In face of climate change and other environmental challenges, inclusion of perennial forage shrubs in Australian agricultural systems has the potential to deliver multiple benefits: increased whole-farm profitability and improved natural resource management. The profitability of shrubs was...

Global efforts to reduce deforestation rely heavily on protected areas and land use restrictions. The effect of these restrictions on local communities is currently the subject of heated debate among conservation and development experts. Measuring the social impacts of protected areas is...

In this paper we examine the multiple environmental effects of policies promoting biofuel production from agricultural crops. We develop theoretical and empirical frameworks and provide an integrated economic and ecological modelling approach: an economic model of farmers’ decision making is...

In Germany agricultural land use is very heterogeneous with respect to management orientation and productivity even at local level. Also the rate of structural change shows a wide variation. While for a limited number of factors (e.g. farm size) a stable relation to structural change could be...

Communal land use system has existed in pastoral Afar (as in many other pastoral areas) since time of immemorial accommodating the interests of different user groups. This form of land use system, which has adapted to the harsh environment in which herders raise their livestock, enables...

In arid countries worldwide, social conflicts between irrigation-based human development and the conservation of aquatic ecosystems are widespread and attract many public debates. This research focuses on the analysis of water and agricultural policies aimed to conserve groundwater resources and...

Agricultural trade is by far the largest vehicle to ‘move’ water virtually around the world. Observing that most countries import and export water embedded in the exchanged products, the objective of this study is to assess the virtual water ‘trade’ in Spain for the period 1997-2006. We...

With the possible exception of nuclear technology, few scientific breakthroughs have generated the level of emotive debate that has surrounded the roll-out of agricultural biotechnology. Initial discussion about the environmental impacts of agricultural genetic modification, are now frequently...

This study assessed the preference for and efficiency of land tenure contract arrangements in rice farming in West Java, Indonesia. Specifically, it examined the transaction costs associated with land tenure contracts, the land tenure contract preference, the efficiency of land tenure contracts,...

The pressure on land as required input in competing uses fuelled research on trade-offs in land use due to agricultural land expansion to meet food demand which is explicitly and implicitly treated in global land use modelling. Global land use studies rely on assessing the trade-offs by assuming...