Agricultural and Resource Economics Commons^™

The Economic Impacts Of Soil Contamination In Wenatchee, Wa, Jessica R. Martin

All Master's Theses

This study determines the economic impacts of soil contamination as a result of historical pesticide use in Wenatchee, WA. A hedonic regression analysis of home values before, during, and after cleanups of six contaminated schoolyards demonstrates the public’s willingness to pay for remediated soil as a housing amenity. A qualitative analysis of media coverage of the contamination and cleanups confirms public awareness and categorizes public perception of risk. Results show a significant positive price effect following remediation, and benefit-cost analysis enumerates sizable private and public financial losses incurred as a result of remediation delay.

Impact Of The Zambian Agricultural Policy On Grain Trade, Onesphore Karuho

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The agricultural sector in Zambia is supported through the government use of public expenditure programs to spur the production and subsidize the consumption of key grains to stabilize prices. Previous research has documented the effects of public spending on agriculture in terms of food prices and food security. The effects of government spending on the trade of key grains, however, is not well understood. As such, there is a gap in knowledge regarding the impact of agricultural policy on the agricultural trade. The purpose of this study was to determine the impact of Zambian agricultural policy on grain trade. A …

Analyzing The Rio Chama Flow Project’S Capacity To Implement Adaptive Management, Avery Olshefski

Water Resources Professional Project Reports

The Rio Chama is the main tributary to the Rio Grande in New Mexico. Several reservoirs were built on the Rio Chama to store water for downstream users, which has led to the river section becoming highly managed, resulting in negative ecological effects. Approximately 400,000 AF per year of water is conveyed through the system without considerable consumptive amounts, 96,200 AF of which were added with the San Juan-Chama trans-basin diversion, creating more water in the system then historically available. Therefore, the flow between the El Vado and Abiquiu Reservoirs has the potential to be optimized in order to provide …

Seed Policy In Pakistan: The Impact Of New Laws On Food Sovereignty And Sustainable Development, Amna Tanweer Yazdani, Nosheen Ali

Institute for Educational Development, Karachi

This paper highlights the challenges that genetically modified (GM) seeds pose for farmers, citizens and the land itself in Pakistan. It explores the history of agricultural policy in Pakistan from the Green Revolution to what is now being dubbed the “Gene Revolution”, and analyzes how harmful effects of both are being amplified by two recently passed laws: the Seed (Amendment) Act 2015 and the Plant Breeders' Rights Act 2016. The analysis of these laws is done from a food sovereignty perspective on sustainable development, where food sovereignty represents “the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through …

Climate Change Crisis: Prescribing Alternative Economic Policy Using An Austrian Framework, Elina N. Mcgill

Honors Program Theses

This paper reviews the literature surrounding climate change adaptation and mitigation to assess the possible contributions and limitations of heterodox economics to climate change policy. Through interdisciplinary research between economics and environmental issues, this paper aims to stress the importance of utilizing heterodox schools of economics to create more pragmatic and dynamic policy. The secondary aim is to use Austrian frameworks to contribute to the construction of feasible, efficient, and equitable climate change policy. This paper used qualitative and textual analysis of the Austrian schools of economics conceptualize possible policy responses to climate change. Research found that the Austrian prescription …

Closing Abandoned Livestock Lagoons Effectively To Utilize Nutrients And Avoid Environmental Problems, Leslie J. Johnson, Charles Shapiro, Amy Schmidt

Nebraska Cooperative Extension: Faculty and Staff Publications

In Nebraska alone, nearly 400 earthen manure storage structures are in operation; approximately four dozen requests to cease operation of permitted lagoons were received by the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality in the prior decade with many more non-permitted storage structures being in need of proper closure. Abandoned livestock lagoons, earthen manure storage basins, and other manure storages (e.g. concrete pits) need to be decommissioned in a manner that controls potential environmental risk and makes economical use of accumulated nutrients. Currently, limited guidance is available to support lagoon closure planning and implementation and few professionals who support livestock producers have …

Empathy Conservation: Experiments Suggest A Need For More Attention In Policymaking, Natalia V. Czap, Hans J. Czap, Gary Lynne, Mark E. Burbach

CAFIO: Policy Research Group Policy Pagers

One of the major challenges of environmental policy with regard to conservation is that it must often rely on voluntary and non-selfish actions of individuals. Traditionally policy makers rely on direct regulation and financial incentives, but both approaches face problems. Regulations may lead to resentment and the costs of perfect enforcement are prohibitively high. Financial incentives can be perverse and may lead to unintended consequences, including crowding out of intrinsic motivation. In addition, behavioral economics and economic psychology studies demonstrate that the assumptions of the neoclassical economic models (such as self-interest only, rationality, and willpower) on which the policy design …

Renewable Portfolio Standards May Reduce Green Energy Used In Electricity Production, Karina Schoengold, Suparna Bhattacharya, Konstantinos Giannakas

CAFIO: Policy Research Group Policy Pagers

Rising energy prices, dependence on foreign oil supplies, and consequences of climate change have prompted governments worldwide to initiate policies to shift from fossil fuels to renewables for electricity generation. One of the most commonly used policy instruments is the Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS), which requires electricity providers to procure green energy (e.g., wind, solar, biomass) for a portion of their electricity supplies. To date, RPS has been a state-mandated program in the United States. As of February 2017, 29 states, Washington DC, and 3 territories have adopted RPS policies.

Executive Summary, Agroforestry: Enhancing Resiliency In U. S. Agricultural Landscapes Under Changing Conditions, Toral Patel-Weynand, Gary Bentrup, Michele M. Schoeneberger

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

Agroforestry, the intentional integration of trees and shrubs into crop and animal production systems, is being deployed to enhance productivity, profitability, and environmental stewardship of agricultural operations and lands across the United States. The full assessment at https://doi.org/10.2737/WO-GTR-96 and summarized here provides a science-based synthesis on the use of agroforestry for mitigation and adaptation services in the face of climatic variability and change. It provides technical input to land-use sector issues in the National Climate Assessment (NCA) and serves as a framework for including agroforestry systems in agricultural strategies to improve productivity and food security and to build resilience in …

Assessment Of Oil Quantification Methods In Soybean And Chia Seeds And Characterization Of Oil And Protein In Mutant Chia (Salvia Hispanica L.) Seeds, Ahmed N. Al-Bakri

Theses and Dissertations--Plant and Soil Sciences

This thesis includes two main parts:

I. Evaluation of techniques for oil (total lipid) quantification of chia and soybean seeds.

This study evaluated ten different methods of seed oil quantification, including some methods that have not been applied to oilseeds before. The main aim of this study was to find one or more techniques that are easy, inexpensive, safe and fast with a small amount of ground seeds. The Soxhlet method was used as a standard to compared between techniques of oil quantification. The oil extraction by the Soxhlet method was evaluated with two solvents petroleum ether and acetone. There …

Environmental Values, Stated Preferences, And Hypothetical Bias, Jerrod M. Penn

Theses and Dissertations--Agricultural Economics

Contingent Valuation (CV) methods are a primary tool in environmental economics to ascertain non-use or other values not observable through existing market mechanisms. Because common CV approaches typically rely on hypothetical answers from surveys in order to generate welfare estimates, these are often labelled stated preferences. Results from stated preference methods often diverge from those obtained when actual preference or behavior are involved. This divergence is commonly known as Hypothetical Bias (HB). This dissertation addresses HB as it applies to environmental applications. To begin, a meta-analysis using a sample of studies many times larger than previous works was performed. Its …

Restoring And Sustaining Smallholder Kappaphycus Alvarezii Farming Post-Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda In Molocaboc, Central Philippines, David C. Fenlon

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

The farming of marine seaweed has the potential to provide both nutritional and financial resources to developing communities such as the Molocaboc Islands in the Philippines. To foster this mariculture development approximately $1,000 USD in grant funds received from the US-Philippines Society was used to purchase materials needed to replace seaweed production infrastructure lost to Typhoon Haiyan (known as Super Typhoon Yolanda in the Philippines). The goal was to restore and expand smallholder farming of the seaweed Kappaphycus alvarezii (locally known as ‘guso’ in the Visayan dialect) in the Molocaboc Islands, thereby increasing harvest yields as compared to those …

Betting On The Big: State-Brokered Land Transfers, Large-Scale Agricultural Producers, And Rural Policy Implementation, Weigang Gong, Qian Forrest Zhang

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

As rural governments have become hollowed out and detached from rural society, can they still effectively implement policies that lack popular support? This article examines a county in Hunan Province, where local governments had strong incentives to implement a national policy of increasing double cropping in rice farming. Small farmers rejected double cropping as unprofitable. Local governments’ limited capacity prevented them from either reshaping small farmers’ economic calculus or coercing compliance. They strategically selected a policy tool acceptable to most small farmers (paid land transfers) and gave new private large-scale producers incentives to double crop by providing subsidies and access …

Comments On “Rich Debt, Poor Debt: Assessing Household Indebtedness And Debt Repayment Capacity”, Sock Yong Phang

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper assesses the system-wide impacts of Malaysia’s rising household debt.Malaysia’s household debt-to-GDP ratio (HDGR) increased from 76% in 2009 to 89%in 2016. This increase has raised concerns regarding the implications for householdfinancial resilience and banking system stability. The paper uses a micro-level datasetthat integrates income and debt to calculate financial margin (FM) and the probabilityof default (PD) for individuals at the baseline, and when subject to various shocks.This allows the estimation of loss to lenders in the event of default, and from there,the banking system’s debt-at-risk. The findings show that default is more likely forhouseholds with a debt service …

Comments On “Rich Debt, Poor Debt: Assessing Household Indebtedness And Debt Repayment Capacity”, Sock Yong Phang

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper assesses the system-wide impacts of Malaysia’s rising household debt.Malaysia’s household debt-to-GDP ratio (HDGR) increased from 76% in 2009 to 89%in 2016. This increase has raised concerns regarding the implications for householdfinancial resilience and banking system stability. The paper uses a micro-level datasetthat integrates income and debt to calculate financial margin (FM) and the probabilityof default (PD) for individuals at the baseline, and when subject to various shocks.This allows the estimation of loss to lenders in the event of default, and from there,the banking system’s debt-at-risk. The findings show that default is more likely forhouseholds with a debt service …

Nutritious Meals For The Homeless Population: Challenges And Opportunities, Kayla A. Albrecht

Masters Theses

Objective: Consuming a nutritionally adequate diet is extremely challenging for the homeless population. Though meals are available to the homeless population through soup kitchens and homeless shelters, these settings often do not serve meals that provide essential nutrients. The consumption of energy-dense, low-nutrient foods has led in part to high prevalence of obesity, heart disease, and chronic illnesses among the homeless. The purpose of this study was to (a) examine the challenges that homeless shelters face in providing nutritious meals to guests and (b) investigate the need and interest of nutrition education at homeless shelters.

Methods: Nine homeless shelter directors …

The Treadmill Of Destruction In Comparative Perspective: A Panel Study Of Military Spending And Carbon Emissions, 1961-2014, Alex Stoner, John H. Bradford

Journal Articles

This article analyzes a unique panel data set to assess the effect of militarism on per capita carbon dioxide emissions. We extend previous research examining the effects of military expenditures on carbon emissions by including in our analyses over 30 years of additional data. In addition, we compare our preliminary results to those obtained from other estimation procedures. Specifically, we report and visually illustrate the results of 54 cross-sectional models (one for each year) and 36 unique panel regression models on both balanced and unbalanced panels. We assess how this relationship has changed over time by testing for interactions between …

Roots Of A Movement: Community Action And The Impact Of Urban Agriculture In Chicago, Maia Welbel

Pomona Senior Theses

Efforts to maintain a relationship to food pathways have been consistent throughout U.S. history despite the general evolution towards an increasingly industrialized food system. Urban agriculture serves as a means of reclaiming and furthering knowledge of where food comes from while also addressing larger social, economic, and environmental goals. This has been demonstrated in Chicago where urban farmers have worked to improve food access, increase employment, and revitalize communities all across the city. For many years, federal policies have promoted maximum production of commodity crops and kept supermarket prices low, allowing the government to ignore the impacts these policies are …

Evaluation Of The Brazilian Agrarian Reform Objective: Agricultural Production Yield Change, Tiffany Kwader Harbour

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Brazil has an active agrarian reform policy program, publicly organized by the federal government and publicly administered at the state level by the National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform. The objective of the agrarian reform policy program is to retitle unproductive and underproductive rural lands to increase agricultural production and land use. Previous agrarian reform researchers have examined quantities of land redistributed, rural technology developments, and the impact of social movements on land redistribution, but a knowledge gap remains regarding the correlation of agricultural production yields in rural municipalities before and after policy program participation. The State of Ceará …

Strategies For Preventing And Mitigating The Effects Of Agro-Food Supply Chain Disruptions, Everjoyce Muzvondiwa

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Supply chain disruptions are detrimental to the performance of companies due to the associated loss of profitability and reduced sustainability. In 2016, organizations lost at least $1.2 million in a single supply chain disruption. Guided by the contingency theory of fit, the purpose of this exploratory multiple case study was to explore the strategies agribusiness managers use to prevent and mitigate the effects of disruptions in the agro-food supply chains. A total of 5 purposefully-selected agribusiness managers from Harare, Zimbabwe participated in semistructured interviews. Participants were senior agribusiness managers who implemented successful strategies for preventing and mitigating the effects of …

Response To Climate Risks Among Smallholder Farmers In Malawi: A Multivariate Probit Assessment Of The Role Of Information, Household Demographics, And Farm Characteristics, Chalmers Mulwa, Paswel Marenya, Dil Bahadur Rahut, Menale Kassie

All Peer-Reviewed Publications

Why do many smallholder farmers fail to adopt what appear to be relatively simple agronomic or management practices which can help them cope with climate-induced stressors? Using household and plot level data collected in 2011, we implement a multivariate probit model to assess the determinants of farmer adaptation behavior to climatic risks and the relative contribution of information, credit and education on the probability of adopting specific practices in response to adverse changes in weather patterns. We find that plot characteristics, credit constraints and availability of climate-related information explain the adoption of several of these practices. In relative terms, we …

Risk Mitigation Through Diversified Farm Production Strategies: The Case In Northern Mozambique, Olivia C. Caillouet, Lawton L. Nalley, Amy L. Farmer

Discovery, The Student Journal of Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences

Mozambique, like many other parts of the low-income world, faces perennial challenges with food security. With a rapidly growing population and arable land on the decline, sustainable agriculture is vital to managing the already depleted natural resources of Sub-Saharan Africa more effectively while increasing food security. Food security issues for subsistence farmers in most low-income countries are a product of endogenous (crop yields) and exogenous (currency fluctuations as many agricultural inputs are imported) factors. In Mozambique the value of the local currency, meticals, has decreased by approximately 50% since January 2015 compared to the U.S. dollar. While this makes exporting …

State Failure In Venezuela, Marcus Littman

Master's Theses

The role of the state is to provide political goods such as security and an environment conducive to economic growth. The Venezuelan state is failing to provide both security and conditions capable of producing economic growth. The government has exacerbated both by enacting failed policies. I measure the economic crisis in Venezuela based on the rates of inflation, falling foreign currency reserves, the food and medical supply shortage, falling government spending, and negative GDP growth. I measure the security crisis based on the escalating rate of kidnapping, human trafficking, drug sales, smuggling, theft, gun distribution, and homicide. In this thesis, …

Evaluation Of Parasite Resistance To Commonly Used Commercial Anthelmintics In Meat Goats On Humid Subtropical Pasture, Megan K. Goolsby, Maria Lenira Leite-Browning, Richard Browning Jr.

Agricultural and Environmental Sciences Faculty Research

Anthelmintic-resistant gastrointestinal nematode parasites are a threat to small ruminant industry sustainability. Meat goat does were administered one of four anthelmintics orally (ivermectin (n = 18), moxidectin (n = 18), levamisole hydrochloride (n = 17), or albendazole (n = 19)) or water (n = 18). Fecal samples were collected pretreatment and 12 days post-treatment. Fecal egg counts (FEC) were determined by the modified McMaster technique. The FEC reduction percentages (FECR%) were calculated using three equations. Log transformed FEC means were analyzed by treatment, sire breed of doe, and doe age. Sire breed affected (P < 0.05) pretreatment FEC, but not post-treatment FEC (P = 0.12). Pretreatment FEC did not differ (P = 0.21) by treatment group. Posttreatment FEC varied (P < 0.05) by treatment. Anthelmintic resistance determinations were based on FECR% falling below 90% or 80%, dependent on equation applied. Resistance was detected to all four anthelmintics using each equation. These results suggest the need for alternative methods of internal parasite control in goats.

Who’S The Fairest Of Them All? The Fractured Landscape Of U.S. Fair Trade Certification, Daniel Jaffee, Philip H. Howard

Sociology Faculty Publications and Presentations

In recent years, consumers in the United States have been confronted by no fewer than four competing fair-trade labels, each grounded in a separate certification system and widely differing standards. This fracturing is partly a response to the recent split by the U.S. certifier Fair Trade USA from the international fair trade system, but also illustrates longstanding divisions within the fair trade movement. This article explores the dynamics of competition among nonstate standards through content analyses of fair trade standards documents from the four U.S. fair-trade certifications for agrifood products (Fair Trade USA, Fairtrade America, Fair for Life, and the …

Has The Usage Of Precision Agriculture Technologies Actually Led To Increased Profits For Nebraska Producers?, Michael H. Castle

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

An ever-increasing global demand for food, coupled with increasingly volatile commodity prices have charged producers with the task of becoming more efficient. As such, technologies aimed at producing more with less are continually being developed and marketed to producers. However, whether or not these expensive new technologies have resulted in improved profitability is still unknown, as the vast majority of studies showing their impact on profitability have been performed using hypothetical farms and simulations. These studies have shown the potential for increases in profitability from use, but their impact in the real world is still uncertain.

This project uses various …

Restoring Relationship: How The Methodologies Of Wangari Maathai And The Green Belt Movement In Post-Colonial Kenya Achieve Environmental Healing And Women's Empowerment, Casey L. Wagner

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The effects of the colonial project in Kenya created multi-faceted damages to the land and indigenous people-groups. Using the lens of ecofeminism, this study examines the undergirding structures that produce systems such as colonization that oppress and destroy land, people, and other beings. By highlighting the experience of the Kikuyu people within the Kenyan colonial program, the innovative and ingenious response of Wangari Maathai's Green Belt Movement proves to be a relevant and effective counter to women's disempowerment and environmental devastation in a post-colonial nation. The approach of the Green Belt Movement offers a unique and accessible method for empowering …

Perspectives On The Development Of A Local Food System: The Case Of Dayton, Ohio, Diana Cuy Castellanos, John C. Jones, Joanne Christaldi, Katherine A. Liutkus

Health and Sport Science Faculty Publications

Multiple sectors play vital roles in a community’s development and maintenance of a sustainable local food system. This study explored the perceptions of twenty-two representatives from the civil society, public, and private sectors in Dayton, Ohio, about the development of the region’s local food system. The researchers employed grounded theory methodology for data collection and analysis. Core themes from the participants of each sector group emerged from the data and areas of convergence and divergence among groups were reported.

Multiplex Social Ecological Network Analysis Reveals How Social Changes Affect Community Robustness More Than Resource Depletion, Jacopo A. Baggio, Shauna B. Burnsilver, Alex Arenas, James S. Magdanz, Gary P. Kofinas, Manlio De Domenico

Environment and Society Faculty Publications

Network analysis provides a powerful tool to analyze complex influences of social and ecological structures on community and household dynamics. Most network studies of social–ecological systems use simple, undirected, unweighted networks. We analyze multiplex, directed, and weighted networks of subsistence food flows collected in three small indigenous communities in Arctic Alaska potentially facing substantial economic and ecological changes. Our analysis of plausible future scenarios suggests that changes to social relations and key households have greater effects on community robustness than changes to specific wild food resources.

The Village Market: New Columbia Goes Shopping For Food Justice, Jane Therese Waddell

Dissertations and Theses

The Village Market is a nonprofit Healthy Corner Store that has been open since May of 2011 in the mixed-use, mixed-income New Columbia housing development in Portland, Oregon's Portsmouth neighborhood. The venture began as a "community-led" effort in partnership with Janus Youth Programs and Home Forward. The project was conceived after a private enterprise in the small grocery space designed into the development failed, leaving the neighborhood without easy access to healthy foods. This dissertation is a case study of the development process, the operation of the market, and the degree to which it addresses food justice and health equity …