This article proposes a set of sustainability indicators based on a combination of economic, social and health data that meet three tests: the indicators are simple, measurable and capable of being extended to workers in the field. They result from a scoring model which ranks the progress of...

This paper outlines emerging issues in agricultural trade and the environment. Its intent is to provoke discussion, rather than to capture all of the issues and details that merit analysis. It focuses primarily on "micro" issues rather than global issues such as green house gas emissions or...

This paper traces the evolution of the debate over a GEO, and analyzes its problems and opportunities in the world trading system. It first considers the genesis of proposals for a GEO, and provides a short historical account. Second, it offers one view of what a GEO might entail. The next two...

The paper is divided into three sections: a discussion of the major provisions of the FAIR act of 1996 [Federal Agriculture Improvement and Reform Act of 1996]; a review of the political forces leading up to it; and a discussion of reforms that could extend the incipient agenda that it represents.

The tension between enterprise as a means and sustainability as an end is directly related to the tension between rights to exclude others from a stream of private benefits and rights to be included in streams of environmental improvements. Resolving this tension is necessary if we are to square...

Agriculture has been at the center of conflicts over world trade from the beginning in 1986 of the eighth, Uruguay Round, of multilateral trade negotiations. Yet it is only in the final phases of the Round that linkages from trade to the environment have come to the fore. In this paper, the...

This essay provides a brief narrative economic history of the timber industry in Wisconsin, including details of my family's involvement in the industry. It evaluates the constraints to production, the major methods of timber harvesting, and the men and companies that dominated the trade. It...

The purpose of this brief analysis is to consider the potential points of contact between a program of "green support" and the existing commodity programs in U.S. agriculture. These points of contact may take the form of conflict, complementarity, or neutrality. We shall assume initially that...