CONSERVATION THROUGH LAND DIVERSION: A SURVEY OF FARMERS‘ ATTITUDES

The need to take land out of intensive arable production offers possibilities for conservation. Assuming that such schemes will operate on a voluntary basis, farmers' reactions to incentives encouraging them to divert land to other uses must be crucial. Samples of farmers in three areas of England were presented with hypothetical schemes to divert cereal land to fallow, permanent pasture and woodland. They were asked for a money ‘bid’ equivalent to the minimum sum to persuade them to enrol land in the scheme an the acreage they would enrol at that level of payment. On average the 147 farmers wanted £348/ha to fallow cereal land, £336/ha to divert arable land to permanent pasture and £437/ha to grow trees. The hypothesis that farmers' response to land diversion initiatives would depend on interaction of conservation attitudes and structural/financial constraints received some support, a result with implications for the design of future land diversion schemes.     

FARMERS‘ WIVES - THEIR CONTRIBUTION TO THE FARM BUSINESS

The contribution which farmers' wives make to the farm business is typically overlooked and under-valued, yet the farm could not function without it. The paper describes the nature of the work done by wives on farms in the UK and Ireland as revealed by two recent postal surveys. Using data from the Farm Business Survey for England and Wales, it attempts to quantify some aspects of the work. It is suggested that farm wives may contribute 5 per cent of the manual hours worked by the regular labour force and 9–10 per cent of the total regular labour input on main holdings. Further, as hired and family labour is shed and farmers seek additional employment, the wife's labour contribution is likely to become more significant. Continued neglect of women's involvement may jeopardise the future of the family farm. The paper suggests how data collection procedures might be improved to give a more realistic picture of the wife's contribution.     

INFORMATION ON FARMERS‘ INCOMES: DATA FROM INLAND REVENUE SOURCES

The most commonly quoted information on UK farm incomes comes from the Farm Management Survey. However, this Survey does not embrace the income farmers receive from non-farm sources, and its coverage of very small farms is not good. For many income studies, an attractive alternative source of information, newly available, is the agricultural and horticultural subsets of the Survey of Personal Incomes, conducted annually by the Inland Revenue. This paper comments on the SPI results for 1978/79. While there are reservations about the classification employed and the income concept adopted, the SPI is nevertheless an important new source of data, covering income received by farming couples and individuals from self-employment, from employment and from investment. Overall, earned income constituted 83 per cent of the Total Income of farmers in 1978/79; business profits (including those of wives) formed less than two-thirds of the total, illustrating the importance of including non-farm sources in any assessment of farmers' income position. When classified by income size, agricultural incomes are seen to figure disproportionately high among the upper income groups of the community. The earnings of farmers' wives are discussed and the SPI income-distribution compared with that from the FMS. Ways of exploiting this newly-available data source are explored.     

THE DEVELOPING FRAMEWORK FOR THE ECONOMIC EVALUATION OF FORESTRY IN THE UNITED KINGDOM — A COMMENT

The application of Kula's sum of discounted consumption flows method to forestry investment gives a more favourable result than NPV, but leads to some curious consequences. In particular, the immediate future generation may not be provided with a timber resource by the present generation, while being expected to provide such a resource for its own successors. The method does not in fact treat future generations equitably: downward revision of the social discount rate, possibly to zero, is a better means of achieving this objective.     

FACTORS AFFECTING SUCCESS AND FAILURE IN FARMERS‘ CO-OPERATIVE ASSOCIATIONS

This paper poses a number of questions such us: Why do we want farmers to co-operate? Who should benefit from co-operation—the community or the co-operators? What kind of (co-operative) organisation should be encouraged? It is suggested that marketing groups provide a link between farm and marketing which will be of increasing importance as the demands for produce become more specific. Groups are see as an expression of practical sociology and some ideas for dynamic group organisation are set out. An attempt is made to suggest to more logical approach to the use of grant aid. Arguments are presented in favour of the answers that co-operative organisation should grow upwards from busically small group beginnings; that co-operators are to be the primary beneficiaries and the co-operation is a suitable wuy of coping with the inherited structure of British agriculture.     

粮食流通管理刍议

当前粮食流通管理面临的困难和问题1.管理主体多,设置不合理。一是监管职责分配过细。《粮食流通管理条例》规定粮食流通管理由国家发改委、财政、工商、质检、物价、卫生等部门共同负责,管理主体达八家之多。各部门职责按照粮食流通环节、产品品种以及粮食性质划分,其职责分工过于细化,工作职权交叉设置,监管范围交错分配,执行程序过于烦琐。比如粮食质量监管采用粮食流通过程中购销调存加各环节由不同主体分段管理为主,品种监管为铺的方式,操作不便,在实际工作中容易造成互相推委引发部门间矛盾,对粮食市场的管理很难形成合力。因而出现重…