In India, electric utilities are owned and operated by the government. This paper explores whether these utilities have functioned to maximize social welfare and whether electricity pricing, through the provision of agricultural subsidies, has been manipulated for political purposes. We first explore the benefits of electricity subsidies to the agricultural sector between 1995 and 2004. A simpl...

We conducted an exploratory investigation of factors influencing the adoption of radio frequency identification (RFID) methods in the agricultural product distribution industry. Through a literature review and field research, and based on the technology-organization-environment (TOE) theoretical framework, this paper analyzes factors influencing RFID adoption in the agricultural product distrib...

Quarantine measures have generally provided an essential protection against the importation of exotic diseases, thus protecting both consumers and producers from major health concerns and pests and diseases that can potentially destroy local agricultural production. However, quarantine measures also impose costs in the form of expenditures on the quarantine program itself and the welfare losses...

The business dynamics of the agricultural sector generally call for a system of calculation and cost management that goes beyond output assessment and profit determination, and coordinates a tool that supports the decision-making process, thus facilitating the evaluation of different cultivation techniques, varieties and so on. Accordingly, this paper proposes using a cost model based on activi...

Computing systems have been employed for agricultural purposes, mainly in the precision farming domain. However, their implementation is complex because the cooperation among system components formed by agricultural equipment and computing parts do not have a common interface and the components are developed over distinct technologies (heterogeneous components). Also, the components are individ...

Nascent U.S. carbon markets reward farmers for reforesting agricultural land, with consequent ecological co-benefits. We use a dynamic optimization model to determine the likelihood of an orchard farmer in northern California converting to forest under 90 plausible future scenarios. We find reforestation to be a highly unlikely outcome, occurring only 18.5% of the time under the most favorable ...

This paper discusses the significance of voluntary arrangements for the water and agricultural policies in the European Union. The current implementation of the European Water Framework Directive (WFD) and the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) require new approaches in water management. As many case studies have shown, co-operative agreements (CAs) between water companies, farmers ...

National survey data collected for 1997 in USDA’s Agricultural Resource Management Study was used to derive implications and pose hypotheses about the impact on pesticide use, production practices, and producer costs of using genetically modified (GM) seed in soybean and cotton production. Results of the analysis suggest concurrence with scientific and industry claims about the environmental qu...

EUWAB-Project (European Union Welfare effects of Agricultural Biotechnology), Project VIB/TA-OP/98-07: “Microand Macro-economic Analysis of the Economic Benefits and Costs of Biotechnology Applications in EU Agriculture Calculation of the Effects on Producers, Consumers and Governments and Development of a Simulation Model”. This paper (pdf) can be downloaded following the link: http://www.agr....