This briefing paper reviews the role that the proposed Conservation Security Act plays in improving US competitiveness in global markets for organic agriculture products. The European Union provides direct payments to organic farmers through an agri-environmental program that is considered a...

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...

Organic farmers are dependent on alternative, biology-based insect control methods and are innovative in their on-farm experimentation with new strategies. By understanding the factors that influence the insect management portfolio chosen by organic farmers, research and education programs to...

One of the major criticisms of past environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) studies is that the spatiotemporal aspects within the data have largely been ignored. By ignoring the spatial aspect of pollution emissions past estimates of the EKC implicitly assume that a region’s emissions are unaffected...

Agricultural production is highly dependent on inorganic substances including fertilizers. High-yielding crop varieties, such as corn, require large amounts of primary nutrients including nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. Farmers often add a surplus of nutrients to crops to maximize yields....

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the willingness of businesses directly dependent on ecotourism to pay for the protection of the environmental assets marketed as "ecotourism products." The open-ended contingent valuation method was employed to elicit willingness to pay (WTP) in the four...

Farmer's willingness to voluntarily reduce insecticide use is not considered when regulatory approaches to environmental protection are proposed. Regulations that require behavior that would voluntarily be undertaken are excessive and economically inefficient. Using survey data from a contingent...

The potential sensitivity of environmental resource valuation to payment vehicles is of interest to researchers and decision-makers involved in estimating and applying these numbers. A conceptual model is developed which provides insight into how the different payment vehicles of a special tax...

An indirect utility model is employed for measuring farmers willingness to voluntarily accept yield losses for a reduction in environmental risk by decreasing pesticide use. Results support the hypothesis that farmers have self-described risk perceptions that enable them to make assessments of...