This paper reviews the progress to date of the Canterbury Water Management Strategy and identifies key developments and emerging issues. The paper examines the provision of storage, water use efficiency, environmental flow adjustments, nutrients from land use intensification, biodiversity...

The 2003 reform of the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) replaced the coupled direct support schemes by a Single Farm Payment (SFP), which will be mainly delivered to farmers irrespective of what they produce (hence 'decoupled' from production). The level of decoupling differs...

Animal welfare policies are often dealing with complex issues that are value laden and quite complex for New Zealand society to consider and evaluate. As a result, it may be difficult for agencies to converge upon policies that provide equally desirable and universally popular solutions. In some...

The aims of our paper are to identify economic determinants of the on-farm cultivars diversity and to empirically characterize the farmers' diversification choices. We focus on the private decision making process involving the choice of rice cultivars and the corresponding allocation of...

The wine industry in New Zealand has been maturing over the past few decades, with consumers becoming more sophisticated and wineries responding by increasing their production of premium varieties. In addition, there have been several legal changes and subsequent changes to the distribution and...

Community forestry in Nepal is intended to reduce poverty by sustainable management of forests. Timber is one of the most high-value forest products, especially in the case of Sal (Shorea robusta) forests in the Terai region of Nepal. Despite having several advantages, including high value...

Australia has long been a major exporter of the products of broadacre agriculture, a production system well suited to the economic and climatic conditions of the country. According to the conventional wisdom, Australia holds a comparative advantage in these products, among which wheat and...

As part of international climate change policy, voluntary opt-in programs to reduce emissions in unregulated sectors or countries have spurred considerable discussion. Since any regulator will make errors in predicting baselines, adverse selection will reduce efficiency since participants will...

With current concerns about climate change and the general status of the environment, there is an increasing expectation that products have sustainability credentials, and that these can be verified. Labelling is a common method of communicating certain product attributes to consumers that may...

New Zealand has a long history of producing official statistics on agricultural, horticultural, and forestry production. Having a good population or survey frame is a key factor enabling the collection and production of quality statistics. Several population frames have been used over time for...