Voting for Environmental Policy Under Income and Preference Heterogeneity

We examine the design of policies for promoting the consumption of green products under preference and income heterogeneity using organic food as an example. Two instruments are considered: a price subsidy for organic food products and a tax on conventional products. When the income differences and social benefits of organic farming are large, these factors dominate in shaping the policy preferences of the majority. In this case, the environmental policies preferred by the majority tend to be stricter than socially optimal policies. However, when income differences are small, policy preferences are more directly determined by tastes for organic products and the majority may prefer no intervention.     

Rethinking Organic Farming in the Post‐Socialist Context: Lessons from Bulgaria

On the basis of an in‐depth qualitative study, this article discusses the case of Bulgaria as an example of a new EU Member State that implemented EU organic farming policies in a top‐down process during EU accession. We explore the difficulties in transposing a concept originating in Western Europe to post‐Socialist countries, and particularly ask what this transposing of an alien concept means for long‐term development of the organic sector. We found that the top‐down agenda‐setting for organic farming in Bulgaria resulted in inefficient policies that inhibited an orientation of producers towards the market's needs. Tacit assumptions underlying the concept of organic farming in Western Europe, such as the relevance of social capital could not be sustained in Bulgaria, which added to the challenges of policy implementation. To increase policy efficiency, we recommend a policy process that involves the expertise of all organic sector actors, including organic operators, but also policymakers, organic organisations, consumers and academic experts. Expertise and knowledge requirements are diverse, touching policy, market, collective action and practice‐oriented skills. Integrating these skills could maximise success in finding the best solution for implementing – and adjusting – a foreign concept meaningfully in a particular local context.     

Conversion subsidies for organic production: results from Sweden and lessons for the United States

Organic conversion subsidies used in Europe are less likely to be politically acceptable in the United States, where organic agriculture development is market‐driven. Persistent barriers to conversion in the United States include limited availability of and access to production and market information, training in management systems and cost of conversion‐related investments. By determining whether these factors affect the requirement of a subsidy to convert, we can suggest whether U.S. policy makers need to provide subsidies to encourage conversion and identify policy variables consistent with market‐based approaches that could stimulate conversion. A utility difference model is used with Swedish data to analyze factors that determine whether a subsidy is required to motivate organic conversion. The results show that farmers requiring subsidies manage larger less‐diversified farms and are more concerned with organic inspection, quality, and adequacy of technical advice. Access to more market outlets and information sources substitutes for payment level in the farmer's utility function, indicating that services rather than subsidies may be used to encourage organic agriculture. To the extent that conditions are similar in the U.S. organic sector, market‐based programs such as cost‐sharing for conversion and market access improvement should stimulate growth of this industry.     

国家级节水政策的量化评价及优化路径探析

基于PMC指数模型和文本挖掘技术构建节水政策评价体系,对我国6项典型国家级节水政策进行量化评价。结果表明,现行的国家级节水政策整体设计优秀,有一项政策评级达到完美,3项政策评级为优秀,2项政策评级为良好。我国节水政策在政策功能、持续效力、作用层面和市场机制4个方面仍存在可改进之处。在此基础上对节水政策提出充分发挥政策功能、推动权责向基层下沉、加快完善市场机制、有机结合长中短期规划4项优化建议。     

Opportunities and pitfalls for researchers to contribute to the design of evidence-based agricultural policies: lessons from Uganda

Agricultural policies in sub-Saharan Africa have paid insufficient attention to sustainable intensification. In Uganda, agricultural productivity has stagnated with aggregate increases in crop production being attributed to expansion of cultivated land area. To enhance sustainable crop intensification, the Ugandan Government collaborated with stakeholders to develop agricultural policies using an evidence-based approach. Previously, evidence-based decision-making tended to focus on the evidence base rather than evidence and its interactions within the broader policy context. We identify opportunities and pitfalls to strengthen science engagement in agricultural policy design by analysing the types of evidence required, and how it was shared and used during policy development. Qualitative tools captured stakeholders' perspectives of agricultural policies and their status in the policy cycle. Subsequent multi-level studies identified crop growth constraints and quantified yield gaps which were used to compute the economic analyses of policy options that subsequently contributed to sub-national program planning. The study identified a need to generate relevant evidence within a short time 'window' to influence policy design, power influence by different stakeholders and quality of stakeholder interaction. Opportunities for evidence integration surfaced at random phases of policy development due to researchers’ ’embededness’ within co-management and coordination structures.     

日本与欧美农业环境支持政策对中国的启示

农业政策中与环境相关的支付政策越来越多。发达国家将WTO绿箱政策、农业直接支付政策与农业环境支持政策结合起来,这样既可以从根本上解决农业生产所带来的安全问题,也可以加深消费者对相关政策的理解与支持,同时从产业链的上游解决食品安全及农业的可持续发展问题。欧盟的Greening政策和日本实施的农业直接支付政策均以农户遵守农药化肥及农业废弃物处理的相关规范为前提,通过合理使用肥料及各种防治措施从不同程度上达到农业可持续发展、农业的多功能性及降低温室气体排放的目的,并由此获取政府的支持。文章通过对发达国家,特别是与中国农业形态类似的日本农业环境政策取向的分析及与欧美相关政策比较分析,认为中国首先应该完善循环农业的相关法律法规和标准,加强对农民的培训以及明确其应遵守的基本义务,对采取环境友好型农业生产方式的农民给予支持。     

Farmers in a deregulated dairy regime: Insights from Ireland's New Entrants Scheme

While the impending review of the European Union (EU) Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is set to have an impact on all farming sectors across Europe, particularly transformative change is sought by policies relating to dairy farmers. EU milk quota abolition in 2015 will fundamentally revise the terms of dairy production, transitioning from policies of subsidy and protection to a scenario where farmers will produce milk on the open market. Dairy quota abolition essentially represents an economic but also socio-cultural disruption for a sizeable cohort of farmers, requiring adaptation to more market-driven production strategies. Agricultural policy-makers in EU member states are demonstrably preparing for this imminent change and dairy farmers are considering and strategising their responses at farm-level. Our focus in this paper is the interplay between quota abolition and farm-level decision-making in the pre-abolition period. Drawing from a broader mixed-methodological and multi-disciplinary research project, this paper uses qualitative narrative analysis to identify the key determinants arising in dairy farmers’ decision-making processes. How are farmers currently strategising their responses to dairy quota deregulation? Using the qualitative Biographic Narrative Interpretive Method (BNIM), we examine the range of factors determining how a particular group of dairy farmers are strategising their positions on the impending open dairy market. Our analysis highlights how, in the advent of a deregulated dairy production regime, dairy farmers are carefully deliberating their responses at farm level, drawing from policy and market related information, their own personal speculations, and conventional wisdom shared with other members of the farming community. We find that the dairy farmers are influenced not only by motivations to increase productivity and scale but by a tenacious approach to farm sustainability and resilience that is informed by past experiences of farming and seeks to preserve and promote socio-cultural farming values. The paper is of particular interest to policy makers and academics interested in the interchange between policy and farmer behaviour, particularly in the context of current CAP reform.     

Modelling the impacts of policy on entry into organic farming: Evidence from Danish–UK comparisons, 1989–2007

This paper analyses organic farming entry decisions using a piece-wise linear depiction of policy. Our goal is to ascertain, from the available but limited information, whether Danish and UK policy measures toward organic agriculture have affected participation. Despite considerable interest in the growth of organic farming there has been little systematic analysis of it, although it is commonly believed that enhanced income levels have played a part. Whilst analyses of organic farming policy have provided extensive reviews of instruments applied, generally speaking, the spirit of those enquiries takes as datum that organic policies have had the desired impacts. Yet such conjectures remain mostly untested. Hence, there is a need to examine systematically if there exist relationships between the introduction of organic farming policies and the growth of organic farming, and whether particular policy measures are more effective than others. Here, we take a first step in this endeavor by undertaking an econometric analysis of the relationship between 14 organic farming policy measures and participation rates in Denmark and the UK during 1989–2007. Using two response variables – the numbers of farmers converted to organic production and the total land area under organic practice – we implement a simple, Bayesian methodology and evaluate the stepwise-linear impacts of policy. Extensions for future work are discussed. Six policy measures in the two study countries were found to be significant influences on participation, five of them direct supply-side instruments. For the UK, all of the policies are annual subsidies for organic farmers once conversion was complete. For Denmark, the policies are the introduction of organic subsidies for non-dairy farms, the extension of subsidies beyond 1997 and support for the costs of marketing services.     

Nutrition, health and economic policies in Europe

This article explores the economic issues associated with diet choices and nutrition policies in Europe. A review of the current and potential policy measures is provided and the issues associated with the development of a common nutritional policy in Europe discussed, with a special focus on the collection of appropriate data for benchmarking. We propose a classification for the wide range of nutrition policy tools and the most recent developments are discussed with reference to policy actions in France, Italy and the United Kingdom.     

Conditioning trends shaping the agricultural and rural landscape in Africa

African countries continue to face deepening food crises that have been accentuated by the global food, energy, and financial crises. This situation is part of a long‐term structural problem: decades of under‐investments in agricultural sector and poor policies of support for smallholder farmers who form the bulk of the farming population. The inability of these farmers to achieve a supply response when commodity prices were high and market access was less of a problem suggests that there are multiple sets of binding constraints that continue to limit the potential of agricultural growth to reduce food security and poverty on the continent. This article reviews some of the historical trends that have hampered the performance of the agriculture sector. In addition, it reviews the impacts of more positive trends that could stimulate agricultural growth in Africa that could change the African agricultural landscape. The article however warns that there are more recent global developments and some continental challenges that could prevent or slow agricultural growth. These include the global financial crisis, public sector investments, inequities in global agricultural development policies, rush for agricultural lands by foreign investors, domestic commercial financing markets, climate change, and emerging carbon markets. The article argues that while opportunities for accelerated growth exists for African agriculture, new sets of policy instruments will be needed to support smallholder farmers to access new agricultural technologies, finance, reduce impacts of climate change, and adopt sustainable land use practices that can allow them to benefit from emerging global carbon markets.     

Using an analytic hierarchy process approach to prioritize public policies addressing family farming in Brazil

In Brazil, some see intensive, large-scale production of sugarcane-based ethanol, based on a model of capital and land concentration, as a threat to the survival of family farming. Family farmers are increasingly under pressure to sell or rent land to mills where sugarcane monoculture is expanding. In this context, the government is working to formulate or change public policies in order to support farmer livelihoods in sugarcane growing regions. The present study is based on research conducted in the municipality of Ipiranga de Goiás, Goiás State, Brazil. It employs the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method, with participation of stakeholders at federal, state and municipal levels, to support public policy decision-making addressing family farming. The stakeholders prioritize environmental and economic benefits as the most important criteria requiring the attention of policy makers. Also, stakeholders agree that diversification of production is the most appropriate alternative for strengthening family farming. The AHP approach can be the starting point in the formulation of public policies. The approach helps ensure transparency, and it purposefully includes family farmer points of view. Policies derived from this process, therefore, may have a higher likelihood of being supported and accepted by farmers.     

Adjusting policy to institutional,cultural and biophysical context conditions: The case of conservation banking in California

This paper examines the political construction of a policy instrument for matching particular institutional, biophysical and cultural context conditions in a social–ecological system, using the case of conservation banking in California as an example. The guiding research question is: How is policy design negotiated between various actors on its way from early formulation of ideas and principles to an accepted policy solution on a state or national level? The underlying assumption is that in order for a policy instrument to be implemented, it has to be adjusted to various context conditions. That is, it has to become accepted by affected actors associated with the institutional framework, and it has to gain local validity for implementation by actors related to a particular ecological and cultural context. We assume that ideas about policy adjustments are not only functionalistic questions determined for example by the materiality of the resource it governs, but are constructed and politically negotiated because these ideas may differ among the mental models of the associated actors. These actors are stakeholders affiliated with the policy process, i.e. authorities, public and private organizations, interest groups, firms or think tanks dealing with, or being shaped by, the policy at different stages of its development.As a result certain context conditions and related concerns such as institutional interplay or match to ecological particularities become inscribed in policy design as an outcome of power struggles, values, and interests. These in turn may vary at different stages of policy development and implementation. Each time the instrument is transferred in a new setting it is likely that the incipient policy design may be opened-up and begin a mutual adjustment process among the newly concerned actors. Thus, such policy developments are not immutable but are dynamic. In this paper, the creation of fit for policies on conservation banking to the issue of species protection in the State of California and later to the U.S. environmental governance domain, are analyzed to understand the instrument's emergence and development toward an established policy solution. The focus is on the negotiation processes among the enrolled actors and their strategies for matching the instrument to certain institutional, cultural and ecological context conditions on different scales. Changes in policy design, its underlying influences, actors’ interests, conflicts and perceived effects are identified, respectively.     

Environmental efficiency and the impact of regulation in dryland organic vine production

Organic agriculture figures prominently in the policies adopted by the EU to improve the environmental impact of agriculture. It may also potentially provide other benefits such as high-quality, health-enhancing food products and advancements in rural development. Recent years have brought new research to assess the environmental and economic implications of organic conversion. Economic efficiency comparisons between organic and conventional farms have been extended to include environmental performance. The inclusion of this variable in efficiency analysis may be useful when assessing the potential impact of suggestions to improve environmental regulations and policies. This paper applies the environmental efficiency model to the analysis of different technologies and calculates productivity and efficiency with and without environmental impacts. In the empirical part of the paper Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and bootstrap techniques are applied to detect and measure differences between organic and conventional agriculture aggregate efficiency and productivity in a sample of vineyard farms operating in semiarid, non-irrigated conditions in Navarre (Spain), taking farms’ nitrogen surplus and pesticide toxicity indicators to consideration. The results for these particular agronomic conditions suggest that organic agriculture is more environmentally efficient than conventional agriculture in dryland farming, in that it achieves a more favorable production to environmental impact ratio. Nevertheless, conversion to organic production methods for extensive vine cultivation under arid conditions does not guarantee substantial environmental gains, since the organic farms in our sample do not display inferior levels of pollution emissions per unit input as extensive conventional production. The overall environmental efficiency of organic farming is largely attributable to the fact that organic farms come closer to the frontier of their own technology. We find no significant technological differences in environmental productivity, however. In terms of policy implications, these findings suggest that the tightening of specific environmental restrictions in organic standards should involve consideration of technological differences in environmental productivity between organic and other alternative technologies. If organic technology is less productive, more restrictive regulation could undermine the economic viability of farms, and thus undermine the other benefits of organic farming. The results also indicate that, at the local level, it could be convenient to address part of organic subsidies to further improvements in the control of pollution from fertilizers and pesticides.     

Causal chains,policy trade offs and sustainability: Analysing land (mis)use in seven countries in the South

The need to enhance sustainable development of land use is more urgent than ever; specifically in developing countries where poverty and land degradation are often interlinked. To promote a common understanding of land use problems by experts, stakeholders and decision makers, it is essential to understand the system characteristics, including the complex feedbacks between drivers and impacts. To enhance sustainable development, appropriate policies need to be identified. In this paper, we analysed and compared seven case studies in Kenya, Mali, Tunisia, China, India, Indonesia and Brazil, representing different biophysical and socio-economic conditions and challenges. We analysed Driver Pressure State Impact Response (DPSIR) story lines of the land use problems, policy priorities and value trade-offs as identified by stakeholders and experts in National Policy Forums. Important drivers of land use change impacting main land use problems among the case studies were economic growth, technological development, immigration and agricultural intensification, in addition to existing policies. Of the latter the most important were related to domestic support through various forms of subsidies or access to credit, land tenure polices and liberalization policies. In the policy prioritization, the value trade-offs made by the National Policy Forums emphasize the environment rather than increased economic production. It is recognized that the environment needs to be improved to maintain and improve economic production in the long term, both in agriculture and in other sectors.     

水利资金政策演变与发展趋势研究

水利资金关系我国水利事业发展和水利工程建设运营,水利资金政策则是实现资金规范高效使用与管理的依据和保障。在梳理1980—2020年国家层面关于水利资金政策的基础上,从政策特征、政策主体、政策工具及政策主题多维度运用政策计量方法开展水利资金政策文本分析,探究了我国水利资金政策的全貌及演化规律,找寻新时代水利资金政策的发展趋势。研究发现,政策出台数量与经济社会发展进程相适应,水利现代化改革持续深化;为保证水利资金政策的制定和推行协调顺畅,发文主体以政策网络为主,且逐渐呈现多元化主体共商共治趋势;政策工具以命令控制型为主,相伴导向激励和建议辅助,由单一向组合政策工具转变;政策主题由安全性、保障性的刚性需求转变为整体性、协调性的发展需求。研究结果可为水利资金管理与高效使用提供理论参考。     

Agricultural policies and food systems: Priorities for indicator development

Existing indicators of agricultural protection and support were developed primarily to gauge the market and welfare effects of government policies. They have shed light on a wider range of impacts through their use in economic models and empirical analysis. The rising scale of support to agriculture globally, and continued reliance on market distorting policy instruments, make this work as important as ever. Deeper investments are nonetheless needed to address heightened concerns about the spill-over impacts of agricultural policies on the performance of food systems, in particular with respect to food security and nutrition, rural livelihoods, resource use and the environment, and global emissions. A first area for development is improved measures of policies to correct agriculture's externalities. A priority here is to develop a carbon tax equivalent of sectoral mitigation efforts. A second area is to provide a clearer delineation of government spending on private versus public goods. This would make a valuable contribution to a ‘repurposing’ agenda that seeks to identify how agricultural budgets can be spent more effectively, as well as the scope for transferring resources to wider social priorities, such as public health and climate action.     

The Impact of Eco-regions in Austria on Sustainable Rural Livelihoods

This paper provides a closer look into the concept of eco-regions in Austria. The idea behind the eco-region is to merge organic farming and rural development into a territorial strategy. The actors proposing this are farmers as well as various stakeholders in regional development. A survey of current manifestations of eco-regions in Austria provides an overview and a base for a preliminary classification. It also indicates the eco-region concept as a potential answer to individual problem situations. The ‘Eco-region National Park Hohe Tauern’ serves as a specific case to assess the impact of this concept using the sustainable rural livelihood (SRL) framework. The case study proves that the concept of eco-regions delivers a range of improvements in the livelihood of small organic farms in less favoured regions. Moreover it supports the forging of new alliances, which can extend the principles of sustainability inherent to organic farming to other actors and sectors in the region. Thus it provides the framework for a territorial application of the principles of organic farming. But the case study also reveals potential dangers, especially from powerful market partners who use the concept for their purposes, dominating further development and creating new dependencies. Finally some general conclusions on the preconditions necessary to establish eco-regions are presented.     

How involved are they really? A comparative network analysis of the institutional drivers of local actor inclusion

Different socio-economic and environmental drivers lead local communities in mountain regions to adapt land use practices and engage in protection policies. The political system also has to develop new approaches to adapt to those drivers. Local actors are the target group of those policy approaches, and the question arises of if and how much those actors are consulted or even integrated into the design of local land use and protection policies. This article addresses this question by comparing seven different case studies in Swiss mountain regions. Through a formal social network analysis, the inclusion of local actors in collaborative policy networks is investigated and compared to the involvement of other stakeholders representing the next higher sub-national or national decisional levels. Results show that there is a significant difference (1) in how local actors are embedded compared to other stakeholders; and (2) between top-down versus bottom-up designed policy processes.     

Home‐grown food and the benefits of sharing: The “intergenerational pact” in postsocialist Moldova

The policy literature on postsocialist Europe tends to frame smallholders' practices of food self‐provisioning and sharing as driven by necessity and proposes land consolidation to increase productivity and efficiency. However, these practices generate nonfinancial benefits, which need to be accounted for. In this paper, I test the socio‐economic relevance of these practices in the Republic of Moldova, the country with the highest density of farming households in Europe and whose government has embraced the rural modernization agenda to integrate into the EU economic space. I carry out quantitative estimates using the household budget survey and complement the results with qualitative insights from an original smallholder survey. I find that food self‐provisioning and sharing are positively related to subjective well‐being and that there is an “intergenerational pact,” with home‐grown food flowing from late‐adulthood smallholders to urban‐based young families and the vulnerable elderly. A counterfactual analysis shows that poverty and inequality would be higher in the absence of donated food, especially in urban areas. The preservation of smallholder farming through widespread access to land could thus help fight poverty and provide social benefits vis‐à‐vis land consolidation.     

Effect of yield and price risk on conversion from conventional to organic farming*

Although the benefits of organic farming are already well known, the conversion to organic farming does not proceed as the Dutch government expected. In order to investigate the conversion decisions of Dutch arable farms, a discrete stochastic dynamic utility‐efficient programming (DUEP) model is developed with special attention for yield and price risk of conventional, conversion and organic crops. The model maximizes the expected utility of the farmer depending on the farmer’s risk attitude. The DUEP model is an extension of a dynamic linear programming model that maximized the labour income of conversion from conventional to organic farming over a 10 year planning horizon. The DUEP model was used to model a typical farm for the central clay region in the Netherlands. The results show that for a risk‐neutral farmer it is optimal to convert to organic farming. However, for a more risk‐averse farmer it is only optimal to fully convert if policy incentives are applied such as taxes on pesticides or subsidies on conversion, or if the market for the organic products becomes more stable.