Agricultural and Resource Economics Commons^™

California's War Over The Bay-Delta: Historic Failures And Current Battles, Jessica J. Mao

CMC Senior Theses

California has one highly-coveted possession: the Bay-Delta, which is the second largest estuary in the United States. Today, tensions are higher than ever as Southern California continues to grow and demand water from the Delta, agriculture suffers from drought and less-than-promised water allocations, and aquatic life diminishes due to environmentally damaging processes like pumping and exporting of water elsewhere. This paper will examine the historic policies that have shaped how the Delta has been managed, their successes and failures, and current plans in discussion for continuing improvement of the Delta. The Bay-Delta Conservation Plan and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley Water …

Foreign Land Investments In Developing Countries, E. Wesley F. Peterson

Cornhusker Economics

In 2009, the government of Liberia leased 220,000 hectares (543,4000 acres) of land to a Malaysian company, Sime Darby, which intends to develop the land for palm oil and rubber production. While the company has promised that its operations will create jobs and comply with all environmental standards, local farmers have expressed concerns about environmental degradation and slow payments to workers (Siakor and Knight).

In recent years land deals in low-income countries involving foreign firms and governments have increased substantially. The World Bank estimated that there were large scale land deals to purchase or lease 56 million hectares of land …

What Cost, Biomass For Fuel?, Richard K. Perrin, Kassu Wamisho, Dereje B. Megeressa

Cornhusker Economics

Biomass has a prominent role in discussions of future United States energy supplies. Why? Because it could reduce our dependence on foreign petroleum supplies, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions compared to using petroleum or other fossil fuels.

What is meant by biomass for fuel? Generally, the term is used to designate either crop residues such as corn stover or dedicated energy crops such as switchgrass and poplar trees. Technically of course, grains themselves are biomass and they can be used for fuel as well.

Recipes Of Resolve: Food And Meaning In Post-Diluvian New Orleans, Jessica Claire Menck

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

In 2005 the city of New Orleans experienced catastrophic flooding as a result of the failure of the federal levee system following Hurricane Katrina. This was an immediate disaster that evolved into a longer-term crisis as the city, state, and national government struggled to respond to the event. This study focuses on one part of managing crisis: meaning making. Specifically, the study investigates meaning making within the food community of New Orleans, asking the questions: is food a way for individuals and groups to make meaning following critical change events such as the failure of the federal levee system in …

Economic Impact Of Agriculture On South Dakota, Gary Taylor

Economics Commentator (1972- 2016)

No abstract provided.

The Resource Curse And Peru: A Potential Threat For The Future?, Sergio Cruz

Master's Theses

What explains the ability of some countries to successfully use their natural resources towards development and economic growth while for others stagnation and impoverishment? The resource curse theory has helped economists explain this observation. This work examines how Peru has been able to produce strong economic growth in the last 20 years despite the economy’s strong dependence on its natural resource extractive industry. Peru has been able to avoid many of the pitfalls and traps that resource curse literature considers to be detrimental to economic growth. This article examines the resource based economies of four other countries (Venezuela, Chile, Nigeria, …

Economic Outlook Heading Into 2012, Emmanuel Opoku, Scott W. Fausti

Economics Commentator (1972- 2016)

No abstract provided.

Using Pen Source Data Inputs To Map Food Insecurity In Cumberland County, Maine, Daniel Wallace

Muskie School Capstones and Dissertations

In 2010, Mapping Food Insecurity’s Project Director (PD) participated in “The Campaign to Promote Food Security in Cumberland County, Maine.” The Campaign drew together a 60 member coalition to address rapidly increasing food insecurity challenges in the county. It produced a report with a series of recommendations grouped under six strategic community goals. One of the recommendations called for the use of ‘mapping and connectivity software to determine location of vulnerable populations and services in order to plan best future delivery and use of food access services in Cumberland County

60 Years Of Rural Reconstruction Movement In The Philippines (Prrm) = 回顧菲律賓鄉村建設運動60年, Isagani R. Serrano

South South Forum 南南論壇

PRRM did not go to the countryside to disperse buffalos though that’s not necessarily a bad thing. PRRM did disperse buffalos and other farm animals but it went to the countryside for nobler reason---the liberation of the peasant from poverty and oppression. It sought to do this through mass education and mass movement.

By 2012 PRRM will have spanned a period running in parallel to the postwar development history of the Philippines. It was founded in 1952 during the administration of President Magsaysay, called “Man of the Masses”. PRRM peaked in the 1960s, declined in the late 1970s through to …

Tension And Contradiction In Agrarian Reform And Rural Reconstruction In Post-Monarch Nepal, Arjun Karki

South South Forum 南南論壇

Agrarian reform and land reform are usually understood synonymously as they are embedded with the unequal agrarian structure in Nepal. A widespread objective of agrarian reform is to promote social justice by equitable distribution of land and resources. Agrarian reform includes the restructuring of land tenure, the means of production, and the provision of support services to the farmers and rural inhabitants.

In Nepal land is the principle determinant for classifying people into distinct classes. Due to the various state-led land grants, unequal socio-economic relations and growing population density, little ‘free’ land is available these days (Karki, 2001). More than …

Reasons To Shop At Farmer's Market: A Survey Study In South Dakota, Kuo-Liang Chang, Jerry Warmann

Economics Commentator (1972- 2016)

No abstract provided.

Ecological Revival And Sustainable Living In The Tropical Dry Evergreen Forest Of Tamil Nadu: A Measurement Of Residential Perception In Sadhana Forest, Elizabeth Collette Mcguire

Department of Environmental Studies: Undergraduate Student Theses

Since 1970, the role and function of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been to promote environmental quality and to form strategies for carrying out environmental policy¹. The EPA has committed to sustainability as the next level of environmental protection. The agency states that sustainability calls for policies and strategies that meet society’s present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs². Presently, society’s requirements have resulted in natural resource exploitation and population distention- projected to reach 10 billion people within two human generations³. These paired occurrences are …

Toward A Constructive Engagement: Agricultural Biotechnology As A Public Health Incentive In Less-Developed Countries, Chidi Oguamanam

Journal of Food Law & Policy

Discourses on global public health crises, especially as they impact the less-developed world, focus mostly on the issue of access to life-saving drugs for needy populations. Also, they implicate the misalignment of global pharmaceutical research and development (R&D) agenda with the health needs of the poor. Equally attracting significant attention is the role of intellectual property in driving up the cost of drugs and exacerbating the drug access freeze to needy populations. More often, the conceptual strings of these discussions are woven around a complex interaction of themes, including those of globalization, the development narrative, and strategic changes in international …

Agricultural Productivity Growth In Central America And The Caribbean, Ayako Ebata

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

This thesis estimates total factor productivity (TFP) growth in the agricultural sector of fourteen regions in Central America and the Caribbean. First, TFP is measured parametrically and non-parametrically, using the Ordinary Least Square (OLS) method and the Maximum Likelihood (ML) method to estimate a translog production function and the Malmquist index approach. Secondly, the thesis incorporates an environmental bad, CO₂ emissions from expansion of agricultural land by sacrificing forest area and estimates environmentally adjusted productivity (EAP) growth rates using an output distance function in order to assess how the growth of TFP rates changes when such a bad is …

World Food Crisis: Imperfect Markets Starving Development, A Decomposition Of Recent Food Price Increases, Christine Costello

College of Business: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The recent decade has experienced two rather substantial food price spikes. This thesis sets out to provide an in-depth look at the recent food price increases by achieving two goals: assessing the forces driving food prices, and determining the magnitude of those forces. These goals are reached by reviewing selected rhetoric on the recent food price increases, analyzing case studies, and lastly determining our modeling capabilities in decomposing food price changes. Additionally, this thesis will serve as a tool for stakeholder's to better address critical policy issues surrounding food, agriculture, and energy policies.

Adviser: Hendrik Van Den Berg

Growing The Experience Economy, Cheryl A. Burkhart-Kriesel

Cornhusker Economics

Some of us, and I confess I am in this group, can remember when our mother would make us a birthday cake. She used basic ingredients or commodities like flour, sugar, eggs and cocoa to create it from scratch. It was always a wonderful creation and quite affordable – probably under 50 cents for the entire cake. Then a few years later it seemed fashionable to use cake mixes and canned frostings. Betty Crocker, Duncan Hines and others figured out that they could take the commodities and package them in such a way as to make a consumer good. …

2012 Nebraska Crop Budgets, Roger K. Wilson

Cornhusker Economics

Overall, average projected cash costs per unit of production for 2012 are almost 15 percent higher than the 2011 projections made in April.

Some of this increase is due to a higher labor wage. Twenty dollars per hour was used as the wage rate in 2012, compared to $12 per hour in 2011. Wage rates vary substantially from one producer to the next, and there is no suitable index for determining a representative wage. It is not likely that actual wages paid increased that much from one year to the next, so this change represents an adjustment upwards as well …

Contributions Of Financial Sector Reforms And Credit Supply To Nigerian Agricultural Sector (1978-2009), Anthony O. Onoja, M. E. Onu, S. Ajodo-Ohiemi

CBN Journal of Applied Statistics (JAS)

This study analyzed the trends and pattern of institutional credit supply to agriculture during pre- and post-financial reforms along with their determinants. It then compared the effects of reform policies on access to institutional credits in Nigerian agricultural sector before and after the reforms (1978 - 1985; and 1986 -2009). Relying mainly on time series data from CBN and NBS, it used ordinary least squares method (linear, semi-log and double log) to model the determinants of banking sector lending to the agricultural sector during the review period. The models were subjected to several econometric tests before accepting one. Chow test …

Determinants Of Foreign Reserves In Nigeria: An Autoregressive Distributed Lag Approach, David Irefin, Baba N. Yaaba

CBN Journal of Applied Statistics (JAS)

On global scale, central banks’ holdings of foreign reserves have escalated sharply in recent years. World international reserves holdings have risen significantly from US$1.2 trillion in 1995 to nearly US$10.0 trillion in June 2011. Dominant among these reserves are concentrated in the hands of few countries. Ten major holders of foreign reserves are mostly from Asia. Oil exporting countries in Africa and the Middle East are not left out in this trend. Nigeria’s foreign reserves rose from US$5.5 billion in 1999 to US$62.40 billion in July 2008, making Nigeria the twenty-fourth largest reserves holder in the world. This pace of …

Effects Of Exchange Rate Movements On Economic Growth In Nigeria, Eme O. Akpan, Johnson A. Atan

CBN Journal of Applied Statistics (JAS)

This study investigates the effect of exchange rate movements on real output growth in Nigeria. Based on quarterly series for the period 1986 to 2010, the paper examines the possible direct and indirect relationship between exchange rates and GDP growth. The relationship is derived in two ways using a simultaneous equations model within a fully specified (but small) macroeconomic model. A Generalised Method of Moments (GMM) technique was explored. The estimation results suggest that there is no evidence of a strong direct relationship between changes in exchange rate and output growth. Rather, Nigeria’s economic growth has been directly affected by …