to the size of the Brazilian Amazon makes impact evaluation challenging. This thesis is organized around two themes: spatial analysis, impact evaluation analysis. The creation of an original database at an aggregation level that is, as far as we know, very little studied allows us to extend research on both environmental and socio-economic analyses of environmental public policies.

Download or read book Three Essays on Environmental Quality with Polluting Sectors written by Nathaly Macarena Rivera Casanoba and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Essays on Environmental and Resource Economics written by Dilek Uz and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this dissertation, I present three essays that empirically study water and energy economics issues in California. The objective of the first chapter is to investigate whether and to what extent farmers' crop choice decision is affected by the irrigation water salinity. Using a highly granular land use data and random coefficients logit method, the effect of irrigation water salinity on crop choice is studied in the context of Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta-- California's major water source and home to prime agricultural farmlands. The results show that though the effect of salinity was statistically significant during the past decade, highest and most significant coefficients were those of crop class indicators and weather. This finding suggests that it is essential to reach out to the farmer community to ensure that they are fully capable of coping with expected salinity increases in medium to long run. Additionally, there is evidence for heterogeneity in farmers' response to salinity even though the area studied is relatively small. Ignoring the heterogeneity can result in misleading coefficient estimates especially for those researchers who wish to study farmer behavior in larger regions. Finally, revenue losses are simulated under baseline salinity and potential future salinity scenarios due to building a water conveying facility around the Delta, which suggests an expected revenue loss of about 19%. In the second chapter, together with Steven Buck, I question the wisdom of selecting a forecast model based on a within-sample goodness-of-fit criterion in the context of commercial and industrial (C&I) water demand in the Southern California. Initially, a set of about 350 thousand regression models are estimated using retailer level panel data featuring water consumption, price, employment, weather variables, and GDP. Out-of-sample forecasting performances of those models that rank within the top 1 \% based on various in and out-of-sample goodness-of-fit criteria were compared. We found that the models that provide the best in-sample fit are not necessarily the most favorable ones when it comes to forecasting water demand. The results indicate that on average, these models have a significantly higher absolute forecast error and a larger gap between the highest and lowest forecasts that they generate compared to the models that rank high based on out-of-sample fit criteria we defined. Finally, the third chpater investigates the effect of the 2000 California energy crisis on the take up of an engineering audit program funded by the Department of Energy, aiming operational improvements in various domains, including energy efficiency, at small and medium sized firms. Using a detailed data set containing information on both firm characteristics and the specifics of the recommendations made, a linear probability model is estimated using difference-in-difference strategy. In order to keep the treatment and the control groups as comparable as possible to ensure credible identification, the firms that applied to be audited and made the take up decision before the crisis are compared to those that applied right before the crisis and had to decide after the crisis started. The results show that the 2000 California energy crisis was associated with a 16% increase in the take up of the IAC energy efficiency recommendations. The coefficient estimate is statistically significant and robust to different model specifications.

Download or read book Essays on Externalities and Agriculture in the United States and Brazil written by Maria Susannah Bowman and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 65 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In these three essays collectively entitled "Essays on Externalities and Agriculture in the United States and Brazil", I discuss three topics. In the first essay, I review the economic literature on diversification in farming systems and comment on the economic incentives and disincentives for diversification in 21st century agriculture. In the second essay, I focus on deforestation in Brazil, which is an externality associated with the expansion of agricultural production at forest frontiers. Using a natural experiment (changes in international Foot-and-Mouth Disease certification), I identify the portion of annual deforestation that can be attributed to changes in disease status, and suggest that the mechanism for new deforestation may be due to increased prices when beef is considered to be safe for export. In my third essay, I discuss the production economics behind the use of sub-therapeutic antibiotics in U.S. pork and poultry production, and comment in detail on the potential for heterogeneity in the returns to antibiotic use (and costs of regulation). A more detailed summary of each essay follows. Chapter 1: Economic Factors Affecting Diversified Farming Systems In response to a shift toward specialization and mechanization during the 20th century, there has been momentum on the part of a vocal contingent of consumers, producers, researchers, and policy makers who call for a transition toward a new model of agriculture. This model employs fewer synthetic inputs, incorporates practices which enhance biodiversity and environmental services at local, regional, and global scales, and takes into account the social implications of production practices, market dynamics, and product mixes. Within this vision, diversified farming systems (DFS) have emerged as a model that incorporates functional biodiversity at multiple temporal and spatial scales to maintain ecosystem services critical to agricultural production. This essay's aim is to provide an economists' perspective on the factors which make diversified farming systems (DFS) economically attractive, or not-so-attractive, to farmers, and to discuss the potential for and roadblocks to widespread adoption. The essay focuses on how a range of existing and emerging factors drive profitability and adoption of DFS, and suggests that, in order for DFS to thrive, a number of structural changes are needed. These include: 1) public and private investment in the development of low-cost, practical technologies that reduce the costs of production in DFS, 2) support for and coordination of evolving markets for ecosystem services and products from DFS and 3) the elimination of subsidies and crop insurance programs that perpetuate the unsustainable production of staple crops. This work suggests that subsidies and funding be directed, instead, toward points 1) and 2), as well as toward incentives for consumption of nutritious food. Chapter 2: Foot-and-Mouth Disease and Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon released approximately 5.7 billion tons of CO2 to the atmosphere between 2000 and 2010, and 50-80% of this deforestation was for pasture. Most assume that increasing demand for cattle products produced in Brazil caused this deforestation, but the empirical work to-date on cattle documents only correlations between cattle herd size, pasture expansion, cattle prices, and deforestation. This essay uses panel data on deforestation and Foot-and-Mouth Disease (FMD) status--an exogenous demand shifter--to estimate whether changes in FMD status caused new deforestation in municipalities in the Brazilian Amazon and cerrado biomes during the 2000-2010 period. Becoming certified as FMD-free caused annual deforestation to be 42% to 85% higher than deforestation rates in infected municipalities, on average, during the 2000-2010 period. Chapter 3: Potential for heterogeneity in the returns to sub-therapeutic antibiotics in U.S. pork and poultry operations Each year, more than 50,000 people in the U.S. die from hospital-acquired bacterial infections, millions experience episodes of foodborne illness, and reported cases of "superbugs" such as Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) are on the rise. For those who acquire a resistant infection in their food, in their community, or in a hospital, resistance is associated with a longer duration of treatment, the use of more potent antibiotics, and longer hospital stays. This, in turn, means increased health care costs and costs to society due to antibiotic-resistant infections. Antibiotic resistance is contributing to the scope and severity of this health care crisis, and at least some of the responsibility for antibiotic resistance sits on the shoulders of industrial livestock production. In livestock operations, low or sub-therapeutic doses of antibiotics (STAs) are used to promote growth, in addition to their use to prevent and control disease. Today, more antibiotics are used in livestock production and the production of milk and eggs than in humans. While the use of sub-therapeutic doses of antibiotics is regulated less stringently in the United States than in the European Union, there is movement toward and potential for such regulation. Beginning in the 1970s, economic researchers began to study the potential impacts of bans on the use of sub-therapeutic antibiotics on the pork, poultry, and beef sectors and on U.S. consumers, but there has been little study of how heterogeneity impacts antibiotic use, and in turn, how it impacts returns to using antibiotics in U.S. livestock operations. I concentrate on U.S. pork and poultry operations since they are the largest users of sub-therapeutic antibiotics by volume in the U.S., and explore the existing literature on the economics of sub-therapeutic antibiotic use for glimpses of heterogeneity in the returns to antibiotic use. Perhaps the most interesting source of heterogeneity in returns to antibiotic use may be heterogeneity in management and/or the use of potential substitutes for antibiotics, such as improved sanitation practices and more modern facilities. Productivity and use of technologies that substitute for STA use vary amongst producers, and likely by region and farm size. Thus, the marginal abatement costs of reducing STA use vary across industries, producers, production systems, and regions.

Download or read book Farming and the Fate of Wild Nature written by Daniel Imhoff and published by Post Carbon Institute. This book was released on 2012-07-16 with total page 552 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Farming and the Fate of Wild Nature addresses an urgent and complex issue facing communities and cultures throughout the world: the need for heightened land stewardship and conservation in an era of diminishing natural resources. Agricultural lands in rural areas are being purchased for development. Water scarcities are pitting urban and development expansion against agriculture and conservation needs. The farming population is ageing and retiring, while those who remain struggle against low commodity prices, international competition, rising production costs, and the threat of disappearing subsidies. We are living amidst a major extinction crisis--much of it driven by agriculture--as well as an increasing shift toward a global urban populace. The modern diet, driven by a grain-fed livestock industry, is no longer connected with the ecosystems that support it. In international circles, experts are arguing that further intensification of agriculture (through industrialization and genetic modification) will be necessary to both feed an exploding human population and to save what is left of wild biodiversity. This book takes up where its predecessor, the award-winning Farming with the Wild, left off. Featuring a wide range of in-depth essays, articles, and other materials by such authors as Aldo Leopold, Wendell Berry, Michael Pollan, Fred Kirschenmann, and Daniel Imhoff, this book persuasively demonstrates that farm and ranch operations which coexist with wild nature are necessary to sustain biodiversity and beauty on the landscape. In fact, as this invaluable educational resource demonstrates, they are essential in the challenge of building sane, healthy, and hopeful human societies.

Download or read book Forest Conservation and Agriculture written by Fanny Moffette and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation is composed of three essays relating agriculture and deforestation issues, in the broad field of development economics. All essays are motivated by the analysis of how policy incentives affect behavior of agricultural producers and influence deforestation in developing countries. This analysis is conducted in the context of two modern types of environmental policies. First, payments for environmental services (PES) are a contract-based mechanism that pays landowners to preserve forests. Second, zero-deforestation commitments are an environmental supply-chain policy often made as a response to threats to brand reputation. The impacts of those two policies and their interactions with agriculture are still not well understood. I examine how these policies might go awry, either because they are undermined by other policies, or through leakage and laundering that occur as a result of the environmental policy itself. The next paragraphs present the motivation, objectives, findings, and main contributions of each of the chapters in this dissertation.