The Desert Uplands is a biogeographic region in central-western Queensland that lies within the rangelands area of Australia. In the region, many pastoralists are clearing the scrub and woodland vegetation in order to improve production for cattle grazing. Only limited production gains are...

Irrigated agriculture is an important source of economic activity in the Fitzroy Basin. The issue of what water is still available for development in the basin and how it might be allocated between different interests groups in the region remains topical. The Water Allocation and Management Plan...

Landholders in rural Australia are increasing their use of computers and the internet. In part, this is because of the increased availability of hardware, software and communications infrastructure at reasonable cost. However, it is unclear what all the costs and benefits of adopting a new...

Evaluating land use change in economic frameworks often requires non-market values to be assessed. However non-market valuation experiments can be sensitive to the way the trade offs are framed. The aim of the research reported in this paper was to examine the influence of varying the valuation...

The Carbon Farming Initiative (CFI) and other carbon trading programs have been promoted as alternative sources of income for agricultural producers, particularly those on marginal land. This paper presents the results of a bioeconomic model developed to compare the relative returns from a beef...

Two choice modelling studies in Australia were designed to test for the effects of variations in geographic scale and scope on WTP values. One case study assessed values for improved natural resource management in a river catchment, and the other assessed values for improved protection of the...

The potential supply of water quality mitigation actions from diffuse sources is difficult to assess, although important for designing policies to encourage such actions. In this paper the design and results of a Choice Modelling(CM) valuation to assess the potential supply of rural mitigation...

Choice modelling (CM) is a developing non-market valuation technique that provides a rich data set to the analyst. In addition to parameter estimates for the influence of attributes, labels and respondent characteristics, models also provide information about, (and are sensitive to), the error...

Queensland is the largest meat producing state in Australia, has the largest processing capacity and is the major meat exporting state. The processing sector is under substantial pressure for change, with current utilisation rates of 70% or below being sub-economic. There are a number of...

Resource development issues remain topical in Queensland, with continued high rates of vegetation clearing and arguments that up to 15 million hectares of tropical woodland areas in the state could be profitably developed. In this paper the contribution of pasture development to beef production...