According to Article 3.4 of the Kyoto Protocol, agricultural soil could be used as a sink for carbon sequestration. Soil sequestration of carbon provides dual benefits: an increase in soil productivity and a reduction in atmospheric carbon concentration. The gain in soil productivity is a slow...

According to Article 3.4 of the Kyoto Protocol, agricultural soil could be used as a sink for carbon sequestration and hence it may provide an alternative venue to sequester the greenhouse gas emission. US plans to reduce the carbon emission amount by seven percent below the 1990 level within...

Environmental and social justifications for organic conversion subsidies are as pervasive in the United States as in Europe, but national policy does not explicitly support organic agriculture. Using Sweden's experience, we analyze factors that affect whether a subsidy is required to motivate...

Sustainability assessment is fundamental to improving the long-term viability of agricultural systems. A variety of assessment tools have been developed for the practitioner to evaluate sustainability at multiple levels, from field to farm. This report is a compilation of annotated references on...

Cotton farmers in the Piedmont region incorrectly believe conservation systems with winter cover crop and no-till cultivation yield less than conventional systems. We model the effect of organic matter on productivity and show how ignoring this effect causes returns to be underestimated. Farmers...

Residue management system (RMS) offers increase productivity gain to farmers by increasing the organic matter. Farmers have failed to realize this gain and consequently have not adopted RMS in cotton cultivation. Benefit of adopting RMS system appears sooner than farmers would think.

We test the likelihood of expansion for six market sectors based on the similarities between counties with and counties without organic markets. Results indicate that sales projections are overstated. Growth imbalance will continue to favor the West and North Central regions over the South and...

Even if governments agree on equivalency of organic standards across countries, consumers may still believe domestically produced organic foods are superior to imports. We simulated a partial equilibrium model of trade in organic wheat between the United States and Germany to illustrate the...

Given that existing food eco-labels are still not well defined in consumers' experience, there is potential for new labels to generate more confusion. Consumers incur fixed costs to learn about a label's meaning. Market shares for existing certifications may be eroded by perceptions that new...