Who Will Pay For On Farm Environmental Improvements In The 21st Century

This resource guide was assembled for distribution at the symposium, Who Will Pay for On-Farm Environmental Improvements in the 21st Century?Ó The symposium offered individuals with different perspectives on the economic aspects of agricultural operations & environmental quality the opportunity to exchange views & ideas on the topic. The guide has two sections: The first contains literature citations selected from the AGRICOLA database of agricultural literature. Citations cover U.S. agriculture during the past 5 years. The second section contains annotated links to selected World-Wide-Web sites relevant to the topic.

In the last 20 years, there has been a remarkable emergence of innovations and technological advances that are generating promising changes and opportunities for sustainable agriculture, yet at the same time the agricultural sector worldwide faces numerous daunting challenges. Not only is the agricultural sector expected to produce adequate food, fiber, and feed, and contribute to biofuels to meet the needs of a rising global population, it is expected to do so under increasingly scarce natural resources and climate change. Growing awareness of the unintended impacts associated with some agricultural production practices has led to heightened societal expectations for improved environmental, community, labor, and animal welfare standards in agriculture. Toward Sustainable Agricultural Systems in the 21st Century assesses the scientific evidence for the strengths and weaknesses of different production, marketing, and policy approaches for improving and reducing the costs and unintended consequences of agricultural production. It discusses the principles underlying farming systems and practices that could improve the sustainability. It also explores how those lessons learned could be applied to agriculture in different regional and international settings, with an emphasis on sub-Saharan Africa. By focusing on a systems approach to improving the sustainability of U.S. agriculture, this book can have a profound impact on the development and implementation of sustainable farming systems. Toward Sustainable Agricultural Systems in the 21st Century serves as a valuable resource for policy makers, farmers, experts in food production and agribusiness, and federal regulatory agencies.

Japan is embarked on a demographic transition without precedent in human history: the population is both declining and ageing rapidly. This raises important questions about the country's future economic geography, as public policies will need both to respond to these shifts and also to shape them.

Agricultural policy reform has become a very hot topic. Over the next couple of years we will see the funding for these programs being hotly debated. The thesis of this book is that a better-informed public is essential to bring rationality to farm policy. This book provides telling evidence that markets work, that competent commercial farmers will earn returns on their resources as high as those earned elsewhere in the absence of income transfer to farmers.

The study is part of the OECD work stream Preparing Regions for Demographic Change, a megatrend that affects several important dimensions of public policy. The following three of them are particular relevant for Korea’s regions and rural places: (i) workforce dimension, (ii) social dimension and (iii) governance dimension. The report consists of three chapters.