ecogrow – Page 30 – Nature Ecrogrow

All biocuration is time consuming and requires assistance from expert biologists

Analyses of single census years provide wildly varying estimates of the effect of landscape simplification on insecticide use. It is evident that the relationship between landscape simplification and insecticide use is spatially and temporally context-dependent, and that there are a number of ways that context could be determined. Although it remains unclear what underlying mechanisms are providing the context, it is abundantly clear that the relationship between landscape simplification and insecticide use observed in 2007 does not hold for previous census years. It is time to move beyond simply asking whether landscape simplification drives insecticide use and instead focus on what factors may explain the variability in this relationship over time and space.We are in an exciting time in Biology. Genomic discovery on a large scale is cheaper, easier and faster than ever. Picture a world where every piece of biological data is available to researchers from easy-to-find and well-organized resources; the data are accurately described and available in an accessible and standard formats; the experimental procedures, samples and time points are all completely documented; and researchers can find answers to any question about the data that they have. Imagine that, with just a few mouse clicks, you could determine the expression level of any gene under every condition and developmental stage that has ever been tested. You could explore genetic diversity in any gene to find mutations with consequences. Imagine seamless and valid comparisons between experiments from different groups. Picture a research environment where complete documentation of every experimental process is available,dutch bucket for tomatoes and data are always submitted to permanent public repositories, where they can be easily found and examined.

We ‘can’ imagine that world, and feel strongly that all outcomes of publicly funded research can and should contribute to such a system. It is simply too wasteful to ‘not’ achieve this goal. Proper data management is a critical aspect of research and publication. Scientists working on federally funded research projects are expected to make research findings publicly available. Data are the lifeblood of research, and their value often do not end with the original study, as they can be reused for further investigation if properly handled. Data become much more valuable when integrated with other data and information . For example, traits, images, seed/sample sources, sequencing data and high-throughput phenotyping results become much more informative when integrated with germplasm accessions and pedigree data. Access to low-cost, high-throughput sequencing, large-scale phenotyping and advanced computational algorithms, combined with significant funding by the National Science Foundation , the US Department of Agriculture and the US Department of Energy for cyber infrastructure and agricultural-related research have fueled the growth of databases to manage, store, integrate, analyse and serve these data and tools to scientists and other stakeholders. To describe agricultural-related databases, we use the term ‘GGB database’. GGB databases include any online resource that holds genomic, genetic, phenotypic and/or breeding-related information and that is organized via a database schema, and contained within a database management system , or non-relational storage systems. GGB databases play a central role in the communities they serve by curating and distributing published data, by facilitating collaborations between scientists and by promoting awareness of what research is being done and by whom in the community. GGB databases prevent duplicated research efforts and foster communication and collaboration between laboratories .

As more and more organisms are sequenced, cross-species investigations become increasingly informative, requiring researchers to use multiple GGB databases and requiring that GGB databases share data and use compatible software tools. Use of common data standards, vocabularies, ontologies and tools will make curation more effective, promote data sharing and facilitate comparative studies . The AgBioData consortium was formed in 2015 in response to the need for GGB personnel to work together to come up with better, more efficient database solutions. The mission of the consortium, comprised of members responsible for over 25 GGB databases and allied resources, is to work together to identify ways to consolidate and standardize common GGB database operations to create database products with more interoperability. The AgBioData consortium joins the larger scientific community in embracing the Findable, Accessible Interoperable, and Reusable data principles, established by stakeholders from the scientific, publishing and library communities . FAIR principles have rapidly become standard guidelines for proper data management, as they outline a road map to maximize data reuse across repositories. However, more specific guidelines on how to implement FAIR principles for agricultural GGB data are needed to assist and streamline implementation across GGB databases. Members of the AgBioData consortium convened in Salt Lake City, UT on 18 & 19 April 2017 to describe challenges and recommendations for seven topics relevant to GGB databases—Biocuration, Ontologies, Metadata and persistence, GGB database platforms, Programmatic access to data, Communication and Sustainability. Preceding this workshop, a survey was sent out to all AgBioData members regarding the seven topics, in order to identify concerns and challenges of AgBioData members. The results were used to focus and foster the workshop discussions. Here we present the current challenges facing GGBs in each of these seven areas and recommendations for best practices, incorporating discussions from the Salt Lake City meeting and results of the survey.

The purpose of this paper is 3-fold: first, to document the current challenges and opportunities of GGB databases and online resources regarding the collection, integration and provision of data in a standardized way; second, to outline a set of standards and best practices for GGB databases and their curators; and third, to inform policy and decision makers in the federal government, funding agencies, scientific publishers and academic institutions about the growing importance of scientific data curation and management to the research community. The paper is organized by the seven topics discussed at the Salt Lake City workshop. For each topic, we provide an overview, challenges and opportunities and recommendations. The acronym ‘API’ appears frequently in this paper, referring to the means by which software components communicate with each other: i.e. a set of instructions and data transfer protocols. We envision this paper will be helpful to scientists in the GGB database community, publishers, funders and policy makers and agricultural scientists who want to broaden their understanding of FAIR data practices.Bio-curators strive to present an accessible, accurate and comprehensive representation of biological knowledge . Bio-curation is the process of selecting and integrating biological knowledge, data and metadata within a structured database so that it can be accessible, understandable and reusable by the research community. Data and metadata are taken from peer-reviewed publications and other sources and integrated with other data to delivera value-added product to the public for further research. Biocuration is a multidisciplinary effort that involves subject area experts, software developers, bio-informaticians and researchers. The curation process usually includes a mixture of manual, semi-automated and fully automated workflows. Manual biocuration is the process of an expert reading one or several related publications, assessing and/or validating the quality of the data and entering data manually into a database using curation tools, or by providing spreadsheets to the database manager. It also encompasses the curation of facts or knowledge, in addition to raw data; for example, the role a gene plays in a particular pathway. These data include information on genes, proteins, DNA or RNA sequences, pathways, mutant and nonmutant phenotypes, mutant interactions, qualitative and quantitative traits, genetic variation, diversity and population data, genetic stocks, genetic maps, chromosomal information, genetic markers and any other information from the publication that the curator deems valuable to the database consumers. Manual curation includes determining and attaching appropriate ontology and metadata annotations to data. This sometimes requires interaction with authors to ensure data is represented correctly and completely,blueberry grow pot and indeed to ask where the data resides if they are not linked to a publication. In well-funded large GGB databases, manually curated data may be reviewed by one, two or even three additional curators. Manual biocuration is perhaps the best way to curate data, but no GGB database has enough resources to curate all data manually. Moreover, the number of papers produced by each research community continues to grow rapidly. Thus, semi-automated and fully automated workflows are also used by most databases. For example, a species-specific database may want to retrieve all Gene Ontology annotations for genes and proteins for their species from a multi-species database like UniProt . In this case, a script might be written and used to retrieve that data ‘en masse’. Prediction of gene homologs, orthologs and function can also be automated. Some of these standard automated processes require intervention at defined points from expert scientist to choose appropriate references, cut off values, perform verifications and do quality checks. All biocuration aims to add value to data. Harvesting biological data from published literature, linking it to existing data and adding it to a database enables researchers to access the integrated data and use it to advance scientific knowledge. The manual biocuration of genes, proteins and pathways in one or more species often leads to the development of algorithms and software tools that have wider applications and contribute to automated curation processes.

For example, The Arabidopsis Information Resource has been manually adding GO annotations to thousands of Arabidopsis genes from the literature since 1999. This manual GO annotation is now the gold standard reference set for all other plant GO annotations and is used for inferring gene function of related sequences in all other plant species . Another example is the manually curated metabolic pathways in Ecocyc, MetaCyc and PlantCyc, which have been used to predict genome-scale metabolic networks for several species based on gene sequence similarity . The recently developed Plant Reactome database has further streamlined the process of orthology-based projections of plant pathways by creating simultaneous projections for 74 species. These projections are routinely updated along with the curated pathways from the Reactome reference species Oryza sativa . Without manual biocuration of experimental data from Arabidopsis, rice and other model organisms, the plant community would not have the powerful gene function prediction workflows we have today, nor would the development of the wide array of existing genomic resources and automated protocols have been possible. Biocurators continue to provide feedback to improve automated pipelines for prediction workflows and help to streamline data sets for their communities and/or add a value to the primary data.Current efforts in machine learning and automated text mining to pull data or to rank journal articles for curation more effectively work to some extent, but so far these approaches are not able to synthesize a clear narrative and thus cannot yet replace biocurators. The manual curation of literature, genes, proteins, pathways etc. by expert biologists remains the gold standard used for developing and testing text mining tools and other automated workflows. We expect that although text-mining tools will help biocurators achieve higher efficiency, biocurators will remain indispensable to ensure accuracy and relevance of biological data. Well-curated GGB databases play an important role in the data lifecycle by facilitating dissemination and reuse. GGB databases can increase researchers’ efficiency, increase the return on research funding investment by maximizing reuse and provide use metrics for those who desire to quantify research impact. We anticipate that the demand for biocurators will increase as the tsunami of ‘big data’ continues. Despite the fact that the actual cost of data curation is estimated to be less than 0.1% of the cost of the research that generated primary data , data curation remains underfunded .Databases are focused on serving the varied needs of their stakeholders. Because of this, different GGB databases may curate different data types or curate similar data types to varying depths, and are likely to be duplicating efforts to streamline curation. In addition, limited resources for most GGB databases often prevent timely curation of the rapidly growing data in publications.The size and the complexity of biological data resulting from recent technological advances require the data to be stored in computable or standardized form for efficient integration and retrieval. Use of ontologies to annotate data is important for integrating disparate data sets. Ontologies are structured, controlled vocabularies that represent specific knowledge domains .

A rich range of secondary metabolites is predicted for the genomic bins

We next examined the genomic bins using antiSMASH 2.0. The majority of the clusters overall were uncategorized , followed by saccharides and fatty acids. non-ribosomal peptide synthases, bacteriocins, and terpenes, and polyketide synthases were also common. Arylpolyenes, lasso- and lantipeptides also were predicted as was one instance each of a siderophore and butyrolactone. MW5 had 229 clusters in 33 bins. MW6 had 371 clusters in 22 bins. DOM had 10 clusters in 158 bins. Notably, the CPR genomes that dominate the water samples have few predicted secondary metabolites on average. Because MW5 was dominated by these genomes, its density of clusters is correspondingly lower. However, some of the individual CPR bins are dense with bio-synthetic clusters . Thus while poor representation of CPR in existing databases may reduce utility of this approach, some of the genomes certainly have detectable clusters. Grouping the genomes phylogenetically , the most clusters occur in the Planctomycetes OM190 . A range of cluster densities was apparent in the rest of the bins. Notably, ladderane biosynthesis, a hallmark of the Planctomycetes,was detected by antiSMASH in all eight of the Planctomycete assemblies , confirming that these are all true Planctomycete genomes. AntiSMASH results show a rich diversity of secondary metabolites in the anammox genomes. Specifically enriched are fatty acids, saccharides, bacteriocins, and terpenes. The OM190 genome was additionally enriched in non-ribosomal peptide synthases, and anatoxin production was predicted. While anatoxin is known to come from cyanobacteria and not from Planctomycetes, its known bio-synthetic pathway invovles polyketide synthases,nft growing system of which 18 are predicted by antiSMASH in this genome. Thus, while this cluster does not likely encode a cyanotoxin, the biosynthetic potential of this genome could certainly produce toxic secondary metabolites.

Indeed, a large number of the predicted secondary metabolites are biologically active molecules that may target other cells in the microbial community and could potentially have side effects on mammals. We saw evidence of rich secondary metabolite biosynthetic potential in several other genomes as well. including representatives of OP3, OP11, Acidobacteria, Bacteroidales, Chlorobi, Chloroflexi, Domibacillus, Entotheonella, Leptonema, Nitrospira, Sphingomonas, Spirochaetes, and from DOM were enriched. Notably, we assembled an incomplete genome that appears to be related to cyanobacterial toxin producers. Its best RAPSEARCH hit was to a Planktothrix aghardii genome. The 500 kb fragment is rich in non-ribosomal peptide synthases, which are another toxin production system in the cyanobacteria and can poison humans. In order to confirm whether this might be a toxin producer, we built a BLAST database of microcystin genes found on NCBI and compared to the genome fragment using TBLASTX. We found numerous hits > 300 bp throughout the fragment, but the percent identity was roughly 40%, indicating that the sequences are diverged. Overall, antiSMASH predicts an enrichment in biosynthetic clusters with antimicrobial activity including bacteriocins, non-ribosomal peptide synthases, polyketide synthases, and lassopeptides. While many antibiotic compounds may have broad targets or even non-antagonistic effects, bacteriocins usually have very specific antibiotic activity, often against closely related strains. The prevalence of predicted bacteriocins in the genomes suggests direct competition between genomes. For example, the Brocadiaceae Planctomycete genomes which co-occur in MW6 are predicted to have on average one bacteriocin per genome, which could be used to compete with the related strains.Overall we find that the metagenomic communities present in groundwater reflect the measured chemical conditions: we measured high nitrogen and DOC as well as a microbial community largely dominated by nitrifier, denitrifier, and anammox bacteria .

Our analysis revealed strain-level variation within key members of this community as well as the potential for rich biosynthetic capacity. We also found evidence for niche specialization based on analysis of the genetic pathways present . Such niche specialization between species in an anammox community was recently reported for a partial nitritation anammox reactor in a wastewater treatment plant. We find evidence that a similar microbial community is present in shallow, nitrate rich groundwater, and there are multiple anammox strains within a single well. The prevalence of the anammox genomes at over 10% abundance suggests that these bacteria are major drivers of the natural geochemistry of this environment. An implicit consequence is conversion of ammonium and nitrate into nitrite and N2 gas. Additionally, nitrite-dependent anaerobic oxidation of methane may be coupled to anammox in this community, reducing potential greenhouse gas emissions.An important aspect of the present study is that the source of the nitrate is cow manure, which also carries a considerable carbon load that supports microbial metabolism. Nitrates derived from synthetic fertilizers do not carry a carbon source and thus may be associated with a considerably different microbial community. Thus, different sources of nitrate could have different potential for bioremediation. Furthermore, we must consider the source of the microbial community in the environment. The Central Valley of California was once an extensive wetland, and wetland-associated microbial communities perform nitrifier, denitrifer, n-damo, and anammox reactions. If the source of the community were different, we might expect to see a different set metabolic processes with different implications for water quality and greenhouse gas emissions.

An overlap in anaerobic nitrogen and sulfur redox reactions was shown by Canfield et al in the oxygen minimum zone of the ocean. Our metagenomic data and chemical data indicate the potential for a similar overlap in nitrogen and sulfur cycles in groundwater, with OP11 Microgenomates specifically involved through assimilatory sulfur reduction . As shown previously , nitrate levels were highest in MW5 , and lower in MW6 and DOM . The sulfate levels follow a similar trend: MW5, 68.8 ppm; MW6, 15.3 ppm; DOM 2.3 ppm. The microbial abundances and corresponding chemical pathway analysis suggest that these pathways overlap in organisms that exist in the appropriate nutrient conditions. Furthermore the presence of Candidatus Methylomirabilis with the anammox communities in MW6 and DOM supports the findings of Shen et al that denitrification may be coupled to methane oxidation, reducing potential methane emissions of degrading manure.The high abundance of anammox and associated nitrifier and denitrifier bacteria in the nitrate-rich samples suggests that excess nitrate and ammonium in groundwater may be naturally remediated [or mineralized] to N2 by the endogenous microbiota. The presence of a natural microbial community that closely resembles the nitritation-anammox active sludge community for sewage wastewater denitrification could also be taken as an indication that the shallow groundwater in the Central Valley is recharged from sources similar to sewage wastewater. Based on extensive, controlled studies of this community, e.g, it appears possible that simply by decreasing the input of manure into the groundwater, the nitrogen pollutants could decrease below harmful levels. This implication holds true in the shallow groundwater as well as in the deep groundwater, where we still see evidence of the nitritationanammox community despite lower levels of nitrate . The nitrate:DOC ratio is similar between MW5, MW6, and DOM , although the total DOC and nitrate levels are an order of magnitude different between each of the samples with MW5>>MW6>>DOM, presumably due to different levels of dilution of the manured water with recharge from the adjacent, unmanured fields. The abundance of a similar nitrifer/denitrifier and anammox microbial community in all three samples appears to mirror the total DOC and nitrate, supporting the notion that bio-remediation of nitrate and DOC scales with nutrient abundance both through direct nutrition and through community metabolism. With increased sampling,nft hydroponic system observed differences in microbial communities may aid in forensic “fingerprinting” approaches to detect sources of nitrate in groundwater.The metagenomes also indicate a potential concern, which is that the same organisms that remediate the nitrogen also produce bio-active secondary metabolites that pose potential health risks and are more difficult and expensive to remove from drinking water. Thus, as groundwater becomes a scarcer and more valuable resource, quantifying the downstream risks of organic manure fertilizer contamination in groundwater becomes a more important priority. There has been speculation about how slow growing anammox bacteria can maintain a competitive advantage over faster growing bacteria. The high abundance of secondary metabolite gene clusters in their genomes may give us a clue.

Our analysis annotated a diverse array of these gene clusters as various antimicrobials, which could of course help the slow growing anammox cells maintain their dominance in the community. Groundwater microbiomes are unique communities and their metagenomes have not been extensively mined for new biosynthesis pathways. Using anti-SMASH we computationally identified many bio-synthetic gene clusters that could produce pharmacologically interesting compounds, such as butyrolactone and antibiotics. We suggest the combination of this pharmacological diversity and the unique cell biology of anammox bacteria could make them a fruitful resource for drug discovery.While short read metagenome data can potentially provide insights into taxonomic identities of organisms, we found greatly improved taxonomic inference and functional pathway inference by using partial assembly of the short reads. For instance, while MetaPhlAn analysis gave us a good depiction of the taxonomic similarity between samples , the accuracy of assignments was not sufficient to guide the choice of reference genomes for assembly of the whole metagenome deep sequencing reads, indicating that our particular samples have a taxonomic distribution that is poorly represented in the available databases that MetaPhlAn uses. Assembly of 16S rDNA from short reads is known to be chimera-prone due to the high homology across the tree of life. Solely using EMIRGE to assemble 16S genes and then aligning to SILVA gave us a much more accurate depiction of the phylogenetic diversity in our samples. However, connecting the 16S taxonomy to the genomic bins was problematic. When we tried to link these genes to contigs in the bins using targeted assembly , we found that multiple 16S genes assembled to a given genomic bin. While we could make good guesses at which 16S gene belonged to which genomic bin, we could not make these links in an unbiased manner. Therefore, we have omitted them here. While our analysis reveals only a fraction of the inherent long-tailed distribution of taxa that occur in the groundwater, because we are interested in the major factors shaping water chemistry, the most abundant taxa are the most important to sample. Thus a sequencing depth of ~50 million PE 101 bp reads per sample is quite adequate for assessing the functional geochemistry of groundwater. However, as discussed earlier, a high amount of strain-level variation is present that our current methodologies can only address at a superficial level.We found evidence for strain-level variation in the anammox community both across samples and within bins . While making further distinctions between strains is beyond the scope of this paper, future investigations into the ecological factors that support anammox strain variation with apparently overlapping niches would help define the biology of this globally important denitrifying community. Here we find evidence that at least three related Brocadiaceae strains can coexist .We find many , highly diverse, nano-prokaryote genomes , and the abundance of these genomes amounts to over 50% of the community in MW5 . Because these organisms have been shown to lack major parts of central metabolism, this observation emphasizes the question posed by Brown et al, which is, to what extent do nano-prokaryotes exist as separate cellular entities versus spatially localized to and metabolically dependent upon other cells? Of note is the presence in the small genomes of many partial pathways that affect cellular decision-making . In particular, most of the small genomes encode homologs of flagellar chemotaxis components, which we speculate could serve to modify the cellular decision-making behavior of larger cells. We note that the greater diversity of Chloroflexi, CPR, and DPANN taxa in MW5 versus MW6 and DOM corresponds to a greater presence of nitrate, sulfate, and DOC, which is contrary to macroecological theory and empirical results that demonstrate loss of diversity with increased nutrients. Future studies could address whether these phylogenetic abundance patterns are directly tied to particular nutrients or an indirect consequence of trophic community metabolism, which could aid in optimizing ecology of wastewater treatment bioreactors.Because of the employment opportunities and economic multipliers it creates, especially during the early stages of development, agriculture has long been at the center of discussions about poverty reduction and economic development .

The minimum number of years of coverage required to receive a full pension was also increased

When some form of compensation is not offered, the reform is almost certain to be defeated. Thus, the eco tax was had little chance of success, given that farmers were not offered any compensation in exchange for this new cost being imposed on them. In June 2014, the Hollande government unveiled the final version of the eco tax plan, now called “truck tolls”. The new plan applied only to trucks weighing 3.5 tons or more and included just 4,000 kilometers of road, as against 15,000 kilometers in the original plan. In addition, all proposed roads in Brittany, the epicenter of the protests, were exempted from the tolls. Trucks carrying agricultural goods, milk collection vehicles, and circus related-traffic were also exempted. As a result of the transportation exemptions and significantly smaller area of coverage, the toll is expected to generate only a third of the revenue of the original plan.The French eco tax example shares much in common with CAP reform, particularly in the area of environmental policy. Proposed environmental policies in the CAP often mean that new costs will be imposed on farmers who are forced to conform to stricter standards and modify their farming methods in some way. These attempted reforms are virtually always modified by farmers in one of two ways: by extracting a new or additional form of compensation for meeting these rules or by compelling reformers to adopt exemptions,hydroponic grow kit often so extensive that barely any farmers are subjected to new rules.

In the case of the French eco tax, farmers followed the latter course: when faced with a tax that would have imposed new financial burdens on producers, they successfully compelled the government to completely exempt agriculture. The victory is all the more significant since these exemptions cost the government badly needed tax revenue at a time of austerity. The successful campaign against the eco tax highlights some of the new sources of power that farmers have developed. Organizations were one important source of power. The FNSEA demonstrated the ability to coordinate its membership and to rely on regional branches to place pressure on both national and local politicians. In the fight against this tax, the FNSEA deployed multiple tactics to exert influence on the policy making process, mobilizing members for public demonstrations while simultaneously lobbying local and national political officials. The protesting French farmers also benefited from a sympathetic public that did not begrudge the massive disruptions and disturbances caused by demonstrations and blockades. While French farmers were able to use their powerful organizations to avoid a new, uncompensated tax, the same cannot be said of other groups. At virtually the same time farmers were thwarting a new tax, a series of austerity-driven pension reforms went ahead. Unlike the case of the eco tax, protests did nothing to stop the reforms, and the policy changes were adopted despite widespread civil unrest. In 2010, then-president Nicolas Sarkozy proposed a series of reforms to the French pension system. The reforms included raising the retirement age from 60 to 62 along with increasing the age at which one qualifies for a full pension from 65 to 67.

In addition, the number of years of required social security contributions increased from 40.5 to 41.5 years. In response to the proposed reforms, nearly 3 million people took to the streets, with plane and train travel severely disrupted and other sectors of the economy virtually shut down as the major unions called for strikes. Fuel shortages were a perpetual problem during the protests, as dock workers went on strike, leaving petrol stranded at ports. In addition, schools, ports, and airports were blockaded by demonstrators. In this case, however, coordinated protest was not able to compel the government to roll back reforms. Just a few years later, in 2014, Sarkozy’s successor, François Hollande enacted further reform to the French pension system. Contribution rates for both employers and employees were raised, a previously tax-exempt supplement for retirees who raised three or more children was made subject to taxation, and the number of years of required social security contributions was increased from 41.5 to 43 years. While France is generally viewed as farmer-friendly, the French case is not an outlier. Looking at other Western European countries, a similar pattern emerges. Pensions cuts were imposed, while national discretionary agricultural spending remained virtually untouched. Indeed, across Europe, pensions were significantly reformed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, placing new financial burdens on the average worker. This contrast between pension policies and agricultural expenditure is all the more glaring when the broader context is taken into account: less than two percent of the population benefits from agricultural support policies while all citizens are current or future pensioners. Current spending levels are not a good indicator of reform, since much pension spending is locked in by decisions made decades ago. In the case of pensions, cuts are best identified by increases in the minimum retirement age or downward cost of living adjustments. Such reforms occurred in each of the four country cases, as summarized in Table 7.1.Germany reformed its pensions in 2007, just before the onset of the financial crisis, raising the retirement age from 65 to 67. In the UK, reforms raised the retirement age from 66 to 67.

New reforms also increased the minimum number of years of contributions to qualify for a full pension from 30 to 35 years. A 2013 Dutch pension reform raised the minimum retirement age to 65 for workers currently under the age 55.While pensions were being cut across Europe, farmers were spared. At the EU level, in the first CAP reform after the financial crisis, spending on the CAP was not cut, and instead money was taken out of other areas in order to channel more support to farmers. Indeed, this reallocation of funds back into farming happened despite a stated objective of directing more money away from agriculture and into other objectives, like improving the provision of high speed internet. Spending on farmers was also preserved at the domestic level. European national governments spend some money on agriculture outside the CAP. National financing of agriculture comes via three main avenues: top-ups of Pillar 1 direct income payments; cofinancing of Pillar 2 programs ; and additional state aid payments to farmers by their national governments. Figure 7.1 tracks national agricultural expenditure as reported by the European Union in its annual statistical yearbook. Farmers in Japan have enjoyed great success in imposing their policy preferences due in part to their homogeneity and highly organized representative associations. Small farmers dominate the agricultural sector, which makes it easy for farmer associations to promulgate a single, coherent message. In addition, a strong union that is well organized nationally, regionally, and locally, represents Japanese farmers. Finally, unlike Europe and the United States, there is little if any pressure from sectoral organizations. The main farming organization in Japan is Japan Agriculture, referred to as JA or Nōkyō. The JA is a three-tiered organization, with national, prefectural, and local-level cooperative groups. The JA commands near universal membership of the Japanese farming community in large part due to the services and benefits it offers. It claims to have nearly 10 million members . Its main businesses are banking, insurance, hydroponic indoor growing system agricultural retail and wholesaling, and supply of farming materials. In addition to these benefits and services, which are not uncommon among agricultural cooperatives, the JA’s scope of business includes real estate, travel agencies, supermarkets, and even funeral homes . Essentially, “within the villages, the JA is a one-stop service. Farmers and everyone else in the village use JA services” . An LDP politician explained that the JA has far-reaching influence and is a cornerstone of rural society, with even non-farmers depending on the JA for services, “No other organizations in Japan are like the JA with so much local organization and influence. The JA is crucial in local community because of the infrastructure it provides. As a result, even non-farmers in rural areas need and depend upon the JA” . Ultimately, this wide range of services means that the JA can forge a relationship with farmers and the broader rural community that extends beyond just agriculture. Indeed, the JA can assist rural communities in all their needs, even those that come after death.

Along with high membership levels, much of the JA’s power derives from the fact that it has been in an official corporatist relationship with the state since it was formally created via legislation in 1947. This close relationship with the state has been quite beneficial for the JA, with the government at times heavily regulating and protecting the JA’s banking and insurance businesses, even going so far as to bail out JA banking multiple times, both after 1980s economic bubble burst and again in 2008. For example, Norin-Chukin a major agricultural cooperative bank had invested extensively in real estate during the 1980s boom. When the bubble burst and the real estate market collapsed, JA affiliated banks, Norin-Chukin chief among them, sustained heavy losses. As a result of political lobbying, the JA was able to reach an agreement where it was only responsible for ¥530 billion out of a total of ¥5.5 trillion in losses . The state has also granted the JA exceptional status in antitrust law, which has afforded the JA monopolies on the supply of agricultural inputs to farmers . Further exceptions are made for the insurance wing of the JA, “which is allowed to sell multiple kinds of insurance whereas other firms are traditionally limited to providing only one type of insurance” . As these examples suggest, farmers and the JA have been quite successful in their efforts to influence agricultural policy making. An important area of success for Japanese farmers has been in shaping Japan’s trade negotiations, pressing for protectionism even when other groups seek greater trade liberalization. In these negotiations, Japanese agriculture is able to impose its preferences despite pressure from the Japanese business lobby, Keidanren, which stands to gain far more from liberalization than agriculture would ever lose. These victories for Japanese farmers have come at both the GATT/WTO and in Japan’s bilateral trade agreements. The GATT Uruguay Round sought to reduce if not eliminate agricultural subsidies and remove tariffs and trade barriers in an effort to liberalize agricultural trade. In these negotiations, Japan’s position was largely defensive and was grounded in a desire to make as few concessions as possible. Its objectives were shaped primarily by the special position of rice producers and also by the overall high level of protection of agriculture. The LDP, whose political position was vulnerable at the time, promised farmers that no amount of foreign rice would be allowed to enter the domestic market . Fundamental incompatibility between GATT objectives and the policy preferences of major negotiating parties, including Japan and the European Community, resulted in the round grinding to a halt. In the end, although reducing tariffs was a major goal of the negotiations, a modification was negotiated specifically for Japan to allow it to delay tariffication of rice in exchange for accepting more imports of agricultural products, but only in sectors that were unimportant to Japanese agriculture such as dairy production. In addition, farmer subsidies were protected, despite the GATT UR goals of eliminating them. By the end of the GATT UR negotiations, Japanese farmers walked away with an agreement that protected their core commodities and allowed them to largely avoid the removal of tariffs for key products, while also maintaining a system of income support for farmers. Farmers have seen similar success in Japan’s bilateral trade negotiations. In September of 2003, Japan was in the final stages of a free trade agreement with Mexico, which had been delayed by agricultural opposition. Frustrated with the delays, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi ordered his trade negotiators to “get it done” . In the end, a tripartite coalition of agricultural representatives was able to extract considerable concessions for agriculture that finally allowed the agreement to move forward. The concessions included a reduction in the level of tariffs that had to be removed and special protection arrangements for “politically sensitive” commodities including pork, beef, chicken, oranges, and orange juice . Although this free trade agreement was concluded with Mexico, agriculture continued to block any progress on other free trade agreements Japanese officials desired at the time with the Philippines, Thailand, and South Korea.

Mandatory cross-compliance could also attenuate the image of the farmer as a polluter

As with Fischler’s strategy in articulating agricultural policy reform, keeping the proposals secret allows the reformers to conduct research and compile data and evidence to justify the proposed changes. These data, on issues such as expected savings, distribution of benefits across groups, or overall change in total support, allowed reformers to support their proposals with evidence, while those who oppose the initiatives are caught flatfooted. Finally, secrecy prevents welfare state beneficiaries from marshalling opposition to reform before the proposals can be fully presented and explained.The plan developed by Fischler and his associates contained three core elements: decoupling of income payments, modulation, and cross-compliance. The first element called for the full decoupling of direct supports to farmers. Payments are coupled when the amount of money a farmer receives depends on how much he or she produces. Coupled payments were the original backbone of the CAP. When the CAP was created, Europe was struggling through its post-war recovery and food shortages were still a concern. Incentivizing production was essential for overcoming these challenges. Over time, production-based payments got out of hand, resulting in the milk lakes and butter mountains that plagued the CAP in the late 1980s and early 1990s. As previous chapters explain, Ray MacSharry was able to take major steps toward managing the surplus problem by implementing, among other reforms, a partial decoupling of payments from production. In the 2003 reform, Fischler sought to complete the work that MacSharry had started, and completely decouple payments from production. Full decoupling was also a crucial and necessary step towards strengthening the EU’s bargaining position in the next round of WTO discussions. Coupled payments are market distorting and thus an object of particular ire within the WTO. In addition,drainage pot for plants coupled payments were exacerbating problems that Fischler feared would diminish public support for the CAP.

Production-based payments incentivized farmers to produce at all costs, with no concern for resulting damage to the land. Production-based payments also skewed the distribution of support. The largest farmers were able to produce the most, ensuring that they got the most money. Finally, production-based subsidies, particularly in times of surplus, were wasteful and increasingly costly. Prices remained high for the consumer, yet expensive, massive stockpiles existed that the EU had to spend a considerable amount of money to buy, store, and dump. By fully decoupling the payment scheme, Fischler would be able to address two of the biggest challenges facing the CAP: compliance with WTO rules and the persistence of unequal and environmentally harmful CAP policies. Decoupling would allow CAP payments to be classified as in the WTO’s green box. The EU would thus be able to offer a key concession of sorts in the Doha Round negotiations by moving its agricultural subsidies into the box that is least trade distorting. As a result, the EU would be in position to press its interests across all sectors, as opposed to being targeted by other counties for having an agricultural policy that did not comply with WTO rules and regulations. Decoupling would also reduce the gap in support across the farming community, and diminish incentives for environmentally damaging farming practices. Payments tied to production had resulted in a dramatic disparity in how income support funds were distributed, with less than one fifth of farmers receiving fourth fifths of the support. The largest farmers continued to produce more and more, widening the gap between themselves and smaller or less productive farmers. Moreover, production-based payments incentivize farmers to produce as much as possible, no matter the costs or consequences for the environment. When these payments are decoupled, the income gap between the most productive and the rest can be contained, and the environment is spared the harmful effects of farmers who attempt to grow as much as possible. Most farmers would not stand to lose much in this change from coupled to decoupled payments.

The Single Farm Payment , calculated with reference to size of holding and historical yields, would replace the coupled payment system. Specifically, the amount of aid received between 2000-2002 would be divided by the number of hectares actively farmed during that reference period. The resulting figure would be the farmers’ new income payment under the SFP. Under this system, farmers would also gain “complete farming flexibility”, allowing them to grow any crop they desired . Receipt of the full SFP would be subject to meeting stringent environmental, food safety, and animal welfare standards . In the end, decoupling was a way of paying farmers the same money, but from a new pot. This outcome is consistent with one of my core claims, that it is difficult if not impossible to cut support for farmers. The second component of the proposal was dynamic modulation. Modulation is a mechanism employed by the European Union whereby income payments are gradually reduced and the funds collected are distributed to support other initiatives. In other words, this program “modulates” or modifies and controls the flow of funds to farmers and uses the savings to increase spending on other programs or member states. The program was called dynamic because the redeployment of funds was not fixed but instead could respond to those areas most in need of additional financial support. The policy entailed not only a gradual reduction of income payments, but also the redeployment and distribution of the funds collected under the program. Most of the revenue collected would be retained by member states, but earmarked for rural development programs. The rest was to be redistributed to other member states in an effort to reduce existing disparities in the allocation of CAP support. Fischler’s dynamic modulation proposal entailed a progressive reduction in direct income payments, beginning with 3% in 2005 and increasing in 3% increments annually, until it reached 20%. Exemptions were to be made for farms that received less than €5,000 annually. Farms that were labor intensive, thus providing jobs in the local community, could have up to €8,000 exempted from dynamic modulation, at the member state’s discretion.

Though this program seemed to be cutting overall levels of spending, the money garnished from farmer income payments was not leaving the CAP but rather being redirected into other CAP programs. Member states would keep a portion of the money for rural development and environmental programs, while the rest would be re-distributed among member states “on the basis of agricultural area, agricultural employment, and prosperity criteria to target specific rural needs” . Through this system of redistribution, and by garnishing the payments of the farmers who earned the most, dynamic modulation would contribute to achieving the twin goals of reducing the disparity in payments between large and smaller farmers and improving the distribution across member states. Dynamic modulation is an example of using the welfare state tactic of turning vice into virtue in the context of agricultural policy reform. Specifically, the dynamic modulation reform revised an existing program , reorienting this CAP program to operate more equitability. As with vice into virtue in the world of the social welfare state, an existing program that was operating inefficiently and inequitably was corrected through reform, rather than eliminating the policy entirely and attempting to replace it. Payments for all farmers above a certain threshold would be reduced, and collected funds would be redeployed to other areas of need. This objective of reducing the disparity in payment levels within and across countries was taken increasingly seriously,garden pots ideas as inequality in the operation of CAP support payments was beginning to garner attention beyond EU technocrats. The Commission noted that dynamic modulation would “allow some redistribution from intensive cereal and livestock producing countries to poorer and more extensive/mountainous countries, bringing positive environmental and cohesion effects” . The redirection of funds from income payments to rural development programs was also a tangible way for EU officials to signal a stronger commitment to the CAP’s social and environmental objectives. These social and environmental objectives had been identified by the public via Eurobarometer surveys as both the most important objectives of the CAP and areas where the CAP was failing to meet existing expectations. Also included in the dynamic modulation package was a proposal to cap the amount of direct aid any individual farmer could receive at €300,000 a year. This proposal was motivated by the desire to prevent large farms from receiving what many considered to be exorbitant sums of money. Specifically, it would address public concerns over the inequality in the operation of CAP payments. The payment cap was also intended to help correct the problem of an inequitable distribution of support within and across countries. This limit would reduce the overall gap between the largest and smallest recipients. In addition, it would begin to correct for payment imbalances among member states, as most of the farmers who would be subjected to the income cap were concentrated in a few member states. The inclusion of a cap on income payments is another example of CAP reformers employing the vice into virtue technique, which has been similarly used by welfare state reformers to correct welfare programs that are operating inefficiently or producing unequal outcomes. The third and final reform was mandatory crosscompliance. In Agenda 2000, cross compliance was adopted only in voluntary form. In the MTR, Fischler sought to make this program compulsory. Under cross-compliance, direct payments could be made conditional on achieving certain environmental goals. The income payment could, for example, be reduced if a farmer failed to comply with a given environmental rule.

Farmers who met the standards would receive the full amount of direct payments for which they were eligible, but would not receive a bonus for full compliance. Farmers who received direct payments would be required to maintain all of their land in good agricultural and environmental condition; if not, payment reductions were to be applied as a sanction . The inclusion of cross-compliance in Agenda 2000 positioned Fischler to make further reforms in the MTR, because he had already softened the ground in the previous agreement. As Fischler noted, “all the components of cross compliance [in the MTR proposal] were things that were already in place since Agenda 2000, but the member states had been responsible for implementing them. However, most members didn’t do it, or did a lousy job of implementing them” . Leading Commission officials argued that the member states had already approved and accepted the concept of cross compliance, so there was no reason that it should be rejected during the MTR. In reality, the vast majority of member states had chosen not to implement any of the standards or rules because cross compliance was an optional program. Still, Fischler was able to put them on the defensive for “failing” to implement Agenda 2000. As Fischler explained, “farmer ministers were put in a hard spot because now they had to account for failure to implement all of these measures in the past. They couldn’t oppose the concept of cross-compliance because they had already agreed to it, so they made the usual complaint that it would hurt farmers, but that’s always their line” . Fischler saw cross compliance as a legitimacy-boosting technique because it tied eligibility for support to compliance with environmental conditions and standards . Cross-compliance would help address public criticism of the CAP by strengthening the greening component and further developing the image of the farmer as a provider of not just food, but broader public goods and services.Fischler’s proposal for the MTR was sent to the College of Commissioners for formal discussion, revision, and approval. The proposal was well received by the Commission overall. Fischler was respected within the Commission as an agricultural expert and a reformer . The way for his proposal was further smoothed, thanks to an October 2002 agreement engineered by Chirac and Schröder at the Brussels European Council meeting, which guaranteed that the agricultural budget for direct-market supports would not be cut before 2013, when a new budget would be drafted . Even though Commission President Romano Prodi had previously expressed a desire to cut the CAP by up to 30%, the ChiracSchröder deal prevented him from doing so, despite the fact that he was supported by other Commissioners who hoped to use these CAP cuts to direct more support into their own portfolios.

The final component of the agreement was a set of three non-binding accompanying measures

The portion of land affected varied by type of production. Financial support for the rest of the land would come as before, via a system of guaranteed prices. In other words, direct income payments were only partially decoupled from production. The third component of the agreement was a mandatory land set-aside program, to remove land from production with the objectives of reducing output and improving the health of the land. Reducing output would also in the long run reduce CAP expenditures, as costs for storage and dumping would decrease. While long-term savings was an oft-repeated refrain of the reforms, details of exactly when these savings would come and how much they would be were murky at best. Contrary to the stipulations of the initial proposal, in the final agreement, land that was required to be set aside was eligible for compensatory payments for price cuts.These measures sought to improve the environmental health of the land via a series of programs, including agri-environmental initiatives, afforestation, and early retirement. These measures were significantly watered down from the initial proposal circulated by Agricultural Commissioner Ray MacSharry. A fifth major proposal, modulation, which would redirect money from the biggest CAP beneficiaries to the smallest farmers, was defeated and thus did not make it into the final agreement. Table 3.1 below presents the initial and final form of each key measure included in the agreement. Not only were price cuts much smaller than initially proposed, but compensation was extended further. Specifically set-aside land,blueberry plant container which was not supposed to be eligible for a compensation payment, was included in that scheme.

Beyond having smaller than proposed pricecuts and a broader extension of compensation, beef and dairy producers benefited from an additional, hidden form compensation in that price cuts to cereals lowered their input costs related to animal feed. In addition, efforts to redirect additional compensation to small farmers and to reduce the payments of the largest CAP beneficiaries via modulation were completely thwarted. As a Financial Times editorial noted, “the more muscular reform that MacSharry had originally envisioned was sapped by the fierce outcry of the EC’s farm lobbies, echoed and targeted by their agricultural ministers” . The MacSharry Reform fits a broader pattern observable across CAP reforms. Changes to CAP policies and programs rarely if ever take money away from farmers; instead, they change how farmers are paid. In the case of the MacSharry Reform, price cuts did not ultimately take money away from farmers. While EU farmers had previously been supported by the CAP through a system of high prices, that support was transitioning to a direct income support system. In the end, farmers were still being paid the same money; it was merely coming from a new pot. This pattern holds up across other CAP reforms. In CAP reform, there is never direct retrenchment, only recalibration. In other words, spending is not cut, but the operation of the program, including how funds are delivered, is reformed. Of the twin goals of lowering spending and reducing production levels and overall output, most progress was made toward achieving the latter. Mandatory set asides removed land from production, a direct initiative to counteract out of control commodity production. The introduction of partial decoupling through a system of price cuts and compensatory payments also worked to reduce at least the incentives for production. It replaced a system that previously encouraged and rewarded farmers for extracting as much as they could from the land. While the reforms included major strides toward reducing production, the MacSharry Reform failed to decrease overall spending.

Although the reform was undertaken with a major objective of reducing CAP expenditure, and proposals were written with this goal in mind, the end result was a reform that actually increased CAP costs in the short run and, due to the lagged implementation of price cuts, would not actually deliver cheaper prices to consumers until the mid-to-late 1990s . On top of the lack of savings related to smaller price cuts and the broader than anticipated extension of compensation, the accompanying measures targeted for early retirement, rural development, and other agri-environmental concerns added an additional 6 billion ECU to CAP spending. The failure to include modulation in the final agreement, which would have limited the maximum payment earnable by the largest farmers, and thus reduced total payment output levels, added another 6 billion ECU in CAP spending. Savings could be expected only in the long term as production levels fell and the EU would no longer have to finance the purchase, storage, and dumping of vast stocks of excess goods.The CAP reform agreed to in March of 1999 was one part of the EU-wide Agenda 2000 initiative. The scheme, formally called “Agenda 2000: For a Stronger and Wider Europe” was intended to prepare the EU for the new millennium, including the adoption of a common currency, the Euro, enlargement towards Eastern and Central Europe, and challenges related to globalization and the continued spread and development of new technologies. The Commission intended for Agenda 2000 to consider “how to develop the European mode of society in the 21st century and how to best respond to the major concerns of citizens” including unemployment, social exclusion, and the environment . In specific reference to agriculture, the report acknowledged that the 1992 CAP reform had been successful but suggested that “the time has come to deepen the reform and to take further movement towards world market prices coupled to direct income aids” . More broadly, the Commission’s guiding document for the Agenda 2000 reforms suggested that the EU had to modernize and reorganize its structures while also concentrating on the essentials and those areas where Europe could provide real added value.

Despite the ambitious agenda, the end result was a CAP reform whose major proposals were either defeated outright, or, at best, made optional for member states to adopt. A key factor explaining the failure to adopt meaningful reform is that there were no major crises that exerted pressure on the CAP. The next round of the WTO had yet to commence. Enlargement was still several years down the road, and the formal terms of CAP accession had not yet been determined. CAP spending was running high, as was normal, but there was no major spending threat, especially since the MacSharry reforms, combined with global price and production yields, seemed to be achieving their intended goal of reducing production. Ultimately,30 plant pot there was no powerful crisis that could credibly be used to justify truly dramatic change or to force an agreement. Unlike his predecessor Ray MacSharry, Agricultural Commissioner Franz Fischler was leading this reform during politics as usual conditions. Fischler thus had little mandate for reform. The purpose of this chapter is to account for the content of the 1999 Agenda 2000 CAP reform and to explain why the reform proposals were largely gutted. The Agenda 2000 CAP agreement contained no landmark reform. Instead previous reforms were preserved and the Commission’s major initiatives in the areas of greening and balancing payments were either made optional or entirely defeated. First, decoupling was preserved and further extended through a series of market reforms to the three most important areas of production: arable goods, beef, and dairy. The cuts were overall somewhat smaller and slower and with greater compensation than reformers had hoped. Beef prices, for example would be cut by 20% as opposed to the 30% proposed and price cuts for milk would be delayed by 6 years, beginning in 2006 instead of 2000 as the Commission hoped. More importantly, these cuts were expected as part of the agreement reached in 1992 to move to decouple the CAP; they do not constitute a new change to CAP policy. Second, the new environmental measure, called cross-compliance, that sought to link direct payments to good environmental practices was made optional instead of mandatory with the member states given virtually complete discretion over if and how to implement the program. If a member state actually chose to participate, it would also be allowed to use its own environmental standards. Modulation, a program to account for payment imbalances across member states by redistributing CAP funds, was likewise made entirely voluntary. Finally, a cap on farmer income payments over 100k ECU was entirely rejected. To the extent that any change was made, CAP reform mirrored the process of welfare state retrenchment, with reformers employing a variety of tactics to slip through any reform possible and hopefully position themselves to achieve more substantial retrenchment in the future. While the environmental programs introduced under Agenda 2000 were voluntary, their inclusion in the CAP agreement positioned policymakers to make more significant reforms in that direction in the future. In this way, the path of these environmental reforms is quite similar to how systemic reforms occur in the process of welfare state retrenchment.

As is typical, the final package included a number of side payments, concessions, and exemptions in order to facilitate the agreement. For example, the measures to cut prices and further decouple payment from production included smaller cuts than initially proposed, with implementation delayed by a number of years and substantial income supports provided to farmers.Agenda 2000 illustrates the importance of disruptive politics for achieving meaningful CAP reform. It demonstrates what reform efforts look like when there are no crises to drive forward major change: major proposals are substantially watered down, made optional, or entirely defeated. The far-reaching reforms that bookended Agenda 2000 were driven by disruptive politics: failing trade negotiations and a CAP system that would be unsustainable in a newly enlarged Europe. In these cases, disruptive politics allowed for fundamental change to CAP programs. The situation surrounding the Agenda 2000 reform was vastly different, with Fischler attempting to lead negotiations during politics as usual. While at first glance it might seem that enlargement, a powerful source of disruptive politics might be at play in the Agenda 2000 reform, a closer look at the circumstances reveals that no such pressure was brought by enlargement. In 2004, ten new member states were scheduled to join the EU. All the new member states, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia, were from Central and Eastern Europe, and were comparatively poorer and less developed than the existing member states. In addition, these countries had agricultural sectors that were much larger and less efficient than the current member states. For this reason, it was projected that it would be difficult and expensive to transition the new Central and Eastern European countries into the CAP. One, albeit narrow, area where enlargement did exert some pressure on reformers was in the domain of price supports. Studies conducted suggested that, without price cuts, the costs of integrating the new member states to the CAP would be “unacceptably high” . Specifically, a 1997 DGVI study estimated that the accession of the ten new Central and East European countries to the CAP would cost between 10-12 billion ECU, with roughly half of that, or 5-6 billion ECU needed to cover direct payments . The study suggested that, if the CAP remained unreformed, these costs could even increase further, as the new member states would exacerbate existing stock build up problems. In addition, if existing EU prices were not brought closer to the lower levels in the new member states, analysts warned that these prices might trigger a new surplus problem, which the MacSharry Reform had worked sohard to combat, and could also result in higher domestic food prices, which would place further financial strain on a population that was already comparatively poorer . Enlargement was ultimately not a significant pressure for reform, however, because member states and the Commission were operating under the assumption that farmers in the new member states would not be eligible for the direct income payments introduced under the MacSharry Reform. Their exclusion was based on the grounds that farmers in these countries had not faced the price cuts for which the direct payment scheme compensated and were actually likely to see prices for their goods increase .

Dutch agriculture is defined by small but incredibly efficient holdings

Although a transition from agriculture to industry and rural to urban might seem natural, it is in reality perilous and difficult. Both Karl Polanyi and Alexander Gerschenkron provide cautionary tales of the mismanagement of class decline. They demonstrate that the most fundamental potential consequences of poor class management are collapse of democratic regimes and the rise of authoritarian alternatives, accompanied by social unrest. Thus in the wake of a war that destroyed the continent and saw the rise of fascism in the heart of Europe, the post-war task of successfully managing the decline of the farmers was immensely important. The Common Agricultural Policy was the plan for navigating the peaceful transition from agriculture to industry without destroying democracy along the way. Along with these significant successes, however, came major costs and what proved to be systemic problems.Although the CAP brought many benefits to European farmers and society, its reliance on high prices generated several problems, starting with a growing imbalance between supply and demand. The introduction of the CAP coincided with a substantial leap forward in technical and scientific progress, such as improved chemical fertilizers and new farming equipment. These advances resulted in a dramatic increase in output. While the baby boom was in full swing when the CAP was being debated and designed, by the 1970s, population growth was slowing. The improved agricultural output quickly resolved the post-war food crisis and ensured that the vast majority of the population was well fed. Consequently, total food consumption remained steady while food output skyrocketed. Meanwhile, the CAP continued to incentivize production, yielding chronic surpluses for a growing number of products, including sugar, wheat, and milk. CAP rules required these surpluses to be purchased and stored at the European Community’s expense. Their disposal quickly became a serious problem. The products could not be sold on the Community market without depressing prices,bluebery pot size which would undermine the CAP’s goal of increasing farmer incomes.

One alternative, destroying surpluses, was politically unviable. The memory of starvation in Europe was still strong, and thus there was a powerful morally negative association attached to the destruction of food. Given these restrictions, the surpluses were disposed of in three main ways. One was to sell the products back to farmers at low prices. This option was primarily utilized with those goods that could serve as animal feed. To prevent farmers from reselling the bargain-priced feed for the higher guaranteed prices on the market, the surplus grains sold to farmers were “denatured” . A second option was to use export subsidies to sell the commodities purchased at intervention prices at the much lower world prices . The third option was to use the surpluses for food aid. Overall, surplus disposal was very expensive and quickly became one of the largest expenditures of the “Guarantee” portion of the EAGGF7 High CAP prices did not necessarily lift all farmers’ boats. On the contrary, the CAP created vast inequality among farmers, both across and within member states. With CAP support based on market intervention, the amount of support received was directly proportional to the amount of goods produced. Under this system, the larger, commodity producing farmers raced ahead, while the smaller and/or non-commodity producers made little gain. Larger farmers, who produced more, benefited the most. Moreover, the gap widened as they bought up available land and invested in the latest machinery to boost output. Meanwhile, subsistence farmers, many of whom still milked their cows by hand, continued to survive on the land, but lacked the means to modernize and expand. Essentially, the CAP served to modernize and improve the larger farms, but for the small family farms, it did little more than allow them to survive and did not improve small farmer incomes in a meaningful or sustainable way. This income problem, both within and across member states, has persisted to the present day and is an issue that current CAP reform is still struggling to address. High CAP prices also caused recurring budgetary crises as the EU was required to purchase and store or dump whatever was produced at prices that were inflated.

Indeed, these obligations consumed the budget, while other important CAP projects, such as modernization and rural development, were woefully underdeveloped and underfunded. The problems stemming from inflated prices were obvious very quickly, but became hard to change since farmers violently opposed price cuts. The budgetary crisis could be resolved in one of two ways: cutting prices or overhauling the fundamental operation of the CAP. The former solution ran contrary to the CAP’s use of inflated prices to improve incomes. In addition, as studies of social welfare state retrenchment reveal, it is exceptionally difficult to cut benefits once they have been extended. The second solution, to achieve paradigmatic reform by altering the core operation of the CAP, was highly controversial. Agricultural differences among the member states made it almost impossible to agree on any kind of significant CAP reform. CAP reform, whether in 1968 or in 2019, is defined by a lack of consensus. Member states are split on every issue from how farmers should be paid, to the methods for protecting the environment, to if such rules should even exist in the first place. While every member state plays an active part in CAP negotiations, there are four countries that tend to drive negotiations and dominate the narrative. In addition, these four countries, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, play a role akin to a coalition leader. The dividing line on most, but not all, issues tends to be drawn between the coalition led by the former two countries and that led by the latter two. Where these countries are positioned on any CAP issue is almost always driven by their agricultural production profile. French agriculture is diverse on all accounts. It includes the highly productive and the uncompetitive, the commodity producers and the specialty goods cultivators, and the large landholders and the small family farmers. Not all groups and preferences are equal, however, and the large landholding cereals producers tend to have more political influence than other farmers. Since the CAP was essentially France’s compensation for supporting German industry, France is typically the most ardent defender of the portions of the CAP committed to supporting and improving farmer incomes. Particularly in the early years of the CAP, these policies were how France forced other countries, most notably Germany, to pay for the modernization of French agriculture. France typically leads a coalition that seeks to preserve CAP support for farmers, to keep prices high, and to ensure compensation for any burdens or new standards imposed on farmers. Germany’s production profile and CAP preferences are best understood by dividing them temporally, pre and post-unification.

At the time the CAP was created, smaller, family-style farms predominated in West Germany. A notable exception, however, were the grain farmers in Bavaria. So, at the CAP’s creation and in its first decades, Germany preferred higher prices. At this time, high prices were a means for modernizing the sector and also for preventing its sudden and total collapse, with industrial jobs looking increasingly attractive in Germany. Indeed,raspberry container size the post-war recovery and modernization of its agricultural sector were particularly important. Around the time of reunification, however, Germany’s preferences began to shift and it has come to slightly prefer more financial discipline as the burden of its financial contribution to the EU has increased. Specifically, by the late 1980s, agriculture in the west had long since modernized. Now, Germany was confronted with the massive financial burden of absorbing the East, essentially a Soviet colony that lagged behind West Germany on every measure. Given the financial burden associated with reunification, Germany sought to contain expenditure as much as possible elsewhere. Essentially, Germany no longer wanted to pay to subsidize French farmers when it needed to modernize all aspects of society and the economy in half of its own country. Despite calling for financial discipline, however, Germany tends to oppose efforts to limit the amount an individual farmer can receive, given the internal structural diversity of its agriculture. Moreover, farms in the East tended to be large, and would be likely to be hit with the effects of any effort to cap incomes. One important similarity has persisted, pre and post-unification, which is that Germany is traditionally a strong supporting member of France’s coalition. Though it breaks with France from time to time, those moments are the exception and not the norm. The United Kingdom is home to some of the largest farms in the EU, with a mean holding size nearly six times the EU average. Until eastern enlargement in 2004 the UK had, on average, the largest farms with a mean holding size of 94 hectares compared to an EU average of 16.4 hectares . Though there is some diversity, the dominant production is in cereals and livestock-related goods. In addition, UK farmers tend to be efficient and competitive, even without price supports. The relative competitiveness of British farmers, coupled with the UK’s substantial financial contributions to the EU, is the major factor driving British attitudes toward the CAP. Although UK farmers are among the largest individual beneficiaries, the situation is spun as one where British government is paying to subsidize its own farmers’ competitors. For the UK, the preferred CAP outcome is to cut spending as much as possible, ideally eliminating income supports entirely. Indeed, the UK routinely favors cuts to prices and income supports. However, because its farms are so large, the UK also opposes any efforts to limit individual benefit levels.

If prices and income supports cannot be entirely removed, then the UK will see its farmers disproportionately bear the burden of income limits. In negotiations, then, the UK typically leads the price-cut coalition.Most production is concentrated in livestock and horticulture, as opposed to commodity products. In addition, the Netherlands places a particular emphasis on research and innovation in agriculture and agricultural technology. Indeed, the world’s leading agricultural research institute is located in Wageningen, the Netherlands. This commitment has allowed the Dutch to become one of Europe’s top agricultural-exporting countries despite having very little land available for agriculture. Dutch agriculture is also defined by a robust commitment to rigorous environmental standards, important in a densely populated country with limited arable land. The ideal CAP outcome for the Netherlands would include the elimination of any price supports and direct income payments so that the most competitive and efficient countries, like the Netherlands, would not be forced to subsidize those who are weaker. In addition, the Netherlands would prefer to see stronger environmental standards. It is typically part of a coalition led by the UK that seeks to cut spending on prices and income supports. These sharp and persistent divisions help explain why systemic reform is only possible under conditions of disruptive politics. Disruptive politics help reformers overcome these divisions among the member states. Challenges such as enlargement or trade negotiations can force member states to reevaluate their policy preferences and priorities. These additional pressures can also raise the stakes for reaching an agreement, incentivizing member states to find a compromise or to agree to a larger policy change than they otherwise normally would. For example, these external actors can threaten to impose change that is broadly disagreeable to agricultural interests. As disruptive politics makes member state divisions and preferences less rigid, paradigmatic reform becomes possible. When CAP reform is negotiated during politics as usual, as the following examples in this chapter will demonstrate, the fundamental divisions on core policies cannot be overcome. There is little incentive for member states to reevaluate their preferences. As a result, the policies that emerge from CAP reform initiatives tend to produce little meaningful change to the operation of core CAP programs. The policies and changes that do result in these situations are those that upset no one. They are often defined by lax rules, extensive exemptions, and/or their voluntary nature.

The prioritization uses language variables to evaluate the management alternatives

The management of today’s complex water supply and demand systems rely on assessment models combining climatic, social, economic, and environmental factors. A model was developed using the concept of risk by identifying hazards, exposure, and vulnerability. Te vulnerability was classified into two domains, i.e., sensitivity and adaptive capacity, and two spheres, natural/built environment and human environment. A geographical information system modeling and satellite data were developed for water management in agricultural areas by modulating the irrigation water demand based on several vegetation indices. Te water allocation rules were evaluated among water user groups considering environmental, economic, and social criteria involving agricultural water user groups across France. Transferring of irrigation management was defined as the complete or partial transfer of responsibility for management and investment in irrigation systems from government institutions to water users and non-governmental organizations. A combination of the Adaptation Pathways approach was used with the Soil and Water Assessment Tool to assess the actions under different climate conditions. Conjunctive management requires a strong institutional capacity, which can be achieved through regional planning,raspberry container based on a sound understanding of the interactions between surface water and groundwater. Sustainability in basins with existing irrigation and drainage networks requires a strategic planning according to sustainable development principles.

Strategic planning refers to an organizational infrastructure that prioritizes plans and maximizes potential opportunities and benefits. Sustainable development achieves present economic, environmental and social needs while fulfilling the needs of future generations. The lack of strategic vision with respect to sustainability practices and goals was discussed. A SWOT analysis consists of well-structured strategic planning to assess the status of a system by evaluating its strengths , weaknesses , opportunities , and threats. A review of works based on SWOT analysis was reported. A strategic approach was applied to water management in Africa with SWOT. Strategic planning approaches were analyzed in Austrian food-risk management by identifying background conditions to facilitate scaling and replication of catchment regional planning tools in food-prone areas. A raster-based regional conservation action planning tool was developed for prioritizing local and regional scale conservation actions in heterogeneous landscapes. A stochastic method was developed to determine the water availability in agricultural lands that resulted from drought management plans. A regional optimization model of crop water consumption using cellular automation , crop suitability , and a regional distributed crop water use model was applied to improve irrigation benefits in the context of regional water management. A study was reported to determine deficiencies in irrigation networks and remediation measures . Multi-criteria decision making is a branch of operations research that provides methods for choosing among alternatives ranked by multiple criteria. The Analytic Hierarchy Process is a widely used decision-making tool in various multi-criteria decision-making problems. The AHP, is an approach that uses ratio comparisons among attributes and alternatives.

A method of scaling ratios using the principal eigenvector of a positive pairwise comparison matrix was proposed. This work defines and measures the consistency of the pairwise comparison matrix by an expression involving the average of the non-principal eigenvalues. The literature on methods and applications of Multiple Attribute Decision Making has been reviewed and classified systematically. A review of the TOPSIS method for decision making was presented. A new step‐wise weight assessment ratio analysis was introduced to determine the criteria weights in decision making problems. The weights of the criteria were calculated using the integrated Stepwise Weight Assessment Ratio Analysis -SWARA-TODIM multi-criteria decision-making method. The weighting methods in decision making process including the DEMATEL and BWM was applied to achieve the importance of supplier criteria in a combined manner. The fuzzy set in the form of a class of objects was introduced with a continuum of grades of membership. The fuzzy extension of the AHP method was introduced. Fuzzy TOPSIS method was applied for decision-making process. The model integrating SWARA and Additive Ratio Assessment methods was introduced under uncertainty. A new decision-making approach was developed by measuring attractiveness through a categorical-based evaluation technique and a new combinative distance-based evaluation method in a supplier selection problem during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Level-based weight assessment in fuzzy environment was developed using actual score measures of the picture fuzzy numbers. A novel extension of a developed multi criteria decision making algorithm known as the preference ranking on the basis of ideal-average distance method in fuzzy environment was applied to address a real-life complex decision making problem in social science research. A comparative analysis of supply chain performances of leading healthcare organizations in India with three MCDM frameworks was reported. Uncertainty analysis was conducted using an integrated fuzzy lambda–tau and fuzzy multi criteria decision making method. The integrated Fermatean fuzzy information-based decision-making method was introduced based on the removal effects of criteria and the additive ratio assessment methods, and applied it to a food waste treatment technology selection problem.

A triangular intuitionistic fuzzy linear programming model was proposed for planning of sustainable production system in Baluchistan, Pakistan. A fuzzy multi-criteria group decision-making model was investigated for watershed ecological risk management. A fuzzy-TOPSIS-world open account -based model was developed to identify the impacts of parameters influencing the water quality failure potential. A scenario-based fuzzy interval programming approach was developed for planning agricultural water, energy, food, and crop area management. Game theory was applied for solving decision making problems. The method was applied to construction site selection, and demonstrated that game theory can be applied for supporting decision in a competitive environment. SWOT analysis can be improved by combining it with MCDM. The Analytic Hierarchy Process and the Analytical Network Process analysis have been combined with SWOT analysis. Multiple criteria group decision making applied for prioritizing SWOT factors. Despite numerous studies on sustainable water management by researchers and research on sustainability principles, sustainable agricultural water management at the local level and scale has received less attention. Studies by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development on water sustainability indicators show that analysis at the local level and scale is necessary to demonstrate the effectiveness of the principles of water sustainability. The analysis of large-scale water resource systems involving multiple components, resources, stakeholders, reservoirs, small irrigation reservoirs, and water transfer schemes is a complex process. This work develops and applies a conceptual framework for sustainable agricultural water use and supply by applying regional management alternatives at multiple spatial scales. The framework is applied to a large scale water resources system considering social,plastic plants pots economic and environmental factors. The framework applies conceptual and analytical methods to sustainable agricultural water management relying on strategic planning and regional multi-criteria decision-making. Previous works have evaluated the sustainability of water resources from different perspectives and methods. This study is novel in its introduction of a framework that measures the sustainability of large-scale agricultural water systems relying on regional management plans.The type of available water resources , the crop pattern and quality of soil and water sources vary throughout the study area. Therefore, a database of water-use statistics was prepared to estimate the water use by agricultural lands within the Sefdroud irrigation and drainage network. The water use in the agricultural lands is a function of various factors such as the type of water resources, the method of water conveyance and distribution, the irrigation method, the type of crop products, climatic conditions, soil type, management practice, and others. Therefore, estimating the amount of water use in the agricultural areas in the study area is beset by complexity . The inputs to the agricultural water use model are the cultivated area and crop pattern of irrigated lands, the crop water requirements, the irrigation efficiencies and the surface and ground water withdrawal data. The agricultural water use analytical model calculates water use in each irrigation unit by comparing the water requirements of the crop pattern with the water withdrawals of surface water and groundwater. The outputs from this model are actual water use, the contributions of surface and groundwater to water use and the volumes of return flow.

The details of agricultural water use from different water sources within the irrigated units of the Sefdroud irrigation network are depicted in Fig. 4 and listed in Table 1 for three irrigation management zones. It can be seen in Table 1 that the cultivated area of paddy fields in the Sefdroud irrigation and drainage network has been estimated at about 179,181 hectares. The total annual water use of cultivated area in Sefdroud irrigation and drainage network is about 1.8 billion cubic meters, of which about 1707 million cubic meters are surface water and 90 million cubic meters are groundwater. Of the total volume of surface water use about 1.4 billion cubic meters are from the Sefdroud dam and related canals, 260 million cubic meters from local rivers and farm wastewater, and about 47 million cubic meters from small irrigation reservoirs. The average volume of water use in the 191,141 hectares of irrigated lands of the Sefdroud irrigation and drainage network equals 9404 cubic meters per hectare.The management alternatives to improve the agricultural water demand and supply management in the irrigation management zones in the study area were determined to be: Development/Rehabilitation of the Sefdroud irrigation network; Improve the management of operation and maintenance of the Sefdroud irrigation network; Wastewater management, and Inter-basin water transfer within the Sefdroud irrigation network system . The spatial distribution of the management alternatives within the Sefdroud irrigation and drainage network were defined according to the management alternatives for agricultural water demand and supply management, and are shown in Figs. 5, 6, 7 and 8. Under current conditions the management alternative of development/rehabilitation of the Sefdroud irrigation network’s infrastructure has not been fully implemented. Accordingly, completion and implementation of the main irrigation and drainage network in about 90,000 hectares represents one of the most important priorities in the Sefdroud irrigation network. Carrying out this management alternative would raise the irrigation efficiencies of the Sefdroud irrigation network. Furthermore, in spite of the implementation of the main irrigation and drainage network in 10 irrigation units of the Sefdroud irrigation network, the rehabilitation of the irrigation network in 102,000 hectares is imperative to achieve operational effectiveness. Figure 5 displays the spatial distribution of development and rehabilitation lands in Sefdroud irrigation network. One of the effective management alternatives for maximum use of internal water resources in the study area is using the natural potential of small irrigation reservoirs existing in the Sefdroud irrigation and drainage network. The spatial distribution of small irrigation reservoirs is depicted in Fig. 6. It is seen in Fig. 6 that the total number of small irrigation reservoirs in the study area for agricultural water supply is equal to 527, and the total area of the small irrigation reservoirs is 4935 hectares. The total volume of stored water in small irrigation reservoirs is estimated at 197 million cubic meters under the rehabilitation and improvement conditions.The alternatives and criteria for decision making are determined and a hierarchical structure is formed. The hierarchical structure has a first level consisting of goals to be achieved, the second level consists of the decision criteria, and the third level consists of the management alternatives. The weights of the criteria are determined by the hierarchical analysis method once the hierarchical structure is defined, which involves constructing a pairwise comparison matrix to determine the weights. The comparison matrix’s values are determined using Saaty’s table, and the weights of the criteria are calculated based on the geometric mean values. The next step applies the fuzzy TOPSIS algorithm to evaluate the management alternatives in each of the irrigation management zones of the Sefdroud irrigation and drainage network. Lastly, the management alternatives are prioritized. The fuzzy TOPSIS calculates the CCj indexes of the management alternatives, such that the alternatives’ rank or desirability increases with increasing value of the CCj index. The CCj index is a dimensionless metric in the range [0,1] that measures the closeness of a management alternative to an ideal management alternative or solution.The first line of argumentation suggests that demography is destiny, and expects farmer influence to decline over time along with the sector’s share of the population .

Economies of Scope and Other Determinants of Breeding Costs

The data also show some evidence that average costs fall with increases in output in joint wheat and maize institutes. The average cost per wheat variety is consistently lower in joint institutes than in wheat-only institutes. Similarly, the average cost per maize variety is consistently lower in joint institutes compared with maize-only institutes. For wheat , the cost per variety falls from 187,000 yuan in wheat-only institutes to 145,600 yuan in joint wheat and maize institutes. The same patterns also appear in data when the area-weighted output measure rather than number of varieties is used. Moreover, the evidence of economies of scope becomes stronger as the scale of research effort increases. Hence, our descriptive data provide evidence that economies of scope may be a source of efficiency differences among institutes. The evidence of economies of scope suggests a potential cost saving associated with combining a wheat-only institute and a maize-only institute into a bigger, joint, wheat and maize institute. Further analysis of the data also points to other factors that potentially could affect costs,plastic pots for planting although in some cases the descriptive statistics do not show a particularly strong correlation. The relatively low education level of China’s agricultural researchers has long been claimed to be one of the key factors limiting agricultural research productivity . Based on our data, the human capital in China’s wheat and maize breeding institutes is low compared with other countries . Our data also show that increases in the educational level of breeders help to reduce the cost of variety production. The institutes that have the highest average cost of variety production also tend to have the lowest proportion of breeders with post-secondary education .

Byerlee and Traxler suggest that efficiency in crop breeding increases when agricultural scientists from other disciplines work in conjunction with breeders. Although the share of scientists working on other agricultural disciplines in wheat and maize breeding institutes is quite high , compared to 30 percent in an average wheat improvement research program in a developing country , there is little difference in this share between institutes with low and high average costs. Finally, it is also unclear from visual inspection of the data in Table 3 whether breeding efficiency is affected by the source of a breeding institute’s genetic materials or the presence of retirees. In this section, we specify the econometric model to be used to study the efficiency of China’s crop breeding institutes, and discuss our strategy for estimating the model. We begin by specifying the relationship between costs and the factors that affect them in institutes that produce either one or two types of varieties . We also define measures for economies of scale, ray economies of scale, and economies of scope. Here we treat a breeding institute as a typical “firm” which applies inputs to produce research output . The total variable cost of an individual institute is expressed as a function of its research output, the price of its inputs and other institutional characteristics affecting the cost structure of crop breeding research.10 A wide range of different types of cost functions have been applied in the literature.We estimate economies of scale and scope in two ways: from a base model, where we estimate the relationship between cost and output taking account of the effects of annual salaries , time, province and institute type without the Z variables; and from a full model, which also includes the four covariates . In the final section we discuss the implications for economic efficiency of crop breeding that can be drawn from the estimated relationship between cost and output after controlling for other variables . We do so for both equation , the single-output cost function, and equation , the multiple-output cost function. Hence in our analysis we have four fundamental units of analyses: the base model for the single-output cost function ; the full model for the single-output cost function , and the base and full models for the multiple-output cost function.

We estimate the base cost function model with ordinary least squares to get initial estimates of economies of scale and scope. However, the OLS estimates of the parameters may be underestimated if there is measurement error in the construction of the output variable . One source of measurement error arises from the special nature of crop breeding and the decision making of its directors. The implicit behavioral assumption that underlies the cost function is that the research manager minimizes costs given the output of the institute. Such an assumption, even for a quasi-productive entity like a research institute, often has been made in cost analyses . While it is not difficult to imagine that the typical research manager in a breeding station strives to minimize the institute’s costs of given output, one characteristic that makes the plant breeding industry special is the long time lag between expenditure and the realization of the output. We are assuming that research managers make their cost-minimizing expenditure decisions based on the expected output of the breeding station. But the econometrician does not observe expected output; only actual output is measured. We measure actual output from a crop-breeding institute as the number of new varieties from that research institute adopted by farmers in the five-year period, 6-10 years after the research expenditure. This measure might vary systematically from the output that the manager was anticipating when expenditure decisions were made. One solution to measurement error is the use of instrumental variables . In order to account for the measurement error, we identify a set of instrumental variables and reestimate our model using three-stage iterative least squares. Since the relationship between output and cost basically depends on factors associated with supply-side decisions of the research institute, we turn to a series of demand-side factors in our search for exogenous IVs: farm-gate prices of wheat and maize, the prices of fertilizer and pesticides in input markets, the land-labor ratio in a region, the share of irrigated land to total cultivated land, and the multiple cropping index. We are also concerned with several other assumptions. In order to test for the effect of our assumption about the length of the lag between costs and research output , we conducted sensitivity analysis using data generated by an array of different lag structures. Further, the presence of unobserved heterogeneity may bias the estimates of our parameters of interest.

To eliminate the unwanted covariance between the unobserved factors and the other regressors we took advantage of the panel nature of the data, using both fixed- and random-effect methods. Finally, it is also possible that the cost minimization assumptions that underlie cost function analyses may not all be valid. As noted above,plant pot drainage these assumptions are avoided— albeit, at the expense of some other disadvantages—when we use a production function approach rather than a cost function approach. As a check on this aspect, we also estimated a Cobb-Douglas production function model, and found that the main findings regarding returns to scale are quite similar between the two approaches . The base model produced remarkably robust estimates of many of the parameters . The quadratic specification fits the data well with R2 estimates ranging from 0.53 to 0.75 for wheat and 0.52 to 0.72 for maize . The goodness of fit measures, however, systematically demonstrate that, for both wheat and maize, the models that use the area-weighted and area-yield weighted outputs have a significantly better fit. In all of the models the effect of an increase in wages on costs is positive and significant, in keeping with expectations and theory. All of the variables were normalized by dividing at their sample mean such that we can interpret the regression coefficients as elasticities at the mean. Economies of Scale After controlling for wages, region and year effects, and the institute type, the measures of economies of scale calculated from the estimated parameters are all much less than one and significantly so . The estimates of SCE for wheat institutes range from 0.22 to 0.26; those for maize institutes range from 0.14 to 0.32. The results imply that at the mean levels of research output and other explanatory variables, strong economies of scale exist for both wheat and maize institutes. If output increases by 10 percent, costs would increase no more than 3.2 percent. Evidence of such strong economies of scale from the multivariate analysis is consistent with the descriptive evidence and reflects the patterns in Figure 1. The elasticities of cost with respect to output are relatively small compared with those found in studies of non-profit institutions . The strong economies of scale are largely unchanged when we control for other institutional factors. Comparing results in Tables 4 and 5, after controlling for the four Z factors and their interactions with output, the SCE elasticities still fall in a similar range . Although the coefficients on variables representing several of the institutional factors are significant and suggest that there are other ways to affect breeding efficiency , the remarkably low and highly significant measures of SCE indicate that significant cost savings could be attained if the scale of China’s breeding institutions were expanded. Accounting for a number of the potential econometric problems does not significantly alter the magnitude or significance of the measures of economies of scale, as can be seen in Table 6.

To address concerns of measurement error, exclusion restriction tests of the validity of our demand-side instrumental variables show that they meet the statistical criteria required for identification. Using these instrumental variables and the 3SLS estimator does not substantively change the estimates of the economies of scale parameters. The economies of scale parameters range from 0.12 to 0.26. The results hold for both wheat and maize in both the base model and the full model. Allowing for lags of different lengths, or controlling for the unobserved heterogeneity also does not materially affect the estimates of economies of scale.11 Similar to the results generated by the parameter estimates of the single-output cost function, results based on the multiple output cost function also imply high and statistically significant estimates of ray economies of scale. The estimates of SOEray, which range from 0.33 to 0.39, mean that if wheat and maize institutes double their output of both wheat and maize varieties, the total variable cost of wheat and maize breeding would increase by only 33 to 39 percent. The strong ray economies of scale are also not affected by alternative estimation strategies or model specifications. While not as strong or as robust as the evidence of economies of scale, our multioutput cost function models show the existence of economies of scope between wheat and maize variety production, as summarized in Table 7. The estimates of SOE based on the parameter estimates of the base model indicate that there would be cost saving of about 10 percent if a wheat-only and maize-only breeding institute were combined into a joint wheat-maize institute. Bootstrapped confidence intervals show that the measured elasticities are statistically significantly different from zero. Unlike economies of scale, however, economies of scope are affected when other institutional factors are added. For example, if we control for the educational level of breeders, the cost savings from merging wheat and maize institutes drops from 10 to 5 percent, and it drops to only 3.8 percent when both human capital and spill-in variables are added to the model. In addition to the cost efficiency associated with the scale and scope of wheat and maize variety production, the statistical analysis supports the early descriptive findings and shows that economic efficiency is also affected by other institutional variables, as can be seen in Table 5. For example, except for one case, the coefficients on the interaction between breeder’s education and output are negative and significant. The magnitudes of the coefficients show that if research managers can increase the share of breeders with college and more education by 10 percent , the marginal cost will fall by around 1.0 percent. An increase in the proportion of genetic material used in breeding that comes from outside the province also increases efficiency .

Weather has often been seen as the ideal exogenous right-hand side variable

The bounty of plenty, in the twenty-first century, is questioned not due to its productive capabilities but rather because of its lack of a palatable narrative of place and transparency to which it could inform, and reassure, its consumers and citizens. This conundrum is eloquently summed up by Connerton : “As natural ecosystems became more intimately linked to the urban marketplace of Chicago, they came to appear ever more remote from the busy place that was Chicago. Chicago both fostered an ever-closer connection between city and country, and concealed the very linkages it was creating.” Problems and issues associated with modern agricultural production, for instance is to a large degree perceptual. This is not to say that these developments are not indeed real, but that the ultimately overall meanings and thus societal importance and individual significance rest, to a large degree, in the perceptions of such developments and their perceived effects, as one cannot know everything for sure, and even what sure, or the truth, means might be debatable as we move from “Authority to Authenticity” . Perceptions about agriculture, food and people, therefore, does not just serve to navigate, interpret and/or internalize the symbols imposed by other agents and structures, but also, in their appropriation, circumvents and re-invents meanings and understandings of these. In other words, the importance of perceptions lies both in their use as “interpreters” of the surrounding world and as creators of the surroundings – the change perspective. These must, surely, not be underestimated, as is evident in the burgeoning food movements and its spatial outlets,precio de macetas de plastico as well as the increasing organic production worldwide. Also, important is the fact that participation in the local sphere is for many in the Western World a choice made out of want and less so out of social and economic necessity as in the past – perhaps reflected in an increase in informalization .

This “choice,” it should be noted still, often, excludes and eludes people with low socio-economic status, who still depend very much on locality, as their mobility and often also skills are more limited and less “mobile.” Context continues to matter, greatly, if for different reasons, and with different effects, than in yesteryears. Lastly, I would like to add that this paper is not a rebuff of the criticism levelled at the food markets and its actors in regards to its, at times, exploitative attitudes towards the nature of resources , workers governance and politics , among others. It is rather an attempt to show how these held perceptions came about, and how structural and historical developments can contribute to explaining their emergence, without retorting to complete structural determinism or complete rational-choice “free” actor perspectives, the two preferred methodological and philosophical lenses that the oppositional camps of these issues wear. Rather, reality is formed by perceptions that both influence and are influenced by individual choices and structural developments, whose autonomy and power structures vary depending on context. There is mounting evidence that the global climate has already changed and it is projected to continue changing for the coming centuries . The world has experienced many new record highs that suggest that the mean temperature is increasing. For example, Munasinghe et al. examine the frequency of new record temperatures across the global landmass and find that the frequency of extremely high temperatures increased tenfold between the beginning of the 20th century and 1999–2008, the most recent decade for which they obtained gridded weather data. At the same time, the frequency of new record lows has also increased, suggesting that the variance and not only the mean may have increased. A spatially disaggregate analysis reveals that the tropics experienced a larger increase in the frequency of record highs during the last 100 years than higher latitudes. This is consistent with forecasts of global circulation models . Looking across 23 circulation models, the authors find that countries in the tropics have a probability greater than 90% of experiencing average summer temperatures by the end of the 21st century that are larger than the hottest summers on record in 1900–2006.

In higher latitudes, the average seasonal temperature will be about equal to the hottest on record for the period 1900–2006. On the other hand, Hsiang and Parshall plot the distribution of absolute changes in predicted temperatures for a number of global circulation models and emphasize that the higher latitudes have larger predicted increases in temperature. While this might at first seem like a contradiction, the reason for this finding is that there is less historic variation in the tropics than in the higher latitudes, and more of the increased warming in the higher latitudes will occur during the winter time. The key features of observed trends as well as future warming are the observed and predicted non-uniformity of warming as well as sharp increase in record highs, especially in lower latitudes that generally have less institutional capacity to adapt to these new records. The predicted change in the mean and variance of weather has direct implications for agriculture, since weather is a direct input into the production function. Unlike many other sectors of the economy that are shielded from weather fluctuations through buildings, agriculture is still at the direct mercy of weather fluctuations . As we will discuss below, the relationship between yields and weather is highly nonlinear and concave. The best predictor of corn yields is a measure of extreme heat over the growing season that only incorporates temperature above29 °C , and slightly higher thresholds apply to soybeans and cotton. Future impacts crucially depend on how often and by how much this threshold will be passed, which can both occur due to an increase in the mean or the variance. As Munasinghe et al. have shown, the observed trend is fairly large. It is generally easier to adapt to shifts in the mean than to shifts in the variance, as optimal crop varieties have to be chosen and planted before the unknown weather is realized. An anticipated change in the mean can be incorporated at the time the planting decision is made, while a change in the variance increases the uncertainty of what will happen after the crop is planted.

Adequate adaptation to an increase in the variance hence has to allow for flexible adjustments during the growing season, e.g., the construction of irrigation systems that can counterbalance fluctuations in temperatures, which increase water demands, as well as fluctuations in precipitation. The majority of studies so far have examined the effects of changes in the mean climate, while estimates of the effects of an increase in the variance are just starting to emerge. It is therefore paramount that empirical studies as well as integrated assessment models move away from impact evaluations that only look at changes in average global temperature or rely on a single global circulation model . Further, reliance on average temperature in these modeling exercises does not properly capture the spatial and seasonal heterogeneity in predicted temperature changes. This reasoning carries over to predicted changes in precipitation, for which there is much less agreement across models. There is a myriad of studies examining the effect of weather/climate on agriculture, both structural integrated assessment models and reduced-form empirical studies. Chetty sees the advantages of reduced-form strategies in “transparent and credible identification”, while the important advantage of structural models is “the ability to make predictions about counterfactual outcomes and welfare.” This paper discusses the issues involved in identifying the impact of climate change on agriculture both on the intensive and extensive margins. We put a special focus on the role of extreme temperatures. Hertel and Lobell in this issue discuss the literature on structural modeling approaches for this important sector. The paper is not meant to be a universal overview of the literature,macetas para viveros but as a survey of issues facing empirical researchers interested in identifying impacts in this important coupled human/natural system. The remainder of our paper is organized as follows. Section 2 summarizes the issues involved in identifying the impact of climate/ weather on agriculture, emphasizing the importance of extreme weather outcomes. Section 3 discusses issues involved in identifying evidence of adaptation in the agricultural sector. Section 4 concludes.There is a long history of empirical estimates of the effect of weather on agricultural outcomes. For example, Fisher developed the concept of maximum likelihood estimation by linking wheat yields to precipitation outcomes.Weather impacts agricultural outcomes, yet humans traditionally have not been able to influence year-to-year weather fluctuations. Only recently have cloud seeding experiments been used to influence precipitation. While it is impossible to summarize the entire history of empirical studies, we focus our attention to the most recent studies. Advances in computer power and data availability have made it possible to fit models with a huge number of observations, which allow for the identification and estimation of a more flexible relationship between weather variables and agricultural outcomes.

One of the most important differentiating factors between econometric studies is the source of variation the study uses to link agricultural outcomes to weather/climate: one has to either rely on time series variation, cross-sectional variation, or a combination of the two in a panel setting. Each source of identifying variation will be discussed in turn. Agronomic field experiments have linked agricultural outcomes to various weather measures in both controlled laboratory settings as well as real-world settings that rely on farm-level data. The number of plots or parcels has traditionally been very limited. For example, McIntosh outlines how time-series variation over two or more field experiments can be combined in a statistical setting. Such field experiments have been used to examine not only the effects of weather variables, but more generally of all sort of inputs, including fertilizer, CO2 concentrations, etc. The estimated weather parameters have been used to predict the effects of changes in climate. This approach has been criticized as “dumb farmer” scenario, as it implicitly assumes that farmers continue to grow the same crop even if the climate is permanently altered. One extension is hence to derive predicted yields under various climate change scenarios and then model the effect of inputs, crop choice, and prices . In their seminal paper, Mendelsohn et al. use a cross sectional analysis that links county-level farmland values in the United State to climatic variables as well as other controls . The advantage of the cross-sectional approach is that farmers in different climatic zones had time to adjust their production system to different climates. For example, if it were to become permanently warmer in Iowa, farmers could adjust their production systems to cope with the hotter climate, just as farmers in Florida have done in the past. Florida farmers currently face higher average temperatures than farmers in Iowa, and hence might be a good case study of how farmers will adapt. There are, however, at least three significant drawbacks to cross sectional studies of this type. First, any cross-sectional analysis is subject to omitted variable bias, as statistical correlations do not imply causation. For example, Schlenker et al. show that access to highly subsidized irrigation water is positively correlated with hotter temperatures. The benefits of higher temperatures in a cross-sectional analysis are upward biased as they also include the beneficial effect of access to subsidized irrigation water. Second, Timmins shows that within-county heterogeneity and endogenous land use decisions can bias Ricardian analyses by allowing for use-specific error terms in his cross-sectional analysis of county-level Brazilian farmland values. Farmers endogenously select the crop they are best suited to grow. The effect of climate on land values hence depends both on how a particular land use responds to climatic conditions, as well as what land use is selected as a function of climate. Third, traditional cross-sectional analyses of farmland values are partial-equilibrium studies. If weather were to make farming either greatly more or less productive, prices for agricultural goods would adjust, and so would farmland values. This is evident in the recent sharp increase in commodity prices that led to a significant increase in the US farmland values. Consumer surplus decreased while producer surplus increased. A decrease in farm productivity might in some circumstance even be good for farmers as demand for agricultural products is highly inelastic and weather-induced yield reductions increase the price of agricultural commodities.

The DEA approach is chosen to avoid functional form specification error

Assessing the sustainability of agricultural systems is challenging because measurements frequently mix multiple dimensions, scales, and benchmarks. This study uses data envelopment analysis to develop benchmarks for comparing the sustainability of different agricultural systems and cropping techniques with a measure of sustainability called sustainable value . Incorporating DEA into the sustainable value approach expands upon the work of Figge and Hahn , who first introduced SV in the journal Ecological Economics. SV calculations integrate human, natural resource, and financial dimensions to generate a monetary measure of sustainability. The Loess Plateau provides a rich context to illustrate how sustainability measurements can be used to assess natural resource management trade-offs. It is a highly distressed region where intensive crop production is undermined by high soil erosion rates that threaten the long-term sustainability of the land and local food production . The Loess Plateau is one of the most severely degraded areas in the world, with over 60% of its land subjected to soil degradation and an average annual soil loss of 20–25 t/ha . Land use changes are often extreme. Much of the agricultural land has already been planted to trees through the Grain for Green program . However, converting from cropland to trees is an extreme conservation measure that generates little economic return to farmers who make a living mostly on their land. Many have migrated to urban areas in order to compensate for lost farm jobs, leading to other unintended consequences. In some cases child-care and other parental activities have been left to the elderly or older children . Rather than focusing on extreme land use changes,arándanos azules cultivo the analysis presented in this paper investigates how to balance environmental objectives with continued crop production.

Many frameworks have been proposed to measure sustainability. Macro scale proposals include the Green National Product , Ecological Footprints , and Genuine Savings . These methods are generally used to readjust Gross Domestic Product or Gross National Product calculations to account for net changes in environmental degradation. While ecologically minded organizations promulgate these alternative accounting approaches, the frameworks are not widely applied in China. Unlike the DEA/SV method proposed in this paper, these macro-level approaches do not explicitly map the value of meeting different environmental targets that are affected by local and regional agricultural production practices.SV is used to calculate net sustainable values, rather than the environmental burden imposed by natural resource use. First presented in Ecological Economics by Figge and Hahn , SV is based upon Capital Theory . SV assesses the sustainability of a proposed or existing system by comparing the opportunity cost of using capital in that system rather than a predetermined benchmark. SV can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of local or regional natural resource management decisions. For example, Van Passel et al. apply the SV approach to the Flemish dairy industry, finding the method to be useable and workable for smaller enterprises. Two years later the authors improved upon the method by applying a parametrically estimated efficiency frontier to provide individual benchmarks for each system . The research presented in this paper takes advantage of the SV approach to study cropping systems in the Loess Plateau, but refines it by creating discrete, customized individual benchmarks using a DEA. The DEA allows for comparison between similar systems and creates a discrete benchmark that is specifically comparable to that system. In contrast to previous studies that chose a single “best” benchmark, or a parametrically estimated frontier, the DEA method allows us to create a non-parametric frontier of benchmarks that takes into account the most efficient use of capital for each unique system .

The SV for over 2000 cropping systems reviewed for the Loess Plateau is recorded in a series of comparison matrices and organized by crop type, cropping technique or land type. These matrices are then used to determine which management practices, like rotation or terracing, have the greatest impact on sustainability. Although this would be the first known integration of the DEA with SV methods, the DEA method has been applied to other sustainability measures. For example, it has been used to compute environmental efficiency . Environmental efficiency is formulated in the same way as technical efficiency except that environmental impacts, rather than observed inputs, are calculated. One limit of environmental efficiency is that it becomes difficult to measure environmental impacts. Eco-efficiency, defined as the ratio of a created value over the environmental impact, is another popular indicator for measuring sustainability that used DEA . According to Van Passel et al. , the rebound effect is one major shortcoming of eco-efficiency. The rebound effect means that advances in environmental performance may be over stated because better eco-efficiency may also lead to growth and thus increase the use of environmental resources. The paper is organized, as follows: The methodology, presented in Section 2, updates Figge and Hahn’s SV approach by introducing frontier benchmarks estimated with DEA. Section 3 contains a description of the Loess Plateau study area and the simulation data, created from the Environmental Policy Integrated Climate model . This simulation is conducted on more than 2000 different cropping-system variations that are based upon Lu’s original work and a subsequent publication that uses approximately 500 of these cropping systems . The sustainability measurements evaluate different combinations of crop rotations, production situations, terracing techniques, tillage techniques, crop residue management techniques, mechanization levels, and land units. The empirical results are reported in Section 4. Discussion and conclusions are provided in Sections 5 and 6, respectively.This section provides a summary of steps for calculating SV and SE, which are applied to the Loess Plateau example.

According to Van Passel et al. , the SV and SE can be calculated in three steps. First, the scope of the analysis is determined. The data used in the presenting study employs 2006 distinct cropping systems as entities to create sustainable value. The entities all employ all three forms of capital. Different cropping systems are characterized by various technologies and practices such as crop rotations and terracing techniques. Second, relevant resources must be identified. In the context of sustainable development, the weight of relative importance of the capital forms used by a firm can be judged by the scarcity or degree of depletion of the capital . Over 60% of land in the Loess Plateau is subjected to soil degradation. Nitrogen loss is associated with soil loss. Thus, in this study soil and nitrogen are recognized as two forms of natural capital. Soil and nitrogen data are rare to observe at the farm level or national level, which strengthens the rationale for utilizing a SV measurement. Fortunately, the simulation model in Lu et al. , which is verified by experiments, provides extensive and realistic estimates of soil and nitrogen losses associated with various cropping practices. In addition to natural capital, financial capital and human capital are also taken into account through enterprise budgeting. Third, appropriate benchmarks must be determined. Four possible benchmarks were proposed by Van Passel et al. . First, the weighted average of a sample can be used. For example,maceta de 30 litros cropping systems with conservation practices can be chosen to calculate benchmarks. Second, a super-efficient firm that uses every single type of capital in the most efficient way can serve as the super-efficient benchmark. In practice, a super-efficient cropping system is highly unlikely. Third, a performance target can be used as a benchmark. A performance target example given by Van Passel et al. is 150 kg nitrogen per ha for the farm gate nitrogen surplus for dairy farms. Fourth, the unweighted average of all firms in the sample can be used as a benchmark.The benchmark choice reflects a normative judgment of sustainable development, and thus biases the way in which the SV is interpreted . Benchmarks should therefore be chosen with great care. Since the goal of this study is to identify the most sustainable cropping systems, the best performance benchmark is preferred. A performance target may also be appropriate, but it may not be easy to specify the reasonable target level. In this paper, many possible cropping systems for the Loess Plateau are considered, so a frontier is constructed for all the possible cropping systems. The frontier takes into account the most efficient use of capital for each unique system, rather than assuming that there is a single best system. Instead of using the parametric frontier benchmark proposed by Van Passel et al. , this study adopts a non-parametric DEA to determine benchmarks. Both parametric and non-parametric approaches have been proposed in the frontier literature . Data noise can be taken into account in the parametric approach, but specification error may arise from the choice of the functional form. The dataset incorporated in this study is simulated from the EPIC model, which is described in greater detail in Section 3.

Data noise is not expected to play a significant role in the estimation of the production frontier in this study because simulated data do not present sampling bias; that is, the simulated data can be readily replicated. The DEA method is also more computationally efficient, especially when multiple capital types are considered in the production process. Another advantage is that a unique frontier benchmark is specified for each cropping system through the consideration of each technology possibility. Lu et al. identified the cropping systems in Ansai County of the Loess Plateau. A summary of these systems is presented in Table 2. Their dataset includes 2006 cropping systems that are comprised of different combinations of 5 land units, 17 crop rotations, 3 production situations, 3 terracing techniques, 2 tillage techniques, 2 crop residue management techniques and 2 mechanization levels. Corresponding outputs of interest were simulated for each system using the Environmental Policy Integrated Climate model and validated with the experimental data as described by Lu et al. . EPIC is a comprehensive simulation model designed to predict the effects of management decisions on soil, water, nutrient and pesticide movements and their combined impact on soil loss, water quality and crop yield . It consists of weather, surface runoff, water and wind erosion, nitrogen leaching, pesticide fate and transport, crop growth and yield, crop rotations, tillage, plant environment control , economic accounting, and waste management. Lu et al. developed the comprehensive dataset regarding soil, weather, crop management, fertilizer and other parameters to meet the basic requirements to run the EPIC model. Hundreds of equations are applied in EPIC to then simulate processes such as crop growth and soil erosion. As described in Section 2, in order to apply the SV approach with DEA benchmarks, the value added and capital need to be specified. As previously defined, crop revenue minus intermediate consumption is specified as “value added” in the SV approach. To cope with multidimensionality, it is assumed that each cropping system uses all forms of capital to produce value. Typically, natural capital is difficult to measure. However, the EPIC model provides an opportunity to measure soil loss and nitrogen losses directly. Nitrogen losses are estimated in EPIC through “runoff and sediment, nutrient movement by soil evaporation, denitrification, ammonia nitrification and volatilization, mineralization, immobilization, biological-fixation, contribution of rainfall and irrigation, and NO3-N leaching Lu et al. .” Lu et al. note that most of the losses of N resulted from volatilization, runoff and soil erosion. Soil loss and nitrogen loss from the EPIC model are treated as natural capital inputs in the production process. Labor is viewed as human capital. Financial capital is calculated by aggregating all conventional inputs, including seeds, nutrients , biocides, irrigation if applicable, and farm equipment . Descriptive statistics of the data are given in Table 3. Revenue and cost data, except labor, are expressed in Chinese monetary units, the RMB. Natural capital, soil and nitrogen, are described in physical units. Financial capital and human capital are expressed in the RMB monetary units. On average, 5221 RMB/ha in revenue can be produced by a 3112 kg/ha soil loss and 15.3 kg/ha nitrogen loss, a cost of 1654 RMB/ha and 1390 RMB/ha for labor. Prices used to calculate aggregate value added and capital are taken from Lu et al. .