©1999–2005 CHOICES. All rights reserved. Articles may be reproduced or electronically distributed as long as attribution to Choices and the American Agricultural Economics Association is maintained. Choices subscriptions are free and can be obtained through http://www.choicesmagazine.org. Economic Values without Prices: The Importance of Nonmarket Values and Valuation for Informing Public Polic...

The approximately 100 million tonne per year increase in the use of corn to produce ethanol in the U.S. over the past 10 years, and projections of greater future use, have raised concerns that reduced exports of corn (and other agricultural products) and higher commodity prices would lead to land-use changes and, consequently, negative environmental impacts in other countries. The concerns have...

In this article, we assess ecological, economic and social sustainability impacts of four alternative agricultural policy scenarios relevant to the European perspective. The analysed scenarios are: Prolonged Agenda 2000, On-going CAP reform, Integrated rural and environmental policy, and Liberalised Agricultural Trade. An economic agricultural sector model of Finnish agriculture is used in the ...

Many fear China’s accession to WTO will impoverish its rural people, via greater import competition in its agricultural markets. We explore that possibility bearing in mind that, even if producer prices of some (land-intensive) farm products fall, prices of other (labor-intensive) farm products could rise. Also, the removal of restrictions on exports of textiles and clothing could boost town an...

Land-use change in the U.S. Great Plains since agricultural settlement in the second half of the nineteenth century has been well documented. While aggregate historical trends are easily tracked, the decision-making of individual farmers is difficult to reconstruct. We use an agent-based model to tell the history of the settlement of the West by simulating farm-level agricultural decision makin...

The 1996 Farm Bill was debated and passed during one of the best of times in U.S. agriculture and has presided over one of the worst of times in terms of crop prices, market incomes, and government payments. While it is not fair to lay all of crop agriculture’s price and income problems at the feet the 1996 legislation, it is fair to assign it much of the blame. Expectations were that the passa...

The marketing data of Sultanpur of 51 commodities gathered during the period of October 1997 to August 2002 when they were transmitted to Lucknow by Senior Agricultural Marketing Inspector (SAMI) office through NICNET, have been consolidated in a suitable format showing them date as well as month wise. The monthly arrivals and retail prices of some sample products have also been depicted graphi...

A weakening dependence on rain-fed agriculture has been a hallmark of the economic transformation of countries throughout history. Rural citizens in developing countries today , however, remain highly exposed to fluctuations in the weather. This exposure affects the incomes these citizens earn and the prices of the foods they eat. Recent work has documented the significant mortality and morbidi...

An important shift in U.S. agricultural policy occurred with the 1996 Federal Agriculture Improvement and Reform (FAIR) Act. Although the actual intent and effects of the Act remain a topic of debate, many observers believed that the 1996 legislation signaled a transition toward a new policy environment characterized by diminished government involvement in agricultural markets. Perhaps the bigg...

A key consideration for development of energy and climate policy affecting the forestry and agricultural sectors is that the selection of specific mechanisms implemented to achieve bioenergy production and/or greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation targets may have substantial effects on landowner incentives to adopt alternative practices. For instance, the prices of allowances and offsets are expected...