The impact of increased consumption of biofuels on agricultural markets has already been substantial, and will increase further as countries around the world seek to expand the proportion of their energy that they get from renewable sources. Models of the agricultural sector must therefore...

There is growing evidence that freshwater availability is declining, while competition among sectors for the withdrawal of this scarce resource is rapidly increasing,(Rosegrant et a, 2002). Therefore, the need to promote inter-sectoral water use efficiency from the demand-side management has...

While water supply sources are dwindling in South Africa, the demand for the scarce water resource is increasing. This situation requires a switch from supply to demand management of water in the country. The study updates the 1999 social accounting matrix for South Africa, using the Trade and...

To date within Europe, a regulatory approach has been favoured when trying to curtail emissions from agriculture, the Nitrates Directive being a recent example. Economic theory indicates that market based solutions such as tradable emissions permits are the least cost means of achieving desired...

The potential impact of the current South African industrial biofuels strategy on the economic feasibility of biofuel production in South Africa is analysed and discussed. The analysis is then taken a step further by means of a scenario to analyse the potential impacts of higher global prices on...

The production of biofuels from agricultural commodities has received much attention in recent years. Apart from a few private initiatives, biofuels have not seen a large scale, commercial production in South Africa to date. This article sketches a basic picture of the economic feasibility of...

When public goods are joint outputs of agricultural production, there is a trade-off between agricultural and non-agricultural provision of the public good. The principle of minimal price distortion in the reform of agricultural policies has led to a theoretical recommendation that public goods,...

Many developing countries are attempting to address the inequities of plant breeders' rights by incorporating farmers' rights provisions in their Plant Variety Protection legislations to reward the role of farmers' as conservers and enhancers of agro-biodiversity. Developing countries expect to...

In comparison to large-scale natural landscapes separated from extensively used agricultural production landscapes in North America or Australia, German and Central Europe landscapes are all charac-terised by predominantly agricultural landscapes with few "rests of nature". Due to the high...

This paper discuss the design of multidimensional yardstick based procurement auction. The suggested design combines Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) based yardstick schemes with the multidimensional score auction. The principal select a single winner to perform a project, characterized by a...