Agricultural and Resource Economics Commons^™

Food Access And Dignity Among University Of Wyoming Students, Alanna Elder

Honors Theses AY 17/18

Because Albany County is the home of the state’s only four-year university, there is a question as to how the student population affects the proportion of county residents considered food insecure. Until now, it has been unclear how many students are struggling to access food. In 2017, a group of University of Wyoming faculty and administrators from the Department of Agricultural Economics, Financial Services, and the Office of Academic Affairs signed up for The Ohio State University’s College Study on Financial Wellness, which included a food security module (Alexander). Surveying 722 undergraduates and using USDA metrics, the researchers ...

Designing Climate Policy: Lessons From The Renewable Fuel Standard And The Blend Wall, Gabriel E. Lade, C.-Y. Cynthia Lin Lawell, Aaron Smith

Economics Working Papers

Many policies mandate renewable energy production to combat global climate change. These policies often differ significantly from first-best policy prescriptions. Among the largest renewable energy mandates enacted to date is the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), which mandates biofuel consumption far beyond what is feasible with current technology and infrastructure. In this article, we critically review the methods used by the Environmental Protection Agency to project nearand long-term compliance costs under the RFS, and draw lessons from the RFS experience to date that would improve the program’s efficiency. The lessons are meant to inform both future RFS rulemaking and the ...

Land As Power: Pathways For Closing The Gender Gap In Land Rights In India, Rachel Lubitz

Capstone Collection

This Independent Practitioner Inquiry Capstone sought to uncover whether women in their respective communities in India experience improvements in income, education, health, food security and their livelihoods, if said women farmers are able to secure the rights to both their land and other productive assets. The study used a comparative analysis to highlight the state of women’s land rights in India, in conjunction with a selection of best practices relevant to the context and analyzing a case study assessing the impact of one organization’s women’s land rights efforts in particular: The Human Development and Research Center’s ...

Evaluating The Impact Of Land Tenure Reform In Present-Day South Africa, Noah Katcher

Social Impact Research Experience (SIRE)

Since the end of apartheid in South Africa, land tenure reform has been discussed ceaselessly as a critical action to restore lasting inequities from the nation’s segregated history. In recent months, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has introduced a proposal for a constitutional amendment supporting expropriation without compensation, stirring controversy and revolt throughout the country and across the globe. As questions continue to rise regarding the value of land reform and best practices for implementation, this paper identifies the relevant stakeholders in the debate over land reform and details the potential impacts of a redistributive mandate. Broadly speaking, this ...

The Impact Of The 2018 Trade Disruptions On The Iowa Economy, Edward J. Balistreri, Chad E. Hart, Dermot J. Hayes, Minghao Li, Lee Schulz, David A. Swenson, Wendong Zhang, John M. Crespi

CARD Policy Briefs

In this analysis, we use historical trade patterns, revenue linkages, and recent futures market price changes to discern the 2018 tariffs’ near-term impacts on the state of Iowa. We use two distinct modeling techniques, and in each technique we make two distinct assumptions. First, we use partial-equilibrium modeling approaches that do not directly consider linkages among the markets and industries across the state of Iowa. In these approaches, two assumptions about price changes are invoked—either the price changes are based upon supply and demand elasticities or the price changes are based upon observations in the futures market. The partial ...

Enhancing Visitors Experiences At Artisan Businesses: A Case Study Of The Économusée® Business Model In British Columbia, John Predyk, Nicole L. Vaugeois

TTRA Canada 2018 Conference

ÉCONOMUSÉE© is a non-profit organization founded in 1992 in Quebec, Canada which now includes over 70 Artisans from across Canada and Europe. The model promotes the preservation of traditional knowledge and local entrepreneurship by utilizing cultural tourism to showcase artisans and encourage the consumption of locally produced artisanal products. This study was completed in order to provide data on the growth and effectiveness of the ÉCONOMUSÉE program in British Columbia since it was first introduced in 2012. This paper highlights the results of the impact of the model on overall visitor experience. At this point in time, it appears that ...

Sustainability And Tourism: A Case Study Of The United States' First Offshore Wind Farm, Andrew Carr-Harris, Corey Lang

Corey Lang

Yardwork: A Biography Of An Urban Place By Daniel Coleman, Vivian M. Hansen

The Goose

Review of Daniel Coleman's Yardwork: A Biography of an Urban Place.

Rational Ecosystems-Based Fisheries Management, Rajesh Singh, Quinn Weninger

Economics Working Papers

Ecosystem-based fisheries management (EBFM) seeks to incorporate the full complexity of marine ecosystems into the design of fisheries management policies and regulations. This paper presents a model of a multiple-species, and spatially-temporally heterogeneous fishery that is managed under a tradable quota regulation. Past studies of fisheries management in this setting have, for purposes of simplification, resorted to (1) restrictive assumptions for multiple-species harvesting technologies, (2) myopic and ad hoc behavioral rules for the fishing sector, and (3) assumptions for regulatory control that do not exist in real world fisheries. We derive a rational expectations, ecological-economic equilibrium outcome for harvests, discards ...

Boundary Spanners And Trust Development Between Stakeholders In Integrated Water Resource Management: A Mixed Methods Study, Jodi L. Delozier

Dissertations & Theses in Natural Resources

Natural resource issues are inherently complex, even more so are those that involve the management of water. Because watersheds tend to cross multiple jurisdictional and geographical boundaries, a diverse set of stakeholders are needed to develop appropriate and sustainable management policy. This research sheds light on the importance of boundary spanners assisting in the development of trust between stakeholders in integrated water resource management (IWRM). Previous literature has explored the advantages to boundary spanning leadership in business practice, emergency management, university and community management as well as fish and wildlife management, but has failed to address the area of integrated ...

Sustainability Of Utilizing Renewable And Nuclear Energy In Saudi Arabia Using Different Types Of Life Cycle Assessment, Kamel Almutairi

Theses and Dissertations

Evaluating the global environmental impacts of the current and future energy policies in Saudi Arabia using Life cycle assessment (LCA) method was the main objective of this dissertation. First, the attributional life cycle assessment (ALCA) framework was used to evaluate the Saudi’s air conditioning systems, as they are responsible for about 70% of the total Saudi residential electricity consumption. The ALCA’s results showed that the AC use phase produces the largest share of the environmental impact and the magnitude of the environmental impacts is influenced by the type of primary fuel used for electricity generation.

Emerging non-fossil sources ...

Irrigation Management, Environment, And Profits: Who Wins?, Emily O'Donnell

Dissertations and Theses in Agricultural Economics

The impact of irrigation technology on farmers’ management strategies and resulting environmental benefits depends upon agronomic properties and market forces. We evaluate the role of deficit irrigation using soil moisture probe technology on corn yield and evapotranspiration, which is a measure of water use efficiency. Evapotranspiration represents the water that transits through the plant during planting to harvest (transpiration) and the evaporation from the soil into the environment, or the displaced water in the production process. We develop yield and evapotranspiration response functions to inform a constrained profit maximization model used to identify the optimal irrigation level across a variety ...

Using Regression Analysis To Determine Land Cover Impacts On Groundwater Levels In The High Plains, Dylan T. Riley

Dissertations and Theses in Agricultural Economics

Many parts of the High Plains region are facing declining aquifer levels, which threatens the long-term viability of irrigated agriculture. Furthermore, some areas of the High Plains region, like the Republican River Basin in Nebraska, need to keep groundwater levels high enough in the short-term to ensure that hydrologically connected rivers have enough streamflow to fulfill surface water obligations, such as Nebraska's interstate river compact with Colorado and Kansas. To better manage groundwater, it is important to understand the unintended effects of policies that may not be aimed at groundwater conservation, such as the USDA- Conservation Reserve Program (USDA-CRP ...

Estimating Adaptation To Climate Change In Groundwater Irrigation, James Keeler

Dissertations and Theses in Agricultural Economics

Understanding the adaptive capacity of irrigated agriculture, including to what extent producers adjust irrigation choices along the intensive and extensive margins, is vital to the development of accurate and holistic estimates of the impacts of climate change on agricultural production and the sustainability of water-related ecosystem services. This thesis proposes and implements a natural experiment using statistical matching methods to estimate how producers adjust groundwater extraction, irrigated crop acreage, and irrigation technology in response to long-term changes in precipitation and evapotranspiration. Results from groundwater irrigated fields in Kansas suggest that intensive and extensive margin water use adaptations are generally limited ...

Integrating Environmental And Social Sustainability Into Performance Evaluation: A Balanced Scorecard-Based Grey-Danp Approach For The Food Industry, Gazi M. Duman, Murat Taskaynatan, Elif Kongar, Kurt A. Rosentrater

Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering Publications

In addition to retaining high levels of customer satisfaction, sustainability of businesses is also heavily reliant on the efficiency of their internal and external processes. Continuous performance evaluations using key performance metrics to leverage operations are essential in maintaining a sustainable business while achieving growth objectives for revenue and profitability. Traditionally, companies have considered various financial criteria, quality characteristics, and targeted levels of service as their primary factors for performance evaluation. However, increasing environmental and social awareness and accompanying governmental legislations are now requiring companies to integrate these two aspects into their performance evaluations. With this motivation, this study proposes ...

Testing Global Dietary Convergence, Sri Noor Cholidah

Dissertations and Theses in Agricultural Economics

Historical evidence shows that compared to Western countries, where the nutrition transition from a diet heavy in starchy staples to the modern Western diet took more than two centuries, the nutrition transition in developing countries towards Western-type diets has taken only a few decades, suggesting a trend towards global dietary convergence. This thesis explores the extent of such convergence by measuring βconvergence and σ-convergence of diets of 152 countries using FAO data on total calorie intake and calories by source from 1961-2009. Results for β-convergence show that a) countries who started in 1961 with lower calorie intake, in total or ...

Indigenous Access To Skilled Jobs In The Canadian Forest Industry: The Role Of Education, Ian G. Cahill

The International Indigenous Policy Journal

In this article, the effect of education on the skill level of jobs held by Indigenous people working in the Canadian forest industry is examined. A skill index based on detailed occupation is used as the dependent variable in ordered logit models estimated using data from Statistics Canada’s 2011 National Household Survey (NHS). Results are obtained by gender. In the case of men, for Métis (a specific mixed European and Indigenous culture) and for First Nations living off reserve estimates of the effect of education are similar to those for non-Indigenous people. The estimated effect is lower for those ...

How Do Restaurant Menu Calorie Labeling Requirements And Exercise Impact Consumer Food Decision Making?, Nigina Rakhmatullaeva

Dissertations and Theses in Agricultural Economics

The percentage of the U.S. population that is obese has increased markedly over the past fifty years. Obesity is driven in part by imbalances in energy consumption and expenditures. There are two main behavioral factors that influence that balance: food consumption and exercise. In this thesis, I report the results of two experiments that encompass both food choice and exercise.

The consumption of food prepared away from home is growing rapidly. Since individuals do not control the ingredients in foods prepared away from home, these foods are frequently less healthy than home-cooked foods. The role of calorie labeling for ...

Effects Of China’S Trade Policies On The U.S. Distiller’S Dried Grains, Vanessa De Oliveira

Dissertations and Theses in Agricultural Economics

Domestic and export demand for distillers’ dried grains (DDG) has increased since the early 2000s. DDG have become an important component of livestock feed given its nutritional value and competitive price. Over the last decade, China has become one of the major export destinations for U.S. DDG. However, there have been recent changes in trade policies in China. In this thesis, we develop an inverse demand equation to analyze the impact of China’s policies on U.S. DDG prices. The model contributes to the literature by incorporating domestic and international demand through which exogenous shocks, such as China ...

Rural Land Titling And Property Rights: Does Legislating Smallholdings As A Non-Seizable Family Asset Improve Smallholder Family Farmers’ Welfare?, Juan M. Murguia, Kassu W. Hossiso, Sergio H. Lence

Economics Working Papers

Land titling and property rights have been of interest in agricultural economics for many years because land is the main production asset for agricultural activity. There is evidence that links land titling with increments in productivity and investment. One of the reasons being that titling facilitates access to credit, by enabling the use of land as collateral. In this paper, we study a particular policy in Bolivia, where legislation prevents legally defined smallholdings from being used as collateral, in order to protect smallholders’ source of income, preventing the seizure of their assets. This study analyzes whether smallholders’ welfare is improved ...