Indonesia sustained an average increase in agricultural output of 3.6% per year between 1961 and 2006, resulting in a more than fivefold increase in real output. This paper constructs Tornqvist-Thiel indices of agricultural outputs, inputs and total factor productivity (TFP) to examine the sources of growth in Indonesian agriculture over this period. The paper extends previous work on measuring...

Afforestation of agricultural lands has been one of the major land use changes in China in recent decades. To better understand the effect of such land use change on soil quality, we investigated selected soil physical, chemical and microbial properties (0-15 cm depth) in marginal agricultural land and a chronosequence of poplar (Populus euramericana cv. 'N3016') plantations (5-, 10-, 15- and 2...

Economic theories show that the direction and magnitude of the fluctuations of economic variables depend on the type and magnitude of the shocks they are faced with. Various reasons are noted for fluctuations in demands for imports, including productivity shocks. Accordingly, this research was aimed at identifying the effects of Total Factor Productivity (TFP) shocks of the agricultural sector ...

The Agricultural Policy Environmental eXtender (APEX) model has been widely applied to assess phosphorus (P) loss in runoff water and has been proposed as a model to support practical decisions regarding agricultural P management, as well as a model to evaluate tools such as the P Index. The aim of this study is to evaluate the performance of APEX to simulate P losses from agricultural systems ...

A new system was used to determine the workplace protection factors (WPF) for dust and bioaerosols in agricultural environments. The field study was performed with a subject wearing an N95 filtering facepiece respirator while performing animal feeding, grain harvesting and unloading, and routine investigation of facilities. As expected, the geometric means (GM) of the WPFs increased with increa...

Random fluctuations in temperature and precipitation have substantial impacts on agricultural output. However, the contribution of these changing configurations in weather to total factor productivity (TFP) growth has not been addressed explicitly in econometric analyses. Thus, the key objective of this study is to quantify and to investigate the role of changing weather patterns in explaining ...

Achievement of management goals for Lake Champlain (Vermont/New York, USA and Quebec, Canada) will require reduction of agricultural phosphorus loads, the dominant nonpoint source in the Basin. Cost-effective phosphorus reduction strategies need reliable treatment techniques beyond basic cropland and waste management practices. The Lake Champlain Basin Agricultural Watersheds National Monitorin...

A significant and growing share of US agricultural output is produced under a production or marketing contract. An important controversy regarding agricultural production contracts is the control of non-labor inputs. Over time, contracts have tended to place more inputs under the buyer’s control and fewer under the farmer’s. This analysis examines the welfare effects of this trend. In the frame...

Agricultural pesticides often have been cited as a factor affecting indigenous amphibian populations, but possible effects of pesticides and other factors associated with agricultural practices are understood poorly. Adult bullfrogs (Rana catesbeiana) were collected within the Yamaska River basin (Quebec, Canada) in subwatersheds representing low, medium, and high agricultural activities and 53...