The aims of our paper are to identify economic determinants of the on-farm cultivars diversity and to empirically characterize the farmers' diversification choices. We focus on the private decision making process involving the choice of rice cultivars and the corresponding allocation of...

The development of agricultural productivity and the management of water along sustainable ecological, economic and social trajectories require an integrated approach. Integrated water management is knowledge intensive across multiple scales. As New Zealand moves to set limits on water quantity...

This paper provides a concise introduction to and evaluation of the Lake Taupo nitrogen cap and trade program established as part of Waikato Regional Council's recent Regional Plan Variation Five. The policy establishes a catchment-wide cap on nitrogen losses by allocating farmers individual...

The River Values Assessment System (RiVAS) uses a combination of expert panels and multi criteria analysis to identify primary attributes (or main features) of river values (e.g., whitewater kayaking, native birds) and their key indicators. The resulting data set is used to rank rivers for their...

Adequately representing dynamic characteristics of land use change and forestry in computable general equilibrium models is challenging but essential if modellers are to provide credible assessments of policies that directly or indirectly influence these phenomena. In this paper, we show how a...

The wine industry in New Zealand has been maturing over the past few decades, with consumers becoming more sophisticated and wineries responding by increasing their production of premium varieties. In addition, there have been several legal changes and subsequent changes to the distribution and...

New Zealand houses are cold, damp, and poorly insulated by international standards. Our substandard housing stock has negative effects on health, quality of life, productivity, winter air quality, energy use and transmission. Investment in home energy efficiency is below the socially optimal...

Animal welfare considerations are becoming increasingly important for producers of animal-derived agricultural products. Recent media attention on issues of housing conditions for intensively reared livestock and induced calving in dairy production make it clear that some members of the public...

NPV and LEV are established and common approaches to valuing single rotation and infinite rotation forests respectively, when the rotation age is fixed in advanced. More recently, Real Options approaches have been employed to value single and infinite rotation forests with a flexible harvest...

Community forestry in Nepal is intended to reduce poverty by sustainable management of forests. Timber is one of the most high-value forest products, especially in the case of Sal (Shorea robusta) forests in the Terai region of Nepal. Despite having several advantages, including high value...