Eco-efficient choice of cropping system for reducing nitrate-N leaching in an agricultural watershed

Eco-efficiency analysis framework was used to evaluate joint economic and environmentally optimal N application rates for alternative cropping systems managed in a watershed in Atlantic Canada. Eco-efficiency indexes were estimated as the ratio of economic returns from N fertilizer application to groundwater-N leaching associated with crop production. Trade-offs between crop yield and associated reduction in groundwater-N leaching were also estimated. Data for the analysis were generated using the soil and water analysis tool modeling, and allowed for evaluating crop yield and groundwater-N leaching effects for a given crop in rotations assumed to be managed at varying N fertilizer application rates. The cropping systems evaluated included: (i) corn-based cropping systems involving corn–corn–alfalfa–alfalfa–alfalfa (CCAAA, and CCCAA) rotations; (ii) potato-based cropping systems involving potato–corn–barley–potato–corn (PCBPC and PBWPC); and (iii) vegetable-horticulture cropping system involving potato–winter wheat–carrot–corn. Cropping systems were compared under conventional tillage (CT) and no-till (NT) systems. Estimated eco-efficient N fertilizer rates were substantially lower than current provincial nutrient management plan (NMP)-recommended rates, and estimated maximum economic rate of nitrogen fertilizer. However, the actual amounts depended on the crop and rotation system. CCAAA-CT was the eco-efficient choice of rotation system among the corn-based cropping systems considered. Similarly, PCBPC-CT was the eco-efficient choice among the potato-based production systems. In addition, when the NMP-recommended N rate was replaced by the eco-efficient rate for the vegetable horticulture cropping system, the eco-efficient cropping system shifted from a rotation involving CT to a NT system.     

Biofuel policies and the environment: Do climate benefits warrant increased production from biofuel feedstocks?

We examine whether climate benefits warrant policies promoting biofuel production from agricultural crops when other environmental impacts are accounted for. We develop a general economic-ecological modelling framework for integrated analysis of biofuel policies. An economic model of farmers' decision making is combined with a biophysical model predicting the effects of farming practices on crop yields and relevant environmental impacts. They include GHG emissions over the life cycle, nitrogen and phosphorus runoff, and the quality of wildlife habitats. We apply our model to crop production in Finland. We find that under current biofuel production technology the case for promotion of biofuels is not as evident as has been generally thought. Only reed canary grass for biodiesel is unambiguously desirable, whereas biodiesel from rape seed and ethanol production from wheat and barley cause in most cases negative net impacts on the environment. Suggested policies in the US and the EU tend to improve slightly the environmental performance of biofuel production.     

Soil biota, ecosystem services and land productivity

The soil environment is likely the most complex biological community. Soil organisms are extremely diverse and contribute to a wide range of ecosystem services that are essential to the sustainable function of natural and managed ecosystems. The soil organism community can have direct and indirect impacts on land productivity. Direct impacts are those where specific organisms affect crop yield immediately. Indirect effects include those provided by soil organisms participating in carbon and nutrient cycles, soil structure modification and food web interactions that generate ecosystem services that ultimately affect productivity. Recognizing the great biological and functional diversity in the soil and the complexity of ecological interactions it becomes necessary to focus in this paper on soil biota that have a strong linkage to functions which underpin ‘soil based’ ecosystem services. Selected organisms from different functional groups (i.e. microsymbionts, decomposers, elemental transformers, soil ecosystem engineers, soil-borne pest and diseases, and microregulators) are used to illustrate the linkages of soil biota and ecosystem services essential to life on earth as well as with those associated with the provision of goods and the regulation of ecosystem processes. These services are not only essential to ecosystem function but also a critical resource for the sustainable management of agricultural ecosystems. Research opportunities and gaps related to methodological, experimental and conceptual approaches that may be helpful to address the challenge of linking soil biodiversity and function to the provision of ecosystem services and land productivity are discussed. These include: 1) integration of spatial variability research in soil ecology and a focus on ‘hot spots’ of biological activity, 2) using a selective functional group approach to study soil biota and function, 3) combining new and existing methodological approaches that link selected soil organisms, the temporal and spatial dynamics of their function, and their contribution to the provision of selected ‘soil based' ecosystem services, 4) using understanding about hierarchical relationships to manage soil biota and function in cropping systems, 5) using local knowledge about plants as indicators of soil quality, remote sensing and GIS technologies, and plant-soil biota interactions to help understand the impacts of soil biota at landscape scale, and 6) developing land quality monitoring systems that inform land users about their land's ecosystem service performance, improve capacities to predict and adapt to environmental changes, and support policy and decision-making.     

Bio-economic modelling of soil erosion externalities and policy options: a Tunisian case study

Soil erosion is one of the most important of today’s environmental externalities and a major threat to sustainability of agricultural system. It constitutes the most widespread forms of land degradation throughout the world. The aim of this paper is to estimate the amount of soil erosion generated by the current cropping systems in Tunisia and to assess the economic and ecological impacts of policy instruments designed to handle this problem. The analysed policy options are based on soil conservation practices and direct incentive farming anti-erosive measures. The selected measures are the reduction of tillage, the avoidance of bare fallow and the use of legume-based crop rotation. A bio-economic modelling framework coupling the biophysical model EPIC to a non-linear dynamic programming farm model was used for this impact analysis. It was performed in a set of representative farms belonging to a region in North-Eastern Tunisia (Zaghouan) strongly affected by this phenomenon. The main finding of this research is the non-convexity of the crop yield—soil erosion space. That is, the use of more intensive techniques to increase productivity (i.e. crop yield) may be accompanied by rough changes in soil erosion (damage) curves, manifested either by non-monotony or non-convexity. In term of policy options and because of giving up convexity assumptions, incentive anti-erosive measures appear more efficient than conventional environmental policies such as Pigouvian taxes or quota systems. The implementation of soil conservation practices would leads to a net decrease in soil erosion and an increase in farm income. However, with the current interest rate of 7% the possible rise in income is not enough to stimulate farmers to invest on these practices. A maximum rate of 4% would be necessary to make this policy option more effective.     

Potential Environmental Impacts of Increased Reliance on Corn-Based Bioenergy

This paper integrates economic and physical models to assess: a) how increases in agricultural commodity prices, driven by ethanol production and other factors, affect land use and cropping systems in the US Midwest, and b) how the changes in land use and cropping systems in turn affect environmental quality in the region. The empirical framework includes a set of econometric models that predict land conversion, crop choices, and crop rotations at the parcel level based on commodity prices, land quality, climate conditions, and other physical characteristics at the sites. The predictions are then combined with site-specific environmental production functions to determine the effect of rising commodity prices on nitrate runoff and leaching, soil water and wind erosion, and carbon sequestration. Results suggest that increasing commodity prices will result in widespread conversions of non-cropland to cropland. Fifty percent of the region’s pasture and range land will be converted to cropland with 6 corn. Rising commodity prices will also result in dramatic changes in crop mix and rotation systems in the Midwest. With6 corn. Rising commodity prices will also result in dramatic changes in crop mix and rotation systems in the Midwest. With 6 corn, the total acreage of corn will increase by 23% and 40% in the Corn Belt and Lake States, respectively; the acreage of continuous corn will increase considerably in both regions as well. These changes in land use and crop mix will have a large impact on agricultural pollution. Approaches to mitigating the environmental impacts are discussed.     

Climate Change and Adaptation: The Case of Nigerian Agriculture

The present research offers an economic assessment of climate change impacts on the four major crop families characterizing Nigerian agriculture. The evaluation is performed by shocking land productivity in a computable general equilibrium model tailored to replicate Nigerian economic development up to 2050. The detail of land uses in the model has been increased by differentiating land types per agro-ecological zones. Uncertainty about future climate is captured, using, as inputs, yield changes computed by a crop model under ten general circulation models runs. Climate change turns out to be negative for Nigeria in the medium term, with production losses and increase in crop prices, higher food dependency on foreign imports, and GDP losses in all the simulations after 2025. In a second part of the paper, a cost effectiveness analysis of adaptation in Nigerian agriculture is conducted. The adaptation practices considered are a mix of cheaper “soft measures” and more costly “hard” irrigation expansion. The main result is that the cost effectiveness of the whole package depends crucially on the possibility of implementing adaptation by exploiting low-cost opportunities which show a benefit-cost ratio larger than one in all the climate regimes.     

Climatic impacts across agricultural crop yield distributions: An application of quantile regression on rice crops in Andhra Pradesh,India

Climatic impact on agricultural production is a serious concern, as it is directly linked to food security and poverty. Whereas there are empirical studies that examine this issue with parametric approaches focusing on the “mean” level of variables, few studies have addressed climatic impacts in general settings. Given this paucity, we characterize the impacts on crop yield distributions with a non-parametric approach. We examine the case of rice yield in Andhra Pradesh, India, an important state producing rice as a main crop but reported to be vulnerable to climate change. Employing 34 years of data, we apply quantile regressions to untangle the climatic impacts across the quantiles of rice yield, finding three main results. First, substantial heterogeneity in the impacts of climatic variables can be found across the yield distribution. Second, the direction of the climatic impacts on rice yield highly depends on agro-climatic zones. Third, seasonal climatic impacts on rice yield are significant. More specifically, a monsoon-dependent crop is more sensitive to temperature and precipitation, whereas a winter crop remains largely resilient to changes in the levels of climate variables. These findings clarify the idiosyncratic climatic impacts on agriculture in India, and call for location- and season-specific adaptation policies.     

长江三角洲生态稻作模式及其效应的比较分析

农业生产对长江三角洲农业环境的影响,一直是社会广泛关注的焦点。水稻种植是长江三角洲农业生产的主要方式。以江苏省为例,在田间试验、农户调查和文献收集的基础上,分析了该省主要生态稻作模式的技术特征及其环境和经济效应。调查和分析结果显示:(1)江苏省生态稻作主要有稻鸭共作型(丹阳)、环境友好型(吴江)和沼气复合型(淮阴)三种典型模式;(2)这三种稻作模式在土壤肥力、生态环境和经济效益上存在一定的差异,但均显著高于当地常规的集约化稻作模式。为了进一步促进该区生态稻作模式的发展,以有效的方式减轻长江三角洲地区的农业环境问题,文章就配套政策方面提出了一些建设性建议。     

Identification of development indicators in tropical mountainous regions and some implications for natural resource policy designs: an integrated community case study

In tropical and subtropical countries a social gradient can be observed in mountainous regions between small-scale farmers on fragile ecosystems associated with human poverty, and the fertile plains and broad valleys with large-scale cash crop productions and industrial centers associated with relative economic welfare. Sustainable community development paths have to be identified in these less privileged regions. The objective of this study was to make a contribution for defining and assessing development indicators at community level, including ecological, economic and social dimensions, to elicit the conflicting objectives in development and to discuss some practical implications. The study was performed in a typical watershed in central Honduras and special attention was given to autochthonous and qualitative indicators for development. Using the pressure-state-response model as a framework, a series of indicators were identified and assessed, which were also used by the local population and grouped into landscape structure, soil fertility, water availability and quality, production system and extractive activities, economic and social performance, and institutions. The development path in this specific case illustrated the transition from an expansive forest conversion agriculture to an intensified and diversified agriculture. This was made possible through technology transfer and improved market access. However, this development path, while increasing economic welfare, generated increasing negative environmental impacts caused by pesticide residues, soil erosion and less regular water supply. As the watershed carrying capacity for traditional shifting cultivation (used as a system indicator) reached its ecological limit, new sustainable development strategies had to be identified. The implications of the study for policy design are that tools need to be provided for natural and environmental resource monitoring, which may consist of sustainability goal definitions, a minimal set of indicators and simple maps for planning land use at local level.     

Environmental spillover effects on firm productivity and efficiency: An analysis of agri-food business in Southeast Spain

Spillover effects are treated as the influence of knowledge and innovation diffusion on an economic activity, but their analysis related to environmental practices within firms is still quite scarce. This study investigates the effect of environmental practices and related spillovers on productivity and efficiency in agri-food firms located in Southeast Spain. The low investment in research and development actions in comparison with the industrial sector, together with the relatively recent application of environmental requirements and the heterogeneity of environmental controls within firms have led to important changes in the organisation and management of their productive activity. These features are especially related to the implications that location and clustering factors have on environmental knowledge and innovation diffusion. Taking environmental management practices as knowledge of capital, we propose a specific analysis that evaluates the impacts of both environmental investment and spillover on the production function. The results indicate the relationship between productivity improvement and environmental practices, also showing the presence of positive spillovers. In a second-stage analysis, the incidence of environmental variables on the individual technical efficiency of firms is also determined. On the whole, the empirical analysis provides evidence of the links between environmental practices spillovers and economic performance.     

Yield curve and the macroeconomy: Evidence from a DSGE model with housing

The slope of the yield curve has long been found to be a useful predictor of future economic activities, but the relationship is unstable. One change we have identified in this paper is that, between the early 1990s and the collapse of the housing market in 2007, movements at the long end of the yield curve have an increase in predictive power. We use a medium-scale DSGE model with a housing sector and a yield curve as a guide to find out the sources of such change. The model implies that an increase in the short-term interest rate and a decrease in the long-term interest rate have different impacts on the economy, and to use the slope as a predictor one needs to distinguish movements at the two ends of the yield curve. Based on simulated data from the model, we find that nominal wage rigidities and the capital adjustment costs are closely related to the predictive power of the yield curve. This result is further confirmed with actual data.     

Substitution between water and other agricultural inputs: Implications for water conservation in a River Basin context

Substitution of irrigation water with other agricultural inputs could be an important means to conserve water in the face of growing pressures on water resources from both nonagricultural water demands and environmental water requirements. This paper discusses the potential of such substitution through an empirical analysis based on a multiple-input crop production function at the field and farm scales complemented with a numerical modeling exercise at the basin scale. Results from the crop production function analysis show that under both crop yield and net profit maximization, water is a substitute to other crop inputs for high-value crops, and is a complement to water for low-valued crops. At the basin scale, an integrated economic-hydrologic river basin model is used to analyze the role of other factors in crop input substitution, including the spatial connections among water sources and demands, hydro-agronomic conditions, and institutional settings for water allocation. Results show that in the case study area, the Maipo River basin in Chile, where water is very scarce, moving from the current, input-constrained, situation to full optimization of water resources leads to an increase in all crop inputs, including water. In that case, 301 million m³ of additional water use results in additional net profits of USD 11 million. However, if the water fee is raised by a factor of eight while overall basin irrigation profits are maintained at the original, baseline level, a reduction of water withdrawals by 326 million m³ is traded off with costs of USD 43.2 million for other inputs. Irrigation districts with a high share of low-value crops have a low potential for substituting water with other crop inputs. Therefore, investments for water substitution should also be kept low in these areas.     

Production and Employment Impacts of Biotechnology —Input-output Analysis for Germany

Biotechnology is often regarded as a key technology with high potential for far-reaching social, environmental and economic impacts. Among others, the development and diffusion of biotechnology may have considerable economic effects on production and employment. This paper analyses the economic impacts of different prospective diffusion paths of biotechnology in some major application fields for Germany. Bottom-up technology information from the literature, expert judgements and explicit scenario assumptions for various impact factors are combined and integrated in an input-output framework to calculate direct and indirect production and employment effects. The impact on net production and employment differs greatly between the different application sectors and depends on the respective importance of the various impact mechanisms. The indirect economic effects are rather high and exceed the direct economic effects. These findings show the importance of a bottom-up approach as well as the consideration of the indirect economic effects for appropriate analyses of the impact of biotechnology.     

An Economic Analysis of Yard Care and Synthetic Chemical Use: The Case of San Francisco

Yard care is an economically important household production activity that also has potentially significant environmental or health impacts. Of particular concern are the possible negative impacts of using synthetic pesticides and fertilizers. But economic models and empirical analyses of yard care and chemical use are rare. We develop a simple model of household production and consumption to analyze yard care and chemical use. We then estimate a multinomial logit model of these behavioral choices with household data from San Francisco. Attitudes towards the quality of one's outdoor residential environment and time scarcity are important determinants of the odds of chemical use whereas financial variables play the major role in determining the odds that people have and care for yards. These results could help to improve educational or marketing campaigns that aim to reduce potential or actual problems associated with yard chemical use. Better data for models similar to this one are needed for future research.     

Socioeconomic Impacts of Public Forest Policies on Heterogeneous Agricultural Households

Nepal has a long history of returning public forests to local people as part of its community forestry programme. In principle the community forestry programme is designed to address both environmental quality and poverty alleviation. However, concern has been expressed that forest policies emphasise environmental conservation, and that this has a detrimental impact on the use of community forests in rural Nepal where households require access to public forest products to sustain livelihoods. To study the effect of government policies on forest use, an economic model of a typical small community of economically heterogeneous households in Nepal was developed. The model incorporates a link between private agriculture and public forest resources, and uses this link to assess the socioeconomic impacts of forest policies on the use of public forests. Socioeconomic impacts were measured in terms of household income, employment and income inequality. The results show that some forest policies have a negative economic impact, and the impacts are more serious than those reported by other studies. This study shows that existing forest policies reduce household income and employment, and widen income inequalities within communities, compared to alternative policies. Certain forest policies even constrain the poorest households?? ability to meet survival needs. The findings indicate that the socioeconomic impacts of public forest policies may be underestimated in developing countries unless household economic heterogeneity and forestry??s contribution to production are accounted for. The study also demonstrates that alternative policies for managing common property resources would reduce income inequalities in rural Nepalese communities and lift incomes and employment to a level where even the poorest households could meet their basic needs.     

Bio economic modeling for a sustainable management of biodiversity in agricultural lands

For several decades, significant changes in farmland biodiversity have been reported in Europe. Agriculture is a major driver of these modifications. Taking into account these environmental impacts, agriculture nowadays aims at a more sustainable way of producing which would reconcile its economic and ecological functions. The objective of this paper is to give insights into the impact of public policies on both conservation of biodiversity and farming production. We develop a macro-regional model combining community dynamics of 34 bird species impacted by agricultural land-uses and an economic decision model. The ecological dynamic model is calibrated with the STOC (French Breeding Bird Survey) and AGRESTE (French land-uses) databases while the economic model relies on the gross margins of the FADN (Farm Accountancy Data Network). We investigate the scenario based on subsidies and taxes. We show that simple economic instruments could be used to establish scenarios promoting economic performances and bird populations. It is pointed out how the sustainability of the policies is sensitive to the ecological and economic indicators used by the planner. The bio-economical analysis shows several solutions for the ecology-economy trade-off. These results suggest that many possibilities are available to develop multi-functional sustainable agriculture.     

Estimating bivariate yield distributions and crop insurance premiums using nonparametric methods

Modelling crop yield distribution is crucial in crop insurance premium setting. The correlation between different crop yields due to rotations or systemic risks requires estimation of joint yield distribution for multiple crops. In this article, we apply a nonparametric method to estimate bivariate yield distributions using farm-level yield data of wheat and corn in Shandong Province in China. Then, the simulated yields are used to evaluate the expected indemnity of one traditional and one hypothetical crop insurance programme. Our results reveal that the nonparametric bivariate method is very flexible in shaping the yield probability density functions to estimate local idiosyncrasies and correlation between two crops. It is also feasible to simulate the nonparametric yield distributions at a satisfying level of accuracy. The simulation results show that the hypothetical two-crop insurance contract can be more affordable to farmers than traditional individual crop insurance contracts.     

A study on the tourism practitioners perception of tourism impact a case study of Hainan, China

This study examines the urban population of tourism practitioners'perceptions of economic,environmental,and social impacts on cultural,convention,and sport tourism may have in Haikou and Sanya,Hainan,China the study uses a modified Urban Tourism Impact (UTI) to examine economic,environmental and social perceived impacts.Analysis of the data includes testing three models of structural relationships between tourism impacts and support for development in each of the tourism market sub-divisions through a confirmatory factor analysis.The results of this study show that the positive economic impacts consistently exert influence on predicting support for tourism development in all three models.However,the social impacts play a greater explanatory role with all three market segment,the negative environmental impacts play a role in determining support for .sport tourism only.Dif ferences have been found with those with a higher education level in predictmg support for cultural tourism,but not Convention or sport tourism.     

Economic Impacts of Multiple Agro-Environmental Policies on New Zealand Land Use

This paper investigates the implications of policy on farm income, land use, and the environment when New Zealand landowners face multiple environmental constraints. It also looks at the interaction between climate and nutrient reduction policy and the extent to which one policy can be used to meet the other’s objectives. We use a non-linear, partial equilibrium mathematical programming model of New Zealand land use to assess the economic impacts of climate and water policies at the New Zealand territorial authority level. The spatially explicit agro-environmental economic model estimates changes in land use, agricultural output, land management, and environmental impacts. The policies investigated include a range of carbon prices on land-based emissions ($0–30/tCO\(_{2\mathrm{e}}\)) as well a range of prices on nitrogen leaching from diffuse sources ($0–30/kgN). We estimate that implementing stand-alone greenhouse gas and nutrient emissions reduction policies for the agricultural and forestry sectors will create environmental benefits outside the scope of the policy. However, not all environmental outputs improve, and net farm revenue declines by between 0 and 11%. Simultaneously implementing the two policies results in the desired goals of reductions in nitrogen and greenhouse gas emissions with a marginal economic burden on landowners (i.e. 1–2% additional loss in farm profit relative to a stand-alone policy).     

基于旅游产出体系的景区可持续发展测评模式

旅游业对地区的影响是全方位的,单纯从经济和环境的角度去评价一个景区的可持续发展状况往往会忽略旅游业的其他重要影响,从而导致评估的偏差。且目前国内通常使用的评估方法多采用一维指标体系,并通过数学模型得出评估值,这样做的不足在于评估时缺少客观的参照体系,也不易明确指出本景区在可持续发展上存在的主要问题。本文在引入旅游综合产出概念的基础上,设计出一种根据一个景区的实际产出,对照需要产出和潜在产出进行分项评估和综合测评的景区可持续发展测评模式。