Agricultural and Resource Economics Commons^™

Dealing With Risks And Uncertainties In Agriculture: Implications For Central Bank Of Nigeria Interventions, Polycarp, Ishaku Mikloda, Jirgi Abigail John

Bullion

The paper discusses key areas in dealing with risks in agriculture which involves much more than dealing with risky events after they occur but through a coordinated risk management processes like establishing the context, risk identification, risk analysis and other quantitative analytical tools. The key institutional risk sharing systems like credit guarantee and insurance schemes were presented with their merits and demerits.

Status Update On The Threat Of Babesiosis Returning To The United States, Jason Tidwell, Christopher Vitek, Donald B. Thomas, John M. Thomas

School of Integrative Biological & Chemical Sciences (Formerly Dept. of Biology)

Babesiosis is a hemolytic disease caused by protozoan parasites in the genus Babesia, transmitted through the saliva of infected ticks. The most economically important species, Babesia bigemina and B. bovis, infect cattle and are the etiological agents of bovine babesiosis. In the southern United States, eradication efforts directed against the tick vectors, Boophilus spp., began in the early 1900s. A quarantine zone in south Texas along the US/Mexico border was subsequently established following the eradication of the disease in the US. The permanent quarantine zone, spanning approximately 33% of the total shared border between Texas and Mexico, has helped limit …

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.

The Impacts Of El Niño And La Niña On Large Grain Producing Countries In Eca: Yield, Poverty And Policy Response, Edinaldo Tebaldi

Economics Faculty Journal Articles

There is a need to further examine and enhance knowledge concerning the relationship among El Niño and La Niña cycles, drought events, and grain production in the Russian Federation, Ukraine and Kazakhstan (RUK) region, which accounts for more than one third of total wheat exports. This report contributes to close this knowledge gap. A data-driven analysis is utilized to gain a better understanding of (a) the potential impact on grain production of droughts linked to the El Niño/La Niña phenomenon in RUK, (b) RUK governments’ policy response to those events and how domestic and regional grain markets are affected, and …

Toxic Effects Of Lead Disposal In Water: An Analysis Of Tri Facility Releases, Patrick Koval

Economics Department Working Papers

Using county-level TRI data from 2003 to 2016, I find evidence that lead emissions in water adversely affect birth weights within the emitting county, especially with respect to the percentage of births considered low birth weight within that county (less than 2,500 grams). I find that a one percent increase in lead emissions per square mile increases the proportion of low birth weights by 0.27 percentage points. For a county with an average number of births in a particular year, this one percent increase in lead per square mile translates to an additional $475,000 in hospitalization costs from complications with …

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

Graduate 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 of electricity …

The Relationship Of Male And Female Pastoralist Income With Household Food Security And Nutrition Status In Tanzania: Maasai, Sukuma, And Barabaig Ethnic Groups, Henriette Gitungwa

Department of Agricultural Economics: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Although previous work provides a significant baseline for understanding the impact of gender on household decision making and resource (i.e. income and food) allocation, there are gaps in evidence for important groups, including East African pastoralists. Previous authors have noted that pastoralists’ gender roles and relations appear to be resistant to change, potentially impeding household development. This paper attempts to assess the relationship between male and female pastoralists’ income control and household food security and nutritional status in Tanzania. We use three surveys: a household-level livestock health and economics survey, a household food security survey, and an individual woman-level survey …

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

School of Natural Resources: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

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 …

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

Department of Agricultural Economics: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

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 …

Estimating Adaptation To Climate Change In Groundwater Irrigation, James Keeler

Department of Agricultural Economics: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

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 …

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

Department of Agricultural Economics: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

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). The …

Point-Of-Sale Specific Willingness To Pay For Quality-Differentiated Beef, Kar Ho Lim, Michael Vassalos, Michael Reed

Agricultural and Environmental Sciences Faculty Research

Despite the growing interest of producers and consumers toward grass-fed, local, and organic beef, the supply chain for these products to reach consumers is not always clear-cut. Among the available options are direct-to-consumers and the conventional food supply chain. Although consumers may pay a premium for beef differentiated by quality attributes, the willingness to pay (WTP) difference across point-of-sales is unclear. In this study, we contrast the WTPs for conventional, grass-fed, local, and organic beef by brick-and-mortar supermarkets (B&Ms), farmers’ markets, and via online stores. We conduct a choice experiment with a nationwide online sample of American consumers. The findings …

Testing Global Dietary Convergence, Sri Noor Cholidah

Department of Agricultural Economics: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

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 …

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

Department of Agricultural Economics: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

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 foods …

Sustainability Partnerships And Viticulture Management In California, Vicken Hillis, Mark Lubell, Matthew Hoffman

Human-Environment Systems Research Center Faculty Publications and Presentations

Agricultural regions in the United States are experimenting with sustainability partnerships that, among other goals, seek to improve growers' ability to manage their vineyards sustainably. In this paper, we analyze the association between winegrape grower participation in sustainability partnership activities and practice adoption in three winegrowing regions of California. Using data gathered from a survey of 822 winegrape growers, we find a positive association between participation and adoption of sustainable practices, which holds most strongly for practices in which the perceived private benefits outweigh the costs, and for growers with relatively dense social networks. We highlight the mechanisms by which …

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

Department of Agricultural Economics: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

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 United States 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’s trade barriers, …

Including Fossil-Fuel Consumption Subsidies In The Gtap Data Base, Maksym Chepeliev, Robert Mcdougall, Dominique Van Der Mensbrugghe

Department of Agricultural Economics Faculty Publications

Historically fossil-fuel consumption subsidies have been one of the most widely used energy and public policy interventions. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), in 2014 they amounted to $493 billion worldwide, which is equivalent to 0.6% of global GDP. Their contribution is even more significant for most energy exporting countries, in many cases exceeding 5-15% of national GDP. However, despite their large magnitude, fossil-fuel consumption subsidies are not explicitly represented in most global economic databases and models, including the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) Data Base, as they are generally not captured by the input-output framework. In this paper, …

Factors Affecting Spatial Differences In Health Outcomes, Kwadwo Poku-Agyemang

LSU Master's Theses

This study sought to establish the impact of the disparities between Metropolitan, Micropolitan and Non-Core communities on life expectancy. The study also assesses the impact of individual behavioral choices and certain social variables and county level policies one the life expectancy in a county.

A simple mean comparison analysis is employed to establish the differences in life expectancy across the various levels of the urban hierarchy in 1,553 counties in the United States. An ordinary least squares model is used to tease out the relationship between specific individual choice factors; smoking habits, obesity and exercise habits and socio-economic factors; medicare …

International Energy Geopolitics, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Overview of international energy geopolitical trends. Emphasizes the importance of the Persian Gulf, South China Sea, East China Sea, Russia, and the Arctic to U.S. and international economic and strategic developments. Stresses the continuing importance of fossil fuels in domestic and international energy consumption, the variety of energy sources being used by various global regions, the potential for military conflict over access to natural resources, and how emerging energy leaders will determine global energy, environmental, and international security developments.

Romania -- Systematic Country Diagnostic: Background Note-Agriculture (English), Edinaldo Tebaldi, Anatol Gobjila

Economics Faculty Journal Articles

Agriculture plays a significant socio-economic role in Romania and its transformation to a modern, vibrant, and market-oriented sector is central to fighting poverty, promoting social inclusion, and reducing the urban/rural development divide. Most of Romania's poor live in rural areas and earn their living from agriculture or agriculture-related activities. In 2016, eight out of ten people who were at risk of poverty or social exclusion lived either in rural areas or in towns and suburbs that were predominately rural. Using microdata from the 2013 Household Budget Survey (HBS), this report finds that individuals living in rural areas are 16.5 percent …

Vaughn, William (Fa 1152), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 1152. Student paper titled “The Old and New [Contrast of Traditional and Modern Farm Machinery]” in which William R. Vaughn identifies manual and mechanized farm equipmentand details the differences between the pieces. Vaughn collected information from equipment salesmen and rural farmers. Also included in the paper are black and white photographs of recognizable machines such as plows, wagons, rakes, and cultivators.

Seaborne, Roy, Jr. (Fa 1151), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 1151. Student paper titled “Old Farm Machinery and Methods” in which Roy Seaborne, Jr. explores the types of tools farmers, both traditional and contemporary, use to plant, harvest, anddistribute their crops. Information was gathered by Seaborne from farmers in Pike and Taylor counties in Kentucky. The paper also includes black and white photographs of various machinery along with brief descriptions of how the equipment is utilized.

Child Abuse Prevention In Rural Southern California: A Participatory Action Research Project, Nelly Zambrano

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This research project examines resources and services to prevent families and children from entering the child welfare system in a rural town in Southern California. There is constant struggle to get the adequate services, resources and trained staff in this rural area because it is isolated and it takes about two hours’ travel time to get to the metropolitan cities. The literature review discusses child welfare services challenges, strengths and social capital to support families and children as well as the child welfare system itself in rural areas. Constructivism is the appropriate framework for this research project, because the goal …

Guide To Usda Agroforestry Research Funding Opportunities

United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service / University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Faculty Publications

This guide is intended for researchers and academics pursuing funding opportunities for research in agroforestry - the intentonal integration of trees and agriculture. The guide provides an overview of external agroforestry research funding opportunities offered by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) agencies.

This publication was created for serveral reasons. Agroforestry is not always clearly identified in announcements about research funding opportunities. In addition, research on agroforestry can require a longer time horizon than research on annual systems, so awareness of multiple funding sources or multi-year funding opportunities can be useful. Last, though USDA offers grants that can support …

From Conflict To Collaboration: Exploring Influences On Community Well-Being, Leana M. Weissberg, Jonathan P. Kusel, Kyle A. Rodgers

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

Decades after the Timber Wars, land management agencies continue to redefine approaches to forest restoration and management, with impacts for Western forest dependent communities. To better understand this evolving dynamic, we examined the recent history of a rural forest community in the northern Sierra Nevada against the backdrop of changing perspectives on and relationships to resource use, industry, and forest management. Guided by community priorities distilled from interview data, we examine the transition from the Timber Wars to collaborative forest management through the rise of area collaboratives. The success of this work and its potential to genuinely improve community well-being …

Rethinking The Fiscal Relationship Between Public Lands And Public Land Counties: County Payments 4.0, Mark Haggerty

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

In 1908, Congress authorized payments to local governments, including counties and school districts, to compensate for the non-taxable status of the newly established forest reserves within their boundaries. The original program shared revenue generated from commercial activities on public lands, e.g. timber harvesting, not anticipating the major changes in the volume and types of activities on National Forest lands, particularly in the Pacific Northwest, that have played out over the past century. Two subsequent reforms – the appropriated Payments in Lieu of Taxes (PILT) in 1976 and ‘transition’ payments made between 1990 and 2018, including payments associated with the Northwest …

Missing The Boat? Measuring And Evaluating Local Groundfish Purchases By New England Institutions, Jeffrey K. O'Hara, Loren Mcclenachan

Journal of Ocean and Coastal Economics

The development of local food markets has provided a critical economic opportunity for small farms in New England. The collapse of Gulf of Maine groundfish stocks has motivated an interest in developing similar marketing opportunities for wild-caught, locally abundant seafood. Institutions, particularly schools and colleges, have been identified as a strategic entry point in the supply chain for such products. However, there has been a dearth of research on this topic. We undertake a case study that evaluates purchases of local groundfish by schools and colleges in New England. First, we analyze recently developed secondary data to assess the propensity …

Valuing Coastal Beaches And Closures Using Benefit Transfer: An Application To Barnstable, Massachusetts, Sarina F. Lyon, Nathaniel H. Merrill, Kate K. Mulvaney, Marisa J. Mazzotta

Journal of Ocean and Coastal Economics

Each year, millions of Americans visit beaches for recreation, resulting in significant social welfare benefits and economic activity. Considering the high use of coastal beaches for recreation, closures due to bacterial contamination have the potential to greatly impact coastal visitors and communities. We used readily-available information to develop two transferable models that, together, provide estimates for the value of a beach day as well as the lost value due to a beach closure. We modeled visitation for beaches in Barnstable, Massachusetts on Cape Cod through panel regressions to predict visitation by type of day, for the season, and for lost …

Radical Social Ecology As Deep Pragmatism: A Call To The Abolition Of Systemic Dissonance And The Minimization Of Entropic Chaos, Arielle Brender

Student Theses 2015-Present

This paper aims to shed light on the dissonance caused by the superimposition of Dominant Human Systems on Natural Systems. I highlight the synthetic nature of Dominant Human Systems as egoic and linguistic phenomenon manufactured by a mere portion of the human population, which renders them inherently oppressive unto peoples and landscapes whose wisdom were barred from the design process. In pursuing a radical pragmatic approach to mending the simultaneous oppression and destruction of the human being and the earth, I highlight the necessity of minimizing entropic chaos caused by excess energy expenditure, an essential feature of systems that aim …

Boosting Demand For Biofortified Foods: The Case Of Orange Fleshed Sweet Potato Bread In Tamale, Ghana, Tchassanty Ouro-Gbeleou

Master's Theses

Abstract: In the context of introducing biofortification of staple crops as a food-based approach to combat micronutrient malnutrition in Sub Saharan Africa (SSA), we carried out a survey in Tamale, Ghana to elicit consumers’ preference of and willingness to pay for one of the highly nutritious biofortified staple crop processed product: the Orange Fleshed Sweet Potato (OFSP) bread. Our results indicate that scores of respondents in the sample show preference for OFSP bread. The most important determinants of OFSP bread preference are its sweet taste and soft texture and consumers are willing to pay 0.634 pesewas more for the attribute …