Nitrogen is an important input to agricultural production but also detrimentally affects the environmental quality of air, soil and water. Identifying the determinants of nitrate pollution and in turn defining sensible performance indicators to design, enforce and monitor regulatory policies is...

Agri-environmental programs in Japan have generally been promoted through the provision of fixed payments for certain environment-friendly farming and management practices. However, the auctioning of agrienvironmental contracts is a noteworthy alternative for the furtherance of such programs....

In modern agriculture, pesticides feature so prominently in growers’ arsenal to reduce crop damage caused by various pests and diseases. But their indiscriminate use can harm human health and the environment and, eventually, impact agricultural productivity negatively. In an era of an...

The Health Check (HC) of the European Common Agricultural Policy in 2003 sped up the process of policy reforms toward decoupled payments in order to urge agricultural production to respond to market signals. However, since decoupled payments could generate “coupled” effects on production, it...

Recently the olive sector has had important changes in Andalusia due to both the enlargement and the intensification of farming. The expansion of the olive grove in Andalusia is causing sustainability problems, not only from the socio-economic dimension (profit reduction) but environmental...

Pig farming is one of the strongest polluters of water resources due to its intensive production techniques and slurry rejection. Several European countries have already introduced environmental regulations aiming at reducing the pollution caused by nitrates from agricultural sources, but not...

This study investigates the optimal agricultural land use allocation and nitrogen application to a representative Japanese farm. The site-specific nature of numerous agri-environmental issues necessitates analysis at a disaggregated level in order to capture the underlying heterogeneity of...

Targeting has become the buzz word in the national agri-environmental policy reform in Finland. It is generally accepted that more environmental benefits could be reaped by implementing environmental protection measures where they have the biggest positive impact. However, considering one of the...

The paper examined whether increasing agricultural output would lead to an expansion of employment in rural areas in the Caribbean and Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The paper found that the agricultural development problems in the Caribbean and SSA are very similar, especially, declining export...

Soil erosion and environmental degradation are serious problems facing food security in Haiti. In 1999, the annual soil loss due to erosion was estimated at 36 million m3 tons. The government of Haiti has been aware of these deteriorating conditions and has sought international assistance to...