An economic framework for evaluating agricultural policy and the sustainability of production systems

Author(s):  
Paul Faeth
Author(s):  
M.G. Keane

Existing grassland-based male beef production systems use 200 to 300 kg N/ha and require 9 to 11 t silage plus 700 to 1200 kg concentrates per animal produced. Output is in the range 700 to 800 kg carcass per ha. Arising from the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the European Union, such beef production systems must be extensified if all the animals are to qualify for the special beef premium. The reformed CAP specifies a maximum stocking density of 2 livestock units (LU) per ha whereas existing systems operate at an intensity of 2.5 to 2.7 LU per ha. The objectives of the present study were (1) to extensify beef production (from dairy bred calves) so as to obtain more production from grazed grass and less from silage and concentrates and (2) to measure the effects of reduced fertiliser N usage on herbage production, stock carrying capacity and animal performance.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fariha Azalea

The study set out to examine the implementation of the vision 20:2020 agricultural policy by the Federal Government and its effect on food production in Nigeria between 2007 and 2015. The qualitative method of data collection and analysis and the Marxian instrumentalist theory were adopted for the study. The study established that the implementation of the Vision 20:2020 did not effectively improve and modernize production systems in Nigeria between 2007 and 2015. Again, the implementation of Vision 20:2020 did not impact effectively on the production of tubers, grains and livestock in Nigeria between 2007 and 2015. The “improved seed projects”, Agricultural Credit Support Scheme (ACSS) as well as Commercial Agricultural Credit Scheme (CACS), and some stated subsidy packages (including that of acquisition of tractors, fast yielding crops, etc) could not be accessed by most farmers. Irrigation and efficient extension schemes, as well as use of highly disease resistant livestock campaign were not implemented. Adequate funds were not released for agricultural research institutes thus leading to low adaptability to modern farming techniques. Worse still, rural farmers lacked information on modern farming techniques, as monies meant for farmers’ enlightenment programmes were embezzled. Therefore, production of tubers, grains and livestock has either declined from 129947000 tons in 2006 (i.e. prior to implementation period) or recorded insignificant increases subsequently as against the policy goal of 100 percent increase in production. The study recommended that the government should match the Vision 20:2020 agricultural policy with commensurate funding and corrupt practices must also be checked at the level of policy implementation so as to achieve good result. The government should also advance workable strategy of attracting meaningful contribution from the private sector under the public-private partnership (PPP) framework.


1991 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 124-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Glenn Fox ◽  
Alfons Weersink ◽  
Ghulam Sarwar ◽  
Scott Duff ◽  
Bill Deen

The agricultural policy agenda in the United States, Canada, and in Western Europe has been increasingly influenced by concerns for the sustainability of agricultural production systems. National, state, and provincial governments in North America are becoming increasingly sensitive to the environmental and human-health risks associated with current modes of agricultural production and policy actions, including restrictions on the use of certain agricultural chemicals and inducements to encourage the use of alternative production practices. Many restrictions and inducements have been undertaken or are currently under consideration in many jurisdictions.


2016 ◽  
Vol 49 ◽  
pp. 1-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hubert Wiggering ◽  
Peter Weißhuhn ◽  
Benjamin Burkhard

To discriminate between the contributions of ecosystems and the human subsidies to agricultural systems, we propose using an additional terminology to bring clarification into the controversial discussion about i) ecosystems versus agrosystems and ii) ecosystem services versus agrosystem services. A literature review revealed that with the exception of some very recent publications, this has not yet been sufficiently reflected, neither within the scientific nor in the policy discussion. The question remains whether to spoil the discussion with new terms again and again. We reason that it makes sense to underpin the case-specific share of agricultural inputs to the supply of agroecosystem services and to add "agro" to the terminology. We conclude, that there is a need to promote the new terminology of agrosystem services and to strengthen the use of the already established term agroecosystem services within this context. To emphasise the production patterns behind the multiple benefits agricultural systems provide to humans (commodity and non-commodity outputs) and to guarantee a reasonable weighting of related externalities in policy processes, we suggest to introduce the term agrosystem services into the discussion on ecosystem services. Agrosystem services in this context describe the anthropogenic share of agroecosystem services' generation. Agroecosystem services include multiple provisioning, regulating and cultural services from agricultural ecosystems. The inclusion of agrosystem services might accommodate the ecology-based ecosystem services concept to the specificity of managed agricultural ecosystems and therefore could be better implemented by mostly economy-driven agricultural production systems and agricultural policy.


2001 ◽  
Vol 2001 ◽  
pp. 70-70
Author(s):  
C. Sañudo ◽  
J.L. Olleta ◽  
G. Renand ◽  
M.M. Campo ◽  
B. Panea ◽  
...  

The EU is the second largest world producer of beef meat, but production is fragmented, consisting of highly variable local systems, compared with homogenous, highly intensive feedlot systems. The current EU agricultural policy requires a reorientation of beef market to take advantage of this diversity by creating meat quality labels relating to geographical areas and with specific genotype and production systems, symbols of guaranteed quality. The aim of this experiment was to analyse the relationships between productive and carcass parameters with some meat quality traits, within breed-production systems in different European countries.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 2072 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacob Asravor ◽  
Alexander Wiredu ◽  
Khalid Siddig ◽  
Edward Onumah

Rice (Oryza sativa) is an important food staple and a cash crop, which is cultivated in all the ten regions of Ghana under varying agro-ecological conditions. These conditions also reflect the production technologies used and the total farm output. In an attempt to determine the potential sources of production shortfalls on rice farms in Ghana, this paper estimates the production efficiency and the environmental-technology gaps of rice-producing households in the forest-savannah transition and guinea savannah agro-ecological zones of Ghana. The paper adopts the stochastic metafrontier framework, which permits technology-related inefficiency effects to be extricated from managerial inefficiency effects for appropriate policy formulation. In contrast to past studies, the empirical findings reveal that farms in the two agro-ecological zones adopt heterogeneous production technologies due to differences in their production environments. This is indicated by the estimated mean environmental-technology gap ratios of 0.95 and 0.50, and mean metafrontier technical efficiencies of 0.56 and 0.42 for farms in the forest-savannah transition and guinea savannah zones, respectively. These findings call for agricultural policy formulation in Ghana to be targeted at the prevailing environmental conditions of the various agro-ecological zones rather than being all-inclusive in addressing the extant inefficiencies in the rice production systems of Ghana.


Author(s):  
B G Lowman

The 1991 reform of the EC Common Agricultural Policy was designed to be acceptable to a successful GATT agreement with EC bureaucrats having an understanding of the GATT objectives, with the start of the recent GATT round beginning in 1986. Hence, the objective of both pieces of legislation is similar - to encourage free trade by reducing support of product prices through removing import quotas, export subsidies etc. As a consequence CAP has transferred open ended support for product price to a support of limited numbers of production units through cow and sheep quotas. It is therefore expected that product prices will fall closer to world market prices, particularly for products in surplus in the EC such as beef. Precise market specifications will therefore impinge directly on producers in terms of price and encourage the development of specific production systems to meet these specific markets, eg ultra light Mediterranean market.


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