Political Ecology

The first page of the calculator asks users to choose a county of interest from anywhere in the US. An input/output window allows them to choose which crops they will grow, yields, tillage practices, and nitrogen fertilizer rates. Default values based on localized USDA statistics are provided as a starting point. Given the farming practices [...]

One of the truths brought home by the Gulf gusher has been the need for a re-organization of the way we address environmental policy and issues in the US. Was anyone else taken aback by the fact that somehow Secretary Napolitano was given the role of top administration official in charge due to the Coast [...]

As a result, we found that global agricultural non-CO2 emissions increase significantly until 2055 if food energy consumption and diet preferences remain constant at the level of 1995. Non-CO2 GHG emissions will rise even more if increasing food energy consumption and changing dietary preferences towards higher value foods, like meat and milk, with increasing income [...]

Community timber enterprises, forest tourism, agro-forestry, marine tourism and the exploitation of fish spill-over from protected zones into adjacent fisheries emerged as the most effective conservation activities from a review of more than 400 peer-reviewed and non-peer reviewed documents.Another four activities were found to reduce poverty to a lesser degree but not to the extent [...]

For decades the world’s agricultural markets have been highly distorted by government policies, but differently for different commodities such that a ranking of weighted average nominal rates of assistance across countries can be misleading as an indicator of the trade or welfare effects of policies affecting global markets. This article develops two theory-based indicators, drawing [...]

There are at least 1 billion poor people living with chronic undernourishment, and the United Nations (UN) Millennium Development Goal of substantially reducing the world’s hungry by 2015 will not be met. The developing world’s poor are experiencing the effects of higher commodity prices, and declining agricultural productivity growth is exacerbating the problem. Next week, [...]

“This is the first time that we’ve looked at the social, economic, health and environmental impacts of livestock in an integrated way and presented solutions for reducing the detrimental effects of the industry and enhancing its positive attributes,” he said.Among the key findings in the report are: * More than 1.7 billion animals are used [...]