Contract farming and everyday acts of resistance: Oil palm contract farmers in the Philippines

Contract violations are critical issues determining the success and sustainability of contract farming (CF). This paper challenges the common portrayal of the “powerful” company versus the “powerless” landowners/smallholders by using the literature on labour agency in global value chains to understand minor contract violations of contract farmers such, as side-selling, refusal to harvest, and burning/felling of oil palm trees. This paper conceptualizes these violations as acts of minor agency or everyday acts of resistance. The analysis highlights how CF has created chains of dependency, in which smallholders are integrated into the modern market economy through new relations of debt and power. In response, contract farmers attempt to influence and shape the CF relation by using these different acts of minor agency. This paper finds that acts of minor agency, in the aggregate, can have important effects on contract relations, governance, and organizational structure of the chain and has the potential to lead to broader changes in the underlying social relations of contract. It highlights how individual acts of minor agency may contribute to the development of a consciousness of collective opposition to the contract relation.     

A hedonic analysis of the demand for and benefits of urban recreation parks

Increasing population and urbanization in U.S. cities is not only contributing to the congestion in urban recreation parks but also is likely to exceed the capacity of these parks’ recreational and amenity benefits. In order to estimate the demand for and benefit of parks, we employed a typical hedonic model, which confirmed that the urban recreation park acres increase nearby property values. Two Step Clustering, which is capable of defining the optimum number of submarkets based on the data, was employed to define the submarkets within Roanoke, Virginia and to obtain enough implicit price points to further estimate the demand for urban park acres in the second stage. Results from the second stage hedonic estimation revealed that demand for urban park acres was inelastic in price and income; and the size of the park was a substitute for living space and proximity to park. In addition, increasing the average size of parks by 20% from the current level increased the per household consumer surplus by $160. The estimated amenity benefits of urban recreation parks will be useful in urban landuse planning and open space preservation.     

State trading deregulation and prairie durum wheat production

We estimate the impact of the 2012 removal of the Canadian Wheat Board's (CWB) single-desk on the spatial pattern of durum wheat acres in Western Canada. We analyze changes in durum seeded acres with a panel regression and Census Agricultural Region data from 2004 to 2016. Our results indicate that removal of the CWB single-desk had a significant impact on total durum production in Western Canada. In addition, we find that the spatial distribution of durum wheat acres shifted away from marginal durum-growing areas and toward drier areas, an increase in specialization that arguably improved the efficiency of resource allocation.     

Modeling residential development in California from 2000 to 2050: Integrating wildfire risk,wildland and agricultural encroachment

Between 1940 and 2000, nearly 10 million housing units were constructed throughout California. This increased interaction between human and natural communities creates a number of significant socio-ecological challenges. Here we present a novel spatially explicit model that allows better characterization of the extent and intensity of future housing settlements using three development scenarios between 2000 and 2050. We estimate that California's exurban land classes will replace nearly 12 million acres of wild and agricultural lands. This will increase threats to ecosystems and those presented by wildfire, as the number of houses in ‘very high’ wildfire severity zones increases by nearly 1 million.     

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.     

State actors and international forest certification policy: Coalitions behind FSC and PEFC in federal Argentina

Forest certification has been so far described as a non-state, market-driven form of private governance developed by non-state actors. However, bureaucracies can influence the effects of these programs in many ways, using their competencies to either enhance or restrict non-state certification schemes. The objective of our work is to analyze the role state agencies played in the forest certification standard development processes in Argentina, including the related coalition building strategies. Our hypotheses are that forest certification is not an activity among merely private actors, but that state agencies do play a small but necessary role in creating favorable frame conditions, and in standard formulation and scheme establishment. Coalitions built around production-oriented state agencies and strong political sectors have a stronger influence in the formulation of standards of forest certification schemes than coalitions between conservation-oriented bureaucracies and environmental NGOs. In order to understand the process of standard formulation for FSC and PEFC in Argentina, data on the different schemes were collected from public statements from stakeholder organizations, written summaries of debates of schemes from both public meetings and meetings by the groups writing the standards, and statements from the agencies in charge of writing the standards. The results show that in Argentina, FSC was temporarily useful to the forestry sector and landowners as a quick solution and hence was supported even by utilitarian state agencies. In light of an evolving operational PEFC scheme four years later, this support by state agencies was dropped and shifted towards the more landowner-friendly PEFC. After this dynamic in the coalition building process, FSC was on a decline in Argentina.     

我国流域水管理法律体制的演变与发展

依据水事四法、流域立法、国家政策和改革实践,对我国流域水管理法律体制的演变和发展进行了历史分析和定性评价,指出我国流域水管理从最初的区域管理体制,演变为流域管理与区域管理相结合的体制,目前仍然处于变革之中。近年来的流域管理机构改革强化了流域管理,河长制的实施强化了区域管理与科层协调,环境监管体制改革要求在生态环保部门建立流域管理机构,国务院和地方政府机构改革则优化了多部门区域管理;这些先后实施的政策和措施之间缺乏统筹,使流域管理与区域管理相结合的体制出现了一定程度的割裂,需要通过进一步的改革予以健全和完善。     

Employing resilience in the United States Forest Service

The concept of resilience has permeated the discourse of many land use and environmental agencies in an attempt to articulate how to develop and implement policies concerned with the social and ecological dimensions of natural disturbances. Several distinct definitions of resilience exist, each with its own concepts, focus and contexts related to land use policy and management. This often makes understanding the inherent objectives of policies and related principles challenging. The United States Forest Service (USFS) is one example where ambiguity and uncertainty surrounding the use of resilience permeates the content of documents in various areas of the agency. The objective of this paper is to investigate how the USFS employs the term resilience as a means to communicate strategies for managing forest lands. We perform a content analysis of 121 USFS documents including budgetary justification reports, research findings (i.e., journal articles, book chapters and technical reports), public releases, and newsletters to analyze both the rise and specific use of the term resilience in the USFS. Our analysis, which is guided by definitions of resilience in the social-ecological systems literature, reveals that the ambiguity surrounding the use of resilience in the academic literature is reflected in the content of USFS documents. However, we also find that often criticized versions of resilience (namely engineering resilience) are minimally employed by the USFS, and instead the agency focuses on the notion of ecological resilience in which natural disturbances are seen as an important component of the landscape. In some cases, the USFS employs notions of social-ecological resilience, however, the extent to which specific components of social-ecological resilience are integrated into management strategies appears minimal. The findings from this study suggest that clarity regarding the type and function of resilience needs to improve in USFS documents, and that the agency should evaluate the existing question in the SES literature of resilience of what to what?     

Searching for farmland preservation markets: Evidence from the Southeastern U.S.

Farmland preservation is a topic of much discussion in many areas of the United States, but of little action. Only 1.6 million acres of U.S. farmland are permanently protected nationwide, a number not too different from some estimates of annual losses of farmland to development. While a number of studies have estimated the non-market benefits of preserved farmland (cf. Wichelns, D., Kline, J.D., 1993. The impact of parcel characteristics on the cost of development rights. Agricultural and Resource Economics Review 22 (October) 150–158), this study is the first to focus on the potential for a market for farmland preservation. Using primary data collected from farmers and citizens specifically to address this issue, we estimate the supply of and demand for farmland for preservation. Separate models are estimated for both privately and publicly run preservation programs. Demand is estimated under private-voluntary, public-voluntary, and public-mandatory scenarios. The results show that both public and private programs can be successful. The market capable of preserving the most acres is a tax-funded, state-run program which could permanently preserve over 200,000 acres in 5 years.     

BOUNTIES FOR FERTILIZERS

Bounty payments on fertilizers have rapidly emerged as a major form of assistance to Australian agriculture. They have been justified as a way of reducing costs and increasing productivity, though economic theory and experience from agricultural production studies suggest that they achieve these objectives inefficiently. The bounties are directed towards making acres more productive, which should in turn make farmers more productive. It is suggested that greater economic welfare would result from tackling the problem the other way round.     

Domestically produced food: Consumer perceptions of origin, safety and the issue of trust

It is becoming increasingly difficult for the public to attempt to assess risks using traditional methods such as smell, taste or other physical attributes of food. The existence of extrinsic cues such as the country of origin (COO) of food can help to make food purchase decisions easier for consumers. However, the use of extrinsic cues depends heavily on the extent to which consumers trust such signals to be indicative of quality or safety, which in turn depends on the credibility behind that cue. This paper aims to examine consumers association of domestically produced food with increased food safety standards and the association of COO and food safety information with socio-demographics and other aspects of consumer psychology such as attitudes, risk perception and trust. Using an ordered probit model, domestic production is examined as an extrinsic cue for food safety by looking at the relationship with trust in food safety information provided by national food standards agencies (NFSAs) and other socio-demographic characteristics, based on nationally representative data from 2725 face-to-face interviews across five European countries. Results suggest that domestic production of food is an extrinsic cue for food safety and as consumers place increasing importance on food safety they are more interested in food produced in their own country. This, coupled with consumer trust in a strong, and independent national food standards agency, suggests the potential exists for the increased consumption of domestically produced foods.     

Valuing habitat regime models for the red-cockaded woodpecker in Mississippi

Managing Mississippi's forest lands to produce both quality wildlife habitat as well as merchantable timber can be a daunting challenge for forest managers and a source of great concern for the public. In some cases, producing both the quantity and quality of habitat needed and the timber desired is all but impossible. In other cases, a delicate balance that achieves both objectives can be struck. The objective of this study was to quantitatively estimate monetary gains and losses and changes in timber inventories relative to the timber growing stock when producing more or less habitat for the red-cockaded woodpecker (RCW) (Picoides borealis). USDA Forest Service vegetation data, habitat ratings, and economic variables were compiled for those regions of Mississippi best suited for RCWs. Data was then analyzed with Spectrum, the USDA Forest Service-based forest planning software. Models maximizing such objectives as net present value (NPV) alone as well as five different levels of RCW habitat quality over a 50-year rotation were developed. Revenue foregone, acres and volumes harvested, land expectation value (LEV), and equivalent annual income (EAI) were compared for all objectives for the South Central Hills and Pine Belt regions of Mississippi (1,036,208 acres) for three ownership types. As expected, when maximizing for any quality level of RCW habitat, revenue forgone was higher ($0.11–$49/acre/year) than for NPV alone. Volume harvested for high-quality habitat ranged from 152,296 to 10,237,649 cunits, while harvests from low-quality habitat ranged from 637,491 to 116,357,673 cunits. Lower levels of habitat management allowed for an increased emphasis on timber harvesting. In general, we determined that increases in habitat quality resulted in lower timber harvest levels and increased revenue forgone than regimes maximizing NPVs. While this result may be expected, of greater importance are the relative differences between regimes and the ability to use these values for policy decisions.     

Agency costs of vertical integration—the case of family firms,investor‐owned firms and cooperatives in the French wine industry

Vertical integration theory has long suggested internal costs related to changes in incentives due to vertical integration, which means that vertical integration may lead to agency costs. In this work, we specify the notion of agency costs of vertical integration and extend Ang et al. (2000)'s measurement of agency costs to provide an empirical assessment of these costs in the French wine industry. Our econometric analysis finds that the agency costs of vertical integration may reach 2–3% of sales. It also showed that operating expenses of vertical integration are lower for cooperatives than for other firms, while vertical integration is less rewarding for them. This raises questions on the relation between agency costs in cooperatives and their performance.     

河南省土地利用变化特征及其空间格局

[目的]通过分析河南省2011~2016年土地利用变化特征和空间格局状况,以期为日后河南省合理开发、利用土地资源提供一定的理论指导。[方法]基于河南省土地变化特征,通过马尔科夫模型对河南省2011~2016年土地变化特征进行分析,从多个角度揭示该地区土地利用结构变化情况,并对河南省土地空间利用变化进行评价。[结果]河南省建设用地增加幅度最大,耕地、水域用地有不同程度的减少。土地空间变换主要表现为耕地和林地、水域用地、建设用地等土地类型之间的变换。由土地利用综合区可知,不同土地类型转换过程中,草地是转换比率最小的类型。[结论]河南省的各类土地利用之间的矛盾日益激烈,直接或间接地影响社会经济制度、土地政策和土地管理,因此,有必要加强开展土地资源管理和规划、保护生态环境等方面的工作。     

Competition, Externalities, and Input Substituting Technologies

The period 1997–2000 saw a rapid global consolidation of crop seed companies. The emerging companies are applying genetic engineering to exploit complementarities and substitutabilities between seed and other crop inputs. This article develops a model of competing technologies where one substitutes for a conventional input. A monopolist may cross-subsidize a technology that substitutes for an input in order to price discriminate between user types. In duopoly, a socially excessive or insufficient share of acres may be subject to an input substituting technology. Welfare improving regulations are identified in the case where a technology substitutes for an externality generating input.     

领导小组功能适当化：高标准农田建设机构建制条款的规范要义

研究目的:厘清高标准农田建设机构建制条款的规范要义,旨在透过所涉领导小组虚置化下的主导部门冲突与职能部门职权配备部门化下的职权交叉而明晰该类条款的字面意义、隐含意义,进而在明确政府主导高标准农田建设的前提下,探究功能适当原则下科学设置相关职能部门以实现效能优化的规范命题。研究方法:文献分析法。研究结果:应完成相应职能部门所涉高标准农田建设职责权限的清单式规范设定,列明围绕建设项目运营全过程的各部门具体协同内容事项,以确立领导小组实体化下的功能主义职权配备之规范进路。研究结论:该进路堪为基于行政任务之行政组织法重构范式下,地方政府议事协调机构更为便宜、可行的规范化、长效化改制方向。     

Slippage Effects of the Conservation Reserve Program

Each year, billions of dollars of public funds are expended to purchase conservation easements on farmland. One unintended impact of these programs is that they may bring non-cropland into crop production. Such a slippage effect can be caused by increased output prices and by substitution effects. This article shows that for each one hundred acres of cropland retired under the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) in the central United States, twenty acres of non-cropland were converted to cropland, offsetting 9 and 14% of CRP water and wind erosion reduction benefits, respectively. Implications of these results for the design of conservation programs are discussed.     

Unearthing ‘dead capital’: Heirs’ property prediction in two U.S. southern counties

Heirs’ property is a form of tenancy in common. It is typically inherited land passed to subsequent generations as intestate property, or property inherited outside of the formal probate process, without “clear title.” In economic terms, this form of property ownership can result in inefficient property uses, as owners tend to under-invest in such properties, owing to uncertainties regarding returns on investments. This, in turn, contributes to a diminution of wealth for affected families. Unclear titles also impede homeowners’ ability to apply for various forms of land and home improvement aid offered by federal agencies. As well, tenancies in common have the effect of intensifying already existing vulnerabilities of place, again, because constraints on homeowners’ access to equity make home improvements less likely.The magnitude of the heirs’ property phenomenon is not well-understood. Extant estimates are dated and often not verifiable; and no systematic means of identifying these parcels has been accepted. We present a methodology for assessing the accuracy of predictors typically used to identify heirs’ parcels using logistic models and data from a rural Appalachian county (Leslie County, KY) and a more urban Black Belt¹ county (Macon-Bibb County, GA). This is the first attempt to empirically examine these predictors. Year property was last sold and financial caretaker are the strongest predictors in both counties. Using these indicators, the percent of correctly predicted heirs’ parcels is about 67 percent in Leslie County and 48 percent in Macon-Bibb County. Applications of this methodology for national forest planning are discussed.     

Why do medium- and large-scale farmers succeed practicing CA and small-scale farmers often do not? – experiences from Paraguay

Conservation agriculture (CA) is defined as a system comprising no or minimum mechanical soil disturbance, permanent organic soil cover, and crop species diversification [FAO. (2014). What is Conservation Agriculture? FAO CA website, consulted on 15.09.2014. Retrieved September 15, 2014, from http://www.fao.org/ag/ca/1a.html]. The vast majority of medium- and large-scale farmers in Paraguay and neighbouring countries (Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay) who use tractor-based farming systems have moved from conventional agriculture and adopted CA through no-tillage technologies. Among this farmer type, very few wish to return to the old system of tillage agriculture. However, despite massive efforts to transmit the technology to small-scale farmers by development aid projects and local governments, widespread adoption of CA has not happened on farms that use animal traction or manual farming systems; in fact significant dis-adoption of CA practices by smallholders has occurred. Some of the reasons for this dynamic are analysed in this paper. The reasons for dis-adoption by small-scale farmers can be generally divided into two groups. One group has to do with the fact that, comparatively, small-scale farmers are less able to cope with the factors related to CA (e.g. degraded soils, recuperating and maintaining soil fertility and know-how) than medium- and large-scale farmers. The second group of reasons has to do with the approaches and strategies that development aid agencies and local governments have taken towards small-scale farmers, which have influenced small-scale farmers’ ability to adopt and maintain CA practices. Small-scale farmers’ main asset is the soil and the CA/no-tillage system is a knowledge-based, learning-intensive system. However, despite the technical support provided by aid agencies and local governments, small-scale farmers often lack a deeper understanding of the CA concepts and practices. This is attributable to the short- to medium-term and rather conservative transfer-of-technology approaches that have been applied by development aid agency and local government programmes over the years, without any changes and without adaptive research. The latter can be derived, for instance, from the accountability of results to donor agencies or the one-size-fits-all approach applied in order to achieve ‘numbers’. One consequence of this is that ownership by and empowerment of farmers is often absent among dis-adopters. It therefore seems more suitable to apply long term, adaptable approaches to CA with smallholders. The lessons learned in Paraguay may well serve to properly direct future development intervention efforts in this country and also serve to mend development strategies in other countries in South and Central America, Africa or Asia.     

基于种养业融合的大兴安岭农垦种养结构优化研究

[目的]种养业协调发展是促进我国农业供给侧结构性改革的重要方面。文章以大兴安岭农垦的种养业结构优化为研究对象,针对大兴安岭农垦种养业结构发展失衡等问题,构建了基于种养业协调发展的多目标线性规划模型。[方法]根据Matlab编程求解,模拟提出了该地区的种养业优化方案,并阐明了促进种养业协调发展的对策措施。[结果](1)通过优化调整,大兴安岭农垦种养结构得到优化,与2013~2015年平均相比,粮食作物种植面积减少2.26万hm~2,经济作物种植面积增加了1.97万hm~2,其中大豆种植面积减少1.16万hm~2,玉米种植面积减少1.96万hm~2,养殖业饲养规模大幅度增加,其中猪的养殖数量增加5.89倍,牛增加16.62倍,羊增加1.57倍,家禽增加了10.2倍。(2)通过优化调整,与2013~2015年平均水平相比,种养业综合效益显著提升,提高了48.81%,其中经济收益增加了93.92%,社会效益减少了6.06%,生态效益提高了6.13%,其中总化肥施用量减少13.15%,总作物需水量减少5.74%、相对生态价值降低0.77%。[结论]为进一步推进大兴安岭农垦种养业结构调整,迫切需要加强宣传,探索种养业结合发展新模式,加快废弃物处理新技术推广,制定扶持政策,促进种植业和养殖业形成良性循环。