As part of the Millennium Challenge Corporation Compact Agreement, the Government of Lesotho has implemented an institutional strengthening and land regularization project in the urban and peri-urban areas of the capital city Maseru. The main objective of this project is to strengthen the rights...

Research on payments for environmental services (PES) largely focuses on two contract types – cost-share and annual stewardship payments. But other types of transactions, such as tax credits, green insurance, and price premiums tied to environmental stewardship certification, can also promote...

The debate over sustainable intensification has hinged on private incentives to abate land degradation. Largely missing is the role of social capital in both creating incentives and removing barriers to soil conservation. Yet soil conservation embodies the externality problem that bedevils so...

The most severe challenges to sustainable development occur where many poor people struggle to eke out a living from marginal lands. In some cases, high human populations on fragile lands have led agricultural productivity to deteriorate (García-Barrios and García-Barrios, 1990, Mink, 1993,...

We study a farmer’s decision to convert traditional crop land into growing dedicated energy crops, taking in account sunk conversion costs, uncertainties in traditional and energy crop returns, and learning. The optimal decision rules differ significantly from the expected net present value...

This paper introduces a spatial bioeconomic model for study of potential cellulosic biomass supply at regional scale. By modeling the profitability of alternative crop production practices, it captures the opportunity cost of replacing current crops by cellulosic biomass crops. The model draws...

The main objective of this paper is to report preliminary findings on the recent trends in agricultural land prices in South Africa against the backdrop of growing concerns over their rising levels. Given the important role of land prices, the impact such increases would have on significant...

Structural adjustments programs (SAPs) in the last two decades have eliminated all farm-support programs leading to low usage of fertilizers by Kenyan smallholders. One way of addressing this problem is use of organic nutrient resources. This paper examines their cost-effectiveness as capital...

Irrigation induced salinity is a serious problem in many countries around the world. In Australia, this type of salinity is most pronounced in the valley of the River Murray in South Australia. Location of irrigation enterprises has been identified as a key factor that needs to be taken into...