Price transmission between products at different stages of manufacturing in forest industries

The theory of demand and supply implies a positive relationship, or “price transmission” between the prices of products at different stages of manufacturing. This relationship was investigated with quarterly prices of softwood stumpage in the US South, and national prices of forest products, from 1977 to 2002. All prices, net of inflation, were found to be nonstationary and there was no evidence of co-integration between prices. Vector autogressive models, augmented by Granger causality tests and multiplier analysis showed that there was a one-to-one permanent positive response of the southern sawtimber stumpage price to a permanent change in the national lumber price. There was also a one-third permanent positive response of the national paper price to a permanent change in the national pulp price. There was no relation between regional pulpwood prices and national pulp or paper prices. When price transmission was significant, the full adjustment took about 2 years.     

The Effect of the Structural Adjustment Program on the Output,Prices and Exports of Major Agricultural Export Crops in Nigeria

The primary objective of this paper is to examine changes in the level of output, prices and exports of major export crops resulting from the Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) in Nigeria. THere two main sources of data: the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) through its annual reports, Economic and Financial Review, and the Nigerian Federal Office of Statistics (FOS) through its Trade Summaries. Although the SAP led to appreciable increases in output and producer prices, its effects on exports were insignificant. The implications of these for the implementation of the program are explored.     

Application of an ecosystem function framework to perceptions of community woodlands

Owners, local residents, government, and conservation organisations can express divergent preferences in the development and management of local woodlands. The perceptions of these four groups were examined, in the context of three community woodlands in Eastern England, using an ecosystem function framework. In a pilot study, residents were able to allocate a relative importance to woodland ecosystem services which were then related to “regulation”, “habitat”, and “production” or “information” functions. However residents also placed importance on negative services or “dis-services” associated with the woodland ecosystem. Therefore a fifth category of “dis-services” was included in the main survey which included 84 local residents, three woodland owners, three government institutions, and six representatives from conservation groups. Each of the four groups placed greatest importance on services associated with habitat (16–39% of the total importance) and information (30–50%) functions suggesting, in this example, mutual interest in the use of woodlands as a habitat or recreational resource. By contrast a potential area of difference was the particularly high importance placed by one owner on dis-services such as fly tipping. In addition the woodland owners placed higher importance (10–20%), than local residents and conservation groups (7–9%), on the productive services of the wood. This suggests a need for communication when production-related operations affect recreation. The ecosystem function framework appears to be a useful approach for highlighting potential tensions and areas of mutual interest in the management of semi-natural ecosystems.     

In Vino ‘No’ Veritas: impacts of fraud on wine imports in China

China is one of the largest wine importing countries in the world and is poised for continued import growth in the future. Increased wine purchases throughout China have given rise to persistent fraud where fake wines are packaged and sold with counterfeit contents and labels. For exporting countries like France, counterfeit wines displace market share, damage foreign brand reputation, and cause distrust in consumers who are aware of counterfeiting problems throughout the country. We examine the impact of fraudulent wine events (as measured by negative media reports) on Chinese wine demand differentiated by supplying country. We employ the Rotterdam demand system and a switching regression procedure to estimate import demand and compare results across different media variable specifications. Results consistently show that negative reports disproportionately affect French wine regardless of how the media variable is specified. This is not surprising because most fraudulent events involve French wine counterfeits.     

土地学科的建设和发展——"土地学科发展规划研讨会"综述

中国土地科学学科发展已取得很大成就,表现为专业教育和人才培养成绩突出、初步形成学科体系、取得大批研究成果.而存在的问题主要是基础理论研究欠缺、独特的土地科学研究方法体系尚未形成、研究角度单一、学术交流质量不高和学科带头人的影响力不足.土地科学学科发展目前面临着巨大的机遇和挑战,应明确土地科学学科发展的基本思路、发展目标及2010-2020年的主要建设任务和保障措施.     

An evaluation framework for earthquake-responsive land administration

In recent years earthquakes and their secondary hazards have claimed the largest number of lives of all large natural disasters. Some of the world’s most earthquake-prone zones are also areas of high population density. The impact is magnified by vulnerability factors including non-enforcement of building codes, knowledge gaps, urban poverty and poor governance capacity to manage and reduce earthquake risks. Poor security of land tenure and property rights increases the vulnerability of people and affects their ability to respond to natural disasters.Earthquake recovery and reconstruction provides very significant challenges for land agencies, with these challenges differing from one country to the next due to differences in the local context. Drawing on contrasting case studies in Haiti, Nepal and New Zealand this paper identifies the common post-earthquake land administration functions and challenges that may apply to many contexts. These lessons provide land agencies and other key stakeholders with a summary of the challenges an earthquake poses for land administration at different post-disaster stages. We also discuss the policy and regulatory, institutional, operational and preparedness lessons for land administration. From these lessons we propose a framework for evaluating the earthquake-responsiveness of a land administration system. This framework can be used by a land agency in an earthquake prone region, or where an earthquake has recently occurred, to assess what challenges to land administration might occur in the event of an earthquake, and the preparedness of their land administration system.     

Revealing different understandings of soil held by scientists and farmers in the context of soil protection and management

This paper aims to analyse and draw together results from similar studies in England, Switzerland and France which investigated farmers’ understanding of soil and compared it with that of scientists, researchers and advisors (collectively called scientists in this analysis). A range of methods were used across the three studies and different theoretical approaches, looking at forms of knowledge, local practice of knowledge production and conceptions of reality, were employed to explain the results. Despite the different contexts, methodologies and theoretical approaches in the three studies, the results reveal similar patterns of difference in farmer and scientist understanding of soil. In the English study, farmers demonstrate a ‘know-how’ form or intuitive working knowledge of soil while advisors rely on scientifically established forms of ‘know-why’ and seek to understand and explain soil processes. Similarly in the Swiss study farmers’ and scientists’ differing perceptions are directed and shaped by their respective aims, methods and context of work. In the French study, farmers and researchers are shown to have different conceptions of soil, they attribute different meaning to the same activities, and use different words and language to describe the same features. In all three studies understanding is shown to be cultural and contextual, as such an integrative theoretical framework is proposed.     

森林生物多样性评价模型的改进

针对2002年的评价模型中的不足,提出了新的改进后的森林生物多样性变化的评价模型,并在我国第六次森林资源清查(1999～2003)资料的基础上,对1973～2003年我国森林生物多样性的变化进行了补充评价。评价结果表明:我国森林生物多样性的压力越来越大,压力指数由1973年的100,上升到2003年的199.10,上升了1.99倍;森林物种多样性总体的下降趋势已有一定幅度的改变,森林物种多样性指数增加了31.12%。森林生态系统多样性和森林生物多样性先逐渐上升,尔后又下降,第六次森林资源清查时又有所恢复,并分别上升了4.67个百分点和17.90个百分点。     

Evaluating Alternative Policy Responses to Higher World Food Prices: The Case of Increasing Rice Prices in Madagascar

Higher world food prices have led many developing countries to adopt policies to mitigate the impact on low-income households. This article sets out a partial equilibrium framework to evaluate the efficiency, distributional, and revenue implications of alternative policy responses. The model is applied to evaluate tariff reductions and targeted transfers in Madagascar. Although lowering tariffs generates substantial efficiency gains, these accrue mainly to the top half of the welfare distribution, and poor net sellers are actually worse off. Developing a system of targeted direct transfers to poor households is likely to be a substantially more cost-effective approach to poverty alleviation.     

转变地质工作发展与服务方式的实践和建议

天津市地矿局注重加快转变经济发展方式,发挥地质工作优势,推进低碳清洁能源的开发利用创新和技术进步,紧紧依托地质工作的人才、技术和行业优势,加大清洁环保资源的勘查、研究、开发、利用。针对天津市水资源缺乏的情况,积极加强后备和应紧水源勘查。按照“两种资源,两个市场”的思路,通过实施中外合作勘查项目,以境外勘查工作为载体和平台,实施引进来和走出去战略,为天津市经济社会发展提供地质技术支撑。     

Trust-A monolithic panacea in land use planning?

Although trust research has been extensive and substantial, the constitution and actual merits of trust in land use planning remain nebulous. What do participants of a local land use planning process actually mean when they say they trust the planning committee? How important is participants’ trust in the planning committee in shaping their perceptions of the planning process and their cooperation in it? To explore the everyday meaning of trust in the specific context of local land use planning, semi-structured interviews with the participants of a local planning project in Switzerland were conducted (n = 9). Based on these results, the constitution and the relevance of trust in the responsible planning committee among a wider circle of participants were assessed (n = 66). The results show that participants trust the planning committee if they perceive its members as competent, honest, open, fair, reliable, reciprocating, respectful and committed. Interestingly, a considerable part of trust in the planning committee hinges explicitly on whether the committee incorporates the personal interests of the participant. Trust is indeed vital to participants’ belief that a meaningful discussion and cooperation with the members of the planning committee is possible. However, trust is neither a guarantee for people's approval of planning decisions nor for their cooperation. One implication of the findings is that in order to evaluate trust-building practice comprehensively, it is necessary to first understand the specific everyday meaning of trust for ‘real people’ in real planning processes.     

Agrarian Poverty,Nutrition and Economic Class – A Study of Gujarat,India

This paper analyses poverty and calorific undernourishment in the Indian state of Gujarat, where high and market‐led industrial growth has resulted in rapid economic improvement. The study is carried out through a combination of secondary and survey‐based data. We conclude that the neoliberal agenda of uncontrolled, outward‐looking growth has not resulted in significant reduction of poverty or malnourishment in rural areas. Furthermore, while land ownership is officially used as a proxy for wealth distribution, class position appears a better predictor of poverty status in the rural areas than landownership per se. At the policy level, there is a need to revive the agrarian economy and create new non‐agricultural assets, and the primary focus in the state must shift to the distribution of created assets rather than a single‐minded focus on growth.     

Transaction Cost Thresholds in International Rice Markets

Recent episodes of high and volatile prices for grains such as rice have raised concerns about their implications for hunger and poverty. We model price relationships between international rice prices and 221 domestic prices in 47 developing countries that import rice. We use a threshold vector error correction model that accounts for transaction costs of trade in spatial price transmission, and an improved regularised Bayesian threshold estimator for threshold models. Our results show that threshold values are higher after 2008 than before, which suggests that transaction costs in international rice trade have increased in recent years. Threshold values are highest for Latin American countries followed by African and Asian countries, and higher for retail than for wholesale prices. Since 2008, price transmission is slower in countries that responded to high and volatile prices with domestic market‐based interventions such as price controls and faster in countries that responded by lowering tariffs and by implementing production support measures.     

Agricultural Land in Vietnam: Markets Tempered by Family, Community and Socialist Practices

Since the late 1980s, markets involving agricultural land have emerged in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. One major reason is that collective farms, previously a central feature of the country's political economy, ended. And a major reason for that was villagers' everyday politics gnawed the underpinnings of the collectives until they collapsed. Rural households, for the most part, wanted to farm separately. Today they do. Land is not privatized, however. Farming households have land use rights, not ownership. This tempers markets, as do other conditions arising from contending schools of thought in Vietnam about how land should be used, distributed and regulated.     

Does sustainable agricultural growth require a system of innovation? Evidence from Ghana and Burkina Faso

This paper tests the ‘systems of innovation’ hypothesis for a selection of crops in Ghana and Burkina Faso that have shown significant growth in production over an approximately 20-year period. The question is whether such growth can only occur if supported by a system of innovation. Using two indicators (a common understanding on objectives and priorities, and a high level of interactivity), we find little evidence for the existence of anything that might be considered a high functioning system of innovation.     

Local impacts of industrial tree plantations: An empirical analysis in Indonesia across plantation types

The values ascribed to industrial tree plantations are often controversial. Hence knowledge of their perceived impacts is important for improving their integration in rural landscapes. In 2016 we conducted household surveys with 606 respondents living in villages adjacent to acacia, teak and pine plantations across three islands in Indonesia (Java, Borneo, Sumatra). Results show that perceptions toward pine and teak plantations tend to differ from those toward acacia pulpwood plantations in several ways. Pine and teak plantations are perceived to have a higher number and variety of benefits and services, a higher number of positive impacts, a better environmental record, and to present more opportunities to local people for use of plantation land and products for improving rural livelihoods. In addition, we find that villagers around acacia pulpwood plantations tend to seek economic development and infrastructure to open up remote areas, yet their expectations were often only partially met. Recommendations from our analysis include: the role of the State in plantations must be clarified and potentially reinforced; the role of institutions as intermediaries is fundamental; and contributions by communities to design of management plans should be accommodated.     

Underpayment of Small Producers of Coffee and Cocoa in Sierra Leone

Fieldwork shows that many Sierra Leonean producers do not receive the official producer price for their coffee and cocoa, due to the concentration of buying stations, credit relations, the small quantities offered for sale, and the lack of marketing knowledge of the numerous and unorganized farmers. To the traders underpayment may seem economically justifiable to a certain extent, but to the farmers it means poverty and debt. A new village marketing centre project aims at remedying this situation and has already led to higher prices. Although no longer allowed to take their "just" share from the producers, traders are still willing to deal with the new centres.     

Upstream demand for water use by new tree plantations imposes externalities on downstream irrigated agriculture and wetlands*

Large‐scale tree plantations in high rainfall upstream areas can reduce fresh water inflows to river systems, thereby imposing external costs on downstream irrigation, stock and domestic water users and wetland interests. We take the novel approach of expressing all benefits and costs of establishing plantations in terms of $ per gigalitre (GL) of water removed annually from river flows, setting upstream demands on the same basis as downstream demands. For the Macquarie Valley, a New South Wales sub‐catchment of Australia’s Murray‐Darling Basin, we project changes in land and water use and changes in economic surpluses under two policy settings: without and with a policy requiring permanent water entitlements to be purchased from downstream parties, before plantation establishment. Without the policy, and given a high stumpage value for trees ($70/m³), upstream gains in economic surplus projected from expanding plantations are $639 million; balanced against $233 million in economic losses by downstream irrigators and stock and domestic water users for a net gain of $406 million, but 345 GL lower mean annual environmental flows. With the policy, smaller gains in upstream economic surplus from trees ($192 million), added to net downstream gains ($138 million) from sale of water, result in gains of $330 million with no reduction in environmental flows. Sustaining the 345 GL flow for a $76 million (406–330) reduction in gains to economic surplus may be seen to cost only $0.22 million/GL; but this is much lower than the market value of the first units of that water to agriculture and forestry.     

Conservation agriculture (CA) in Tanzania: the case of the Mwangaza B CA farmer field school (FFS), Rhotia Village,Karatu District,Arusha

This project was initiated to promote conservation agriculture (CA) in Tanzania so as to improve the food security and rural livelihood of small- and medium-scale farmers through the scaling-up of CA as a sustainable land management (SLM) tool as well as increasing the numbers of SLM-CA farmer field schools (FFS) in communities. The project had two phases from 2004 to 2010. It was funded by a Government of Germany trust fund and implemented by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the Ministry of Agriculture in Tanzania. The project pilot districts include Arumeru (Arusha and Meru Councils), Karatu, Babati, Hanang and Moshi districts. CA has been shown to offer positive elements that could contribute to fighting hunger and poverty.     

Malaria incidence and agricultural efficiency in Uganda

The cost of accessing healthcare can be a major determinant of disease prevalence, which in turn has short‐ and long‐term welfare implications on poor households. In response, governments in developing countries often resort to subsidizing the cost of drugs, which, while perhaps easier to administer, may not always be the most effective way of addressing healthcare cost. In this regard, we analyze the impact of different types of household level health expenses on disease incidence and agricultural production efficiency. We use data from the 2006 Uganda National Household Survey, which covered approximately 7,400 households. The results suggest that a 10% increase in consultation, medicine, and hospitalization expenses would reduce malaria incidence respectively by 35.6%, 20.5%, and 21.3 %, which translates into a 1.1%, 0.6%, and 0.6 % decrease in agricultural inefficiency, respectively. The results indicate that helping poor households meet expenses for consultation through subsidies or eliminating consultation fees has a larger impact on malaria incidence and agricultural productivity among poor rural households than subsidizing the cost of medical drugs, the most common avenue chosen by developing country governments in the fight against the disease.