For most of the past fifty years, real agricultural commodity prices followed a downward trend punctuated by short-lived peaks that were not matched by equally pronounced and short-lived price falls but rather were separated by extended price troughs. Since 2000 it appears that prices have departed from their long-term downward trend and have become increasingly volatile (Figure 1). Prices incr...

Although the EPIC model has been widely used in agricultural and environmental studies, applications of this model may be limited in the regions where daily weather data are not available. In this paper, a stand-alone MODAWEC model was developed to generate daily precipitation and maximum and minimum temperature frommonthly precipitation, maximum and minimum temperature, and wet days. A case st...

The food price crisis of 2008 has led to the re-emergence of debates about global food security (e.g. Wiggins, 2008) and its impact on prospects for achieving the first Millennium Development Goal (MDG): to end poverty and hunger. On top of a number of shorter-term triggers leading to volatile food prices, the longer-term negative impacts of climate change need to be taken very seriously. The U...

Article history: Received 22 April 2011 Received in revised form 8 April 2013 Accepted 14 April 2013 Available online 23 April 2013 Using a panel dataset of 31 provinces in China, this paper computes the output-oriented Malmquist productivity indexes and their decomposition in China's agricultural sector over the period 1994–2008. In the second-stage regression, which uses the efficiency change...

Farmers earn their main income from selling agricultural commodities. Stabilityas well as the level of income are determined by the amount of production and marketprices. Prices and price policies on the agricultural market could have a great impact onthe success of programmes themselves. This paper focuses on research of relationshipsbetween prices at the regional level. The ai...

The High Plains, Mississippi Embayment, and Central Valley aquifer systems within the United States are currently being overexploited for irrigation water supplies. The unsustainable use of groundwater resources in all three aquifer systems intensified from 2000 to 2008, making it imperative that we understand the consumptive processes and forces of demand that are driving their depletion. To t...

climate change phenomenon is an important environmental challenge of the world. increasing extension of greenhouse gases and remote relationship phenomena accelerate the speed f climate change. changes in precipitation level, drought occurrence and changes in the level of surface and groundwater resources are the recognized consequences of climate change. in order to study consequences of clima...