A risk efficient frontier for a pastoral farm indicates the optimal enterprise mix that allows the farmer to generate the highest income for a given level of financial risk. It is calculated by matching the available range of enterprises (sheep, beef cattle, deer, dairy, exotic forest and...

Beginning in 2000 Lincoln University has completed biennial surveys of people's perceptions of the state of the New Zealand environment. The surveys use the Pressure-State-Response framework for state of the environment reporting to assess resources such as air quality, native plants and...

The 2003 reform of the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) replaced the coupled direct support schemes by a Single Farm Payment (SFP), which will be mainly delivered to farmers irrespective of what they produce (hence 'decoupled' from production). The level of decoupling differs...

Lakes Taupo and Rotorua are important to New Zealand, but declining lake water quality is increasingly becoming a problem. Primary producers are said to be impacting heavily on the lakes' water quality through discharges that reach them through streams and ground water. The paper discusses the...

The key resource in efficient production is the management input used to coordinate the land, labour and capital. Yet, our understanding of this resource is still somewhat limited, especially the factors involved in improving the managerial ability of farmers. This paper summarises three tests...

Investment in R&D has long been regarded as an important source of productivity growth in New Zealand and Australian agriculture. Perhaps because research lags are long, current investment in R&D is monitored closely. In this paper trends in public investment in R&D and in productivity growth...

Animal welfare policies are often dealing with complex issues that are value laden and quite complex for New Zealand society to consider and evaluate. As a result, it may be difficult for agencies to converge upon policies that provide equally desirable and universally popular solutions. In some...

Large quantities of fresh produce can be grown in the Highlands provinces of Papua New Guinea, and this produce is then marketed to a range of markets, including the coastal cities of Port Moresby and Lae. However, it is often argued that the marketing system performs poorly, and various reasons...

The greatest friction in trade and fishery between Japan and New Zealand was the Total Economic Relationship, which was insisted by the PM of NZ. NZ wanted to export dairy foods in exchange for admitting fishing. Both governments experienced a long and tough negotiation. Recently frictions have...