A strategic environmental assessment method for agricultural policy in the UK

There are a number of significant environmental impacts that arise from agricultural practices that may be influenced by policy. A Strategic Environmental Assessment Method (SEAM) is described which aims to assess the environmental impacts of agricultural policy and aid the development of more sustainable policy formulation. The method addresses the issues of selecting appropriate performance criteria and measurements, and makes use of effect-damage functions and targets to determine the significance of potential impacts in relation to sustainability. A set of profiles is produced, describing the environmental performance of a specific policy. A confidence assessment system (CAS) is also described which provides details about the quality of the assessment and areas of uncertainty. SEAM provides information about impacts in simple format that can be easily used in decision making. It can identify environmental trade-offs and provides a holistic view that is essential when making decisions that affect the environment.     

A quarter of a century of Australian agricultural economics — some personal reflections

The late Fred Gruen (1921–1997) was asked to write these previously unpublished reflections for the twenty-eighth Annual Conference of the Australian Agricultural Economics Society in 1984; they were circulated in working paper format as Gruen (1986). In this paper, Fred, who made the transition from agricultural to general economics later in his career, offers a modest perspective on his contributions to agricultural analysis and policy. The unifying theme in this outstandingly productive life was his focus on public policy issues whose resolution would impact importantly on the lives of many — that is, his intellectual curiosity was driven ultimately by his philanthropy.     

Natural resource accounting in theory and practice: A critical assessment

In this paper an extensive review of the theoretical and applied literature on natural resource accounting (NRA) is provided. The review begins by explaining the economic theory that underpins NRA, contrasting welfare and sustainability as policy goals, and presenting various distinct conceptions of national income. The state of play regarding official revisions to the system of national accounts (SNA) with respect to natural resources and the environment is presented and controversial areas are highlighted. Finally, the economic literature on proposed revisions, and applied studies that have proceeded using these methods, is summarised and critiqued. We argue that much of the literature proceeds with weak conceptual foundations, and that typical case studies produce results that are ambiguous in interpretation. Moreover, we highlight fundamental tensions between economic theory and national accounting methodology, and conclude that one outcome of this has been the insufficient attention paid by economists to the revisions to the SNA; instead devoting time and effort to 'freelance' NRA case studies utilising sometimes ad hoc methods from the economic literature.     

Frontier production functions and technical efficiency: a survey of empirical applications in agricultural economics

The modelling and estimation of frontier production functions has been an important area of econometric research during the last two decades. Försund, Lovell and Schmidt (1980) and Schmidt (1986) present reviews of the concepts and models involved and cite some of the empirical applications which had appeared to their respective times of publication. This paper seeks to update the econometric modelling of frontier production functions associated with the estimation of technical efficiency of individual firms. A survey of empirical applications in agricultural economics is an important part of the paper.     

How to define and study farmers' management capacity: theory and use in agricultural economics

Textbooks and articles on farm management stress the importance of the management capacity of the farmer with respect to his farm results. However, explicit definitions together with an elaboration of this concept are hard to find. In this article, aspects of management capacity are grouped into: (1) personal aspects, consisting of fanner's drives and motivations, fanner's abilities and capabilities and his biographical facts such as age and education; and (2) aspects of the decision-making process, consisting of practices and procedures with respect to planning, implementation and control of decisions at the farm. Empirical studies on the role of management capacity in relation to farm results are reviewed. Frontier production functions are widely used in recent literature to estimate technical and economic efficiency of farms. However, in explaining differences in efficiency most studies do not go further than adding a biographical variabk (e.g., level of education). This study concludes that a next step would be to include aspects of the decision-making process. Longitudinal on-farm observations, which give possibilities for studying the dynamic aspects of the decision-making, are suggested to further analyze the concept of management capacity.     

A novel approach to quality assessment of plant health clinics

Since 2003, community-based plant health clinics have been established in several developing countries as a new, low-cost method to provide plant health advice to smallholder farmers who have limited access to advisory services. As the plant clinics are becoming more widespread, there is an increasing need to create basic procedures to regulate clinic operations. This paper describes how the concepts of ‘plant health clinic quality’ evolved from 2006 to 2009 and how a novel framework for quality assessment was developed in Nicaragua, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Bolivia and Uganda. Quality criteria for plant clinics include technical quality, timeliness, staff attitude, feasibility of advice, clinic location, materials, organization and outreach. These criteria show many similarities to those applied successfully in human and animal healthcare. Allowing plant clinic staff and their supervisors to define the quality criteria and monitoring methods themselves has helped raise awareness about clinic performance and improve self-assessment skills. Monitoring visits are being done more consciously and systematically and there are indications that register management and decision-making processes are improving as well as staff motivation. Monitoring protocols and quality assessment are now accepted as an essential component of plant clinic operations to improve clinic performance and accountability to farmers.     

An assessment of the economic and environmental potential of biomass production in an agricultural region

The establishment of deep-rooted perennial species and their processing for biomass-based products such as renewable energy can have benefits for both local and global scale environmental objectives. In this study, we assess the potential economic viability of biomass production in the South Australian River Murray Corridor and quantify the resultant benefits for local and global scale environmental objectives. We model the spatial distribution of economically viable biomass production in a Geographic Information System and quantify the model sensitivity and uncertainty using Monte Carlo analysis. The total potentially viable area for biomass production under the Most Likely Scenario is 360,728 ha (57.7% of the dryland agricultural area), producing over 3 million tonnes of green biomass per annum, with a total Net Present Value over 100 years of A$ 88 million. The salinity in the River Murray could be reduced by 2.65 EC (μS/cm) over a 100-year timeframe, and over 96,000 ha of land with high wind erosion potential could be stabilised over a much shorter period. With sufficient generating capacity, our Most Likely Scenario suggests that economically viable biomass production could reduce carbon emissions by over 1.7 million tonnes per annum through the production of renewable energy and a reduced reliance on coal-based electricity generation. Our analyses suggest that biomass production is a potentially viable alternative agricultural system that can have substantial local scale environmental benefits with complimentary global scale benefits for climate change mitigation.     

Decomposition of output growth in the Tunisian olive-growing sector: A frontier production function approach

The aim of this paper is to investigate the relative contribution of technical efficiency, technological change, and increased input use to the output growth of the Tunisian olive oil growing farms, using a stochastic frontier production function approach applied to panel data for the period 1995-1997. The proposed methodology is based on the use of a flexible translog functional form. Results indicate that technical efficiency of production in the sample of olive producing farms investigated ranges from a minimum of 24.8% to a maximum of 84.6% with an average technical efficiency estimate of 48.5%. This suggests that olive producers may increase their production by as much as 51.5% through more efficient use of production inputs. Further, the production is characterized by decreasing returns to scale, which on average was 0.8. Finally, investigation of the sources of production growth reveals that the contribution of conventional inputs (labor, in particular) and technical change are found to be the main source of that growth, since total factor productivity increased during the study period, but at a slowing rate.     

A pragmatic approach for soil erosion risk assessment within policy hierarchies

This paper presents a methodological framework for scale-specific assessment of soil erosion by water. The framework enables the definition of hierarchical, functional and modular nested reference units which result from the integrated consideration of policy, process and model hierarchies. The framework is applied on three planning levels: at first, large scale zones are designated that show a defined risk potential for soil erosion (first level: catchments and drainage areas in the German Federal State of Saxony-Anhalt, ca. 20,000 km²). By both increasing model complexity and spatio-temporal resolution of input data, the results are locally specified within these risk zones (second level: designated farms and fields in a study area of 141 km²). This is the basis for the prediction of soil erosion areas and sediment transport to hydrologic drainage networks as well as for small scale management and measure planning (third level: designated field blocks in the study area). On this level, the mitigation of soil erosion and sediment entry to the river system is demonstrated by simulating the introduction of conservation management practices, vegetation and riparian buffer strips.