The genetic and economic impact of the CIMMYT wheat breeding program on local producers in the Yaqui Valley,Sonora Mexico

This article quantifies the productivity gain from CIMMYT‐released semidwarf bread wheat (Triticum aestivum) cultivars over time, using test plot data from Mexico's Yaqui Valley. Previous studies have shown a deceleration in irrigated wheat yield growth since the 1980s, which could be due to slowing increase in genetic potential. Our results suggest that CIMMYT cultivars contributed a 0.46% annual increase (about 38 kg/ha annually) to wheat yields in the Yaqui Valley, which raised local wheat producers’ revenue by an average of $4 million annually for the period 1990 to 2002, and by approximately $9 million in 2002.     

横向一体化陆基海水养殖经济潜力的评价

本文是Stuart W.Bunting,Muki Shpigel发表于Aquaculture 2009年294期43～51页"Evaluating the economic potential of horizontally integrated land-based marine aquaculture"一文的译文。原作者通过研究得出:生物经济模型有助于横向一体化水产养殖系统的优化,帮助澄清情况,找出关键制约因子和具有针对性的研究及发展重点。生物经济模型的其他横向一体化战略,例如对虾与贝类、海藻和红树林湿地一体化养殖,可以说明这种做法在经济上可行并满足生态无害和对社会负责。同时,生物经济模型应辅以市场分析,包括消费者评估、质量安全评估、伦理审查、环境影响评估以及与利益相关者的共同评估。     

Evaluating the impact of rising fertilizer prices on crop yields

Because of tensions on fossil energy and phosphorus markets, the rise in fertilizer prices observed during the last decades may continue in the future, putting into question production pathways relying heavily on crop intensification. To evaluate how, in this context, economic choices may alter crop yields, we first construct different fertilizer price scenarios to 2050 based on an econometric relation with oil and gas prices. Other possible scenarios, such as the continuation of historical trends, are also considered. The resulting changes in fertilizer price range between +0.8% and +3.6% per year over the 2005–2050 period. These scenarios are tested in a global land‐use model incorporating an endogenous representation of the land–fertilizer substitution. We find that the supply‐side response to rising fertilizer prices could lower crop yields in 2050 from ?6% to ?13%, with a corresponding increase in global cropland area ranging between 100 and 240 Mha if the demand for food and nonfood products has to be met. The sensitivity of these results is tested with regard to assumptions on food consumption, change in potential yield and nutrient use efficiency.     

A review of the economic impact of malaria in agricultural development

This paper surveys the linkages between malaria and agriculture, focusing on the economic impacts of the disease. We adopt Negin's (2005) conceptual framework to examine the potential impacts of malaria in the agricultural sector, including both direct and indirect impacts. In addition to health care costs, malaria causes loss of agricultural labor and slows adoption of improved practices in agriculture. Furthermore, some agricultural practices and development interventions are known to facilitate the spread of malaria, exacerbating its impacts. Given the importance of both agriculture and malaria in developing countries, especially in Africa, the interaction between them could be a significant factor in economic growth. The review identifies gaps in past research on this topic. A better understanding of malaria's impact on agricultural productivity, coupled with efforts to strengthen capacity to deal with malaria, would enhance policies and programs aimed at combating malaria and curbing its impacts on agricultural productivity.     

Lessons from the PB Selayang Land consolidation project in Medan, Indonesia

The National Land Agency (BPN) carried out the PB Selayang Land Consolidation (LC) Project on 79 ha of urban fringe land in Medan from 1986 to 1990 as a pilot project for North Sumatra Province. Although it did not include the construction of the network infrastructure, the project provided valuable benefits and lessons. It demonstrated the feasibility of the LC technique in the Medan context, including the preparation of the needed land parcel map of the site and the 90% landowner support for the project. It created a planned layout of roads and public facility sites and reshaped land parcels with the public lands in government ownership and the private land parcels with registered titles. It also provided lessons to guide the future use of LC in Medan and for all urban LC projects by BPN, including the need to incorporate the construction of the network infrastructure in each project, the desirability of undertaking the projects as joint BPN/ municipal government projects, and the need to make each project self-financing by the sale of some of the new parcels/plots to recover the project costs.     

Evaluating the impact of government land use policies on tree canopy coverage

Many cities around the world are experiencing the negative effects associated with not sustaining a sufficient level of tree canopy coverage. Tree canopy provides environmental benefits such as clean water and air, erosion prevention, climate control, and native species habitat and provides economic benefits such as higher housing values and lower energy expenditures. We study local government policies in a large U.S. metropolitan area (the Atlanta Metropolitan Statistical Area) to find which policies perform the best at preserving or increasing urban forests. Empirical analysis reveals that a set of effective tree ordinance clauses, zoning ordinances, and having high quality smart growth projects in the community all help in preserving tree canopy in economically and environmentally meaningful amounts. Other actions, such as simply having a tree ordinance, designating a key management person in charge of tree programs, the presence of a tree board, and multiple communication channels were shown to be ineffective for our data set. Because benefits from tree canopy accrue to the local government's budget, to residents and to business owners, the entire community should gain from the passage of effective policies to preserve their local tree canopy. Estimated economic benefits from preserving tree canopy through an effective set of public policies are in the range of $10–15 million annually in an average county, mostly due to savings on stormwater management.     

Learning from Doing Participatory Rural Research: Lessons from the Peak District National Park

Understanding the socio‐economic and environmental implications of rural change requires the active participation of many research disciplines and stakeholders. However, it remains unclear how to best integrate participatory and biophysical research to provide information useful to land managers and policy makers. This paper presents findings of a RELU scoping study that has formulated and applied a research framework based on stakeholder participation and adaptive learning to model rural change in the Peak District National Park in the north of England. The paper describes a learning process that integrates different types of knowledge to produce future scenarios that describe possible economic and environmental changes due to a national review of burning practices on heather moorland and blanket bogs. We stress the need for using social network analysis to structure stakeholder engagement and outline how a range of participatory approaches can facilitate more inclusive environmental planning and policy development.     

Agricultural extension,trust, and learning: results from economic experiments in Ecuador

Using an artefactual economic experiment and a randomized training intervention in Ecuador we test if trust conditions a farmer’s decision to learn during an agricultural training. We present a simple model of farmer behavior during the agricultural training in order to link play in the laboratory to behavior in the field. We find evidence that farmers who trust agricultural technicians relatively more than community farmers in the trust game learn more during training. The results provide insight into the design of agricultural extension services in Ecuador.     

The impact of the use of new technologies on farmers’ wheat yield in Ethiopia: evidence from a randomized control trial

In 2013, Ethiopia's Agricultural Transformation Agency introduced the Wheat Initiative to increase smallholder productivity. In this article, we measure the impacts of the Wheat Initiative package of technologies, and its marketing assistance component alone, on yields among a promotional group of farmers. The package includes improved techniques, improved inputs, and a guaranteed market for the crop. Relying on crop‐cut measures and farmers’ own assessments, we find that full package led to an average 14% higher yields. Implementation of the Wheat Initiative was successful in making certified seed and fertilizer accessible to farmers and increasing their uptake, though only 61% of the intervention group adopted row planting and few farmers received marketing assistance. The measured yield difference may underestimate the true yield difference associated with the technology because of incomplete adoption of the recommended practices by intervention farmers and adoption of some practices by control farmers.     

Evaluating the impact of agricultural extension on farms' performance in Crete: a nonneutral stochastic frontier approach

This article attempts to integrate the production‐ and the efficiency‐based approaches for evaluating the impact of extension on farms' performance. For this purpose the nonneutral production frontier model is used, and the empirical analysis refers to a sample of farms from Crete, Greece. The empirical results support the proposed formulation instead of either the production‐ or the efficiency‐based formulations as extension was found to have a statistically significant effect on closing both the technology and management gaps. Public and private extension services were found to be competitive in the production function and complementary in the technical inefficiency effect function. In addition, farms using both public and private extension services achieved a higher degree of technical efficiency than those using either public or private extension services, and farms with no extension services were found to be the least efficient.     

Livestock intensification as a climate policy: Lessons from the Brazilian case

Brazil is trying to identify ways to ally economic growth with climate change mitigation. Productivity gains in livestock have been pointed out as a promising alternative to achieve that goal. Thus, this paper analyses the economic impacts of a policy of productivity gains in the Brazilian livestock. Besides, we evaluate if the policy may conciliate agricultural growth and deforestation control, bearing in mind the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from land-use changes. The analysis was carried out through a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model, tailored to represent land-use changes, GHG emissions and removals. Besides, it made progress modeling the heterogeneity of climate, soils, and emissions in inter-regional models with many regions. The results show that productivity gains can effectively “save” land and thus avoid deforestation, especially in the Amazon and Cerrado (savannah) biomes. The policy also may boost the economic growth, spreading it to other regions of Brazil, like Centre-West and North, and increasing income and consumption in those places. However, as a climate policy, focused on the reduction of GHG emissions, the results may be counterproductive. The net amount issued may increase, as a result of the positive stimulus of the policy on the economy, and GHG emissions are directly related to the economic growth.     

The economic impact of cowpea research in Senegal: an ex-post analysis with disadoption

This study evaluates the impact of a long‐term research collaboration between the Senegalese Institute for Agriculture Research (ISRA), and the Bean/Cowpea Collaborative Research Support Program (CRSP) funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Adoption of the primary outputs from this collaboration, a nonchemical cowpea storage method and two short‐season cowpea varieties, were tracked through a series of farmer interviews in 1996, 1997, and 2004 in the main cowpea growing area of Senegal. Combined with information from an impact assessment in the late 1980s, this study draws on ex‐post adoption data from most of the product life cycle for the storage technology. The 2004 survey found that 60.4% of cowpea production in the main cowpea growing area of Senegal is stored in metal drums and that 69% of households use this storage technology; ISRA/CRSP improved short season varieties were determined to account for 3.6% of cowpea production. Baseline economic analysis of the most recent survey data, which includes benefits and costs of the storage technology and improved varieties, reveal an IRR to donor funding of 13%. The benefits of these technologies appear to be evenly distributed in the rural population on the basis of gender and ethnic background. Comparison of the rates of technology adoption over time, however, reveals that use of the storage technology may be decreasing; inclusion of this technology disadoption trend reduces the IRR by only 0.4% from the baseline estimate. Overall, estimated returns reveal that this collaboration has been a good investment for the U.S. and Senegalese governments, and other donors.     

Evaluating the effects of farm programmes: results from propensity score matching

The paper applies a semi-parametric propensity score matchingapproach to evaluate the effects of agri-environment (AE) programmeson input use and farm output of individual farms in Germany.The analysis reveals a positive and significant treatment effectof AE programmes on the area under cultivation, in particulargrassland, resulting in a decrease of cattle livestock densities.Furthermore, participation significantly reduced the purchaseof farm chemicals (fertiliser, pesticide). We also find differencesin the treatment effect among individual farms (heterogeneoustreatment effects). Farms that can generate the largest benefitfrom the programme are most likely to participate.     

Some Lessons from the Modelling of the Spanish Rice Market

Spanish accession to the European Comminity (EC) will lead to many changes in Spain's agricultural sector. Predicting the nature of these changes is difficult because the new policy regime differs significantly from historic Spanish policies. In this paper, conventional econometric models of the Spanish rice sector are constrated with a model designed specifically to reflect the pervasive impact of Spanish rice policies. This policy model predicts the historical evolution of production, consumption and trade more accurately than the conventional models. However, the policy model cannot be used to predict the impact of the radical policy changes in Spain resulting from the introduction of the EC rice regime because the historical relationships no longer hold. It is argued that alternative approaches relying more on institutional analysis and expert opinion need to be developed to understand the future of the Spanish rice sector.     

Towards the measurement of the impacts of improving research capacity: an economic evaluation of training in wheat disease resistance*

It is notoriously difficult to assess the economic value of research aimed at improving research capacity, particularly for the human capital component of research capacity. In this paper, a framework is developed and an analysis is undertaken of the value of training for scientists in wheat rust resistance. The value of improving human capital is assessed through a framework based on marginal analysis of the improvement in productivity outcomes flowing from the increased capacity. On that basis, the value of programs to build human capacity through training or further education can be estimated. Although such estimates are necessarily qualified, they provide a basis for quantifying the value of building research and development capacity.     

Building an effective coalition to improve forest policy: Lessons from the coastal Tripa peat swamp rainforest,Sumatra, Indonesia

In recent history, Indonesian forest policies have been dominated by deforestation in the name of economic progress. Many actors have expressed concerns about this trend and have tried to reverse it in favour of a more sustainable pathway. From 2004–2017, non-governmental environmental organisations fought for the case of the coastal Tripa peat swamp rainforest in the province of Aceh, Sumatra. Unique in Indonesian history, they managed halting and reversing the deforestation of an area. Their sustained action led the Indonesia state to cancel an oil palm plantation permit, with the plantation managers and owners facing heavy fines and prison terms. Our research seeks to understand the enabling factors making this success story possible. We used the Advocacy Coalition Framework for its capacity to deal with a complicated policymaking ecosystem whose decisions takes years for implementation.Our analysis found four enabling conditions of success, which were the NGOs capacity to: 1) sustain action for over a decade and grasp four changing events (post-tsunami reconstruction, emerging connection between forests and climate change, governors’ change, and use of digital technologies); 2) learn from own past failures marked by the evolution of their policy core beliefs, from ‘conserving forest for biodiversity’ to ‘conserving forest for local livelihoods’, and then to ‘conserving forest to prevent climate change’. As a result, they could broaden their advocacy coalition, which grew to include diverse social actors from local to international levels, including the central state's REDD + Task Force; 3) take an advantage over economic power by acting strategically and timely when changes occurred; and 4) closely monitor and disseminate knowledge (fire events, deforestation trends and peat depth), supporting a simple causal deforestation model which allowed a high degree of policy-oriented learning, helping the coalition to change its behaviour and act strategically.To sum up, the overall trend of rainforest destruction for agricultural extension in Southeast Asia, particularly in Sumatra, Indonesia, can be reversed, at least at the local level. Cautious not to overgeneralise, the Tripa case indicates that NGOs could improve forest governance by engaging in the long term, acting strategically, and building a broad socio-ecological and rights-based coalition.     

Quality Measurement and Contract Design: Lessons from the North American Sugarbeet Industry

This paper examines contracts used in the North American sugarbeet industry. Though quite similar in many respects, the contracts we study vary across processing firms in the set of quality measures used to condition contract payments to growers. This is somewhat surprising, given the homogeneous nature of the processors' finished product (refined sugar). It seems unlikely that processors differ significantly in how they value the various attributes of a sugarbeet, and such a difference is perhaps the most natural reason to expect variation in the structure of quality incentives across processors. Previous attempts to explain the observed variation in sugarbeet contracts have focused on differences in organizational form across firms. In this paper, we provide an alternative explanation that relies on variation across production regions in growers' ability to control the relevant measures of sugarbeet quality.