Newsletter on bioeconomic and social research on
Sustainability and Economics in Agriculture
Issue 13, September 2002
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Newsletter on bioeconomic and social research on |
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Editor:
Dave Pannell, University of Western Australia, email
David.Pannell@uwa.edu.au SEA Project main funder: Grains Research and Development Corporation Address of the SEA News web site: http://www1.crcsalinity.com.au/newsletter/sea/ |
In This Issue
Editorial
In Brief
Creating markets for ecosystem services - Are we sustaining Australia? -
Desalination report - Property rights and the rural environment
- Conservation field director position available
Articles
The human dimensions of integrated
weed management
Non-commercial trees on wheatbelt
farms
National economic and policy issues in
the productive use of salinised resources
Explaining groundwater depths in saltland
Economics of including pasture
in a crop rotation for integrated weed management
Research
Methodology
Including land values in analysis of land conservation
investments
Regular
Bits and Pieces
News and coming events -
Overview of the SEA Project - People in the SEA team - Publications available
This issue of SEA News marks the end of the SEA Project. I will take this opportunity to thank a number of people and organisations who have contributed to the success of the project over the past five years. Firstly, we are very grateful to Grains Research and Development Corporation for their support of the project, both financially and in various other ways. Secondly, there is a long list of researchers who have contributed directly to the analyses that have been presented in SEA News. There are well over 50 people who have authored or co-authored articles for us, but I will just list the core team, which has included at various times Sally Marsh, Nicole Glenn, Martin Van Beuren, Tennille Winter, Natasha Van Heemst, Jo Pluske, Steven Schilizzi, Andrew Bathgate, Michael O'Connell, and post-graduate students Marta Monjardino, Rick Llewellyn, Michele John and Elizabeth Kington. Next there are the scientific collaborators and helpers external to the project, who have been absolutely essential to us to ensure the scientific validity and credibility of our analyes. I have lost count of the number of people who have had inputs of this type, but I believe there have been around 100 from 10 organisations. Of these, I would particularly like to thank Don McFarlane and Ruhi Ferdowsian for their generosity and enthusiasm.
I will be taking leave from October 2002 to March 2003 but when I will return, SEA News will rise from the ashes as an outlet of the Economic and Social Assessment Program of the Cooperative Research Centre for Plant-Based Management of Dryland Salinity. We will maintain a similar breadth of topics and issues.
Lastly, thank you for your support of SEA News. The volume and enthusiasm of responses has frequently surprised and delighted me.
David Pannell, September 2002
Creating markets for
ecosystem services. The
Productivity Commission has released a research paper which investigates the
potential for addressing environmental problems related to salinity,
biodiversity and climate change by creating markets for ecosystem services. The
research paper, Creating Markets for Ecosystem Services, can be obtained from
the website at www.pc.gov.au.
Are We Sustaining Australia?
Environment Australia has published a first report against a set of 24 headline
sustainability indicators, "Are We Sustaining Australia?: A Report Against
Headline Sustainability Indicators for Australia". The indicators used in the
report aim to measure national performance against the core objectives of the
National Strategy for Ecologically Sustainable Development (NSESD).
www.ea.gov.au/esd/national/indicators/report/development.html
Desalination report.
A new report on “Economic and Technical Assessment
of Desalination Technologies in Australia” has been prepared for Agriculture,
Fisheries and Forestry - Australia and the National Dryland Salinity Program. A full report and a summary are available at
http://www.napswq.gov.au/publications/index.html
Property Rights and the Rural
Environment.
The ACT branch of the Australian
Agricultural and Resource Economics Society (AARES) conducted a symposium on
‘Property rights and the rural environment – beyond the textbook’, in Canberra
on Tuesday 20th August, 2002. Several papers from the symposium are available
for downloading from the AARES web site:
http://come.to/aares
Position available.
Conservation Field Director: Earthwatch Institute is
seeking to appoint a Field Director for its new Conservation Research Initiative
to be based at the CSIRO Tropical Forest Research Centre at Atherton. For
details and how to apply view
http://www.earthwatch.org/offices/vacancies_oz.html
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The human dimensions of
integrated weed management
by Dave
Pannell
"Farmers have always practiced Integrated Weed Management." |
The rise of herbicide resistance has seen pressure on farmers to evolve their weed management systems in new (as well as old) directions, and challenged them to retain the high levels of weed control that seemed relatively easy in the recent past. This paper considers some of those challenges from a socio-economic perspective. The first section provides a brief summary of factors influencing farmers to adopt or reject innovative farming practices, based on findings from an extensive literature. Characteristics of Integrated Weed Management that relate to those findings are spelled out, and then selected results from some recent surveys of farms and farmers are presented. Economics, which can either promote or inhibit change, is then examined, particularly the economics of highly diversified weed management systems.
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Non-commercial trees on
wheatbelt farms
by Michael O'Connell
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This study analyses the impact of non-commercial
trees on groundwater recharge and farm profits. A whole farm bio-economic model
(MIDAS) is used to assess the place of non-commercial trees in the eastern
wheatbelt of Western Australia for a range of scenarios. The analysis suggests
that small areas of non-commercial trees can be established without incurring
large decreases in profit but that this scale of planting is unlikely to
significantly reduce overall recharge levels. The costs associated with
establishing enough trees to significantly reduce recharge will almost certainly
lead to negative whole-farm profits. Furthermore, it is suggested that the farms
with the highest levels of recharge will be least able to afford even small
areas of non-commercial trees.
For the full article, see this web page:
http://www.general.uwa.edu.au/u/dpannell/dpap0203.htm
(90K)
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National economic and policy
issues in the productive use of salinised resources
by Dave Pannell "We really don’t have a choice between salinity and no salinity, but that we do have a choice between being prepared and unprepared for salinity." |
Prevention might be better than cure, but it is
not necessarily better than living with the disease. The side effects of
preventative medicine might do more damage than the disease itself. Tradeoffs of
this type are an everyday reality in medicine, and they are just as relevant to
dryland salinity. Living with salinity can take a wide range
of forms in different situations: planting saltbush on saltland, using saline
water for aquaculture; repairing infrastructure damage once it happens, rather
than trying to prevent it, and using engineering works to reduce impacts of
flooding. Despite the old saying, sometimes it really is better to treat the
symptom than to undergo an uncertain and very expensive treatment of the cause.
For the full article, see this web page:
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Explaining groundwater
depths in saltland
by
Ruhi Ferdowsian, Dave Pannell and Michael Lloyd "In the absence of saltbush, groundwater would have been discharging at the surface." |
We present an approach for statistically
estimating changes in groundwater levels including the impacts of treatments
(such as saltbush) on those levels. In an analysis of data from a farm in Lake
Grace, Western Australia we found that saltbush can lower groundwater levels to
below the capillary fringe and thus prevent ongoing worsening of soil salinity
at the surface. Judging from the two bores that had been established for 56
months, this effect of saltbush on watertable effect was mostly completed within
30 months after planting. After that period, saltbush managed to keep
groundwater levels at bay and prevent them from rising again.
For the full article, see this web page:
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Economics of including
pasture in a crop rotation for integrated weed management by
Marta Monjardino, Dave Pannell and Steve Powles "In most cases, the pasture phase becomes more valuable as the weed burden increases." |
What role should pasture play in integrated weed
management systems in cropping-dominant regions? In this paper, the Multi-species RIM (Resistance and Integrated Management)
model is used to investigate the value of including pasture phases in the crop
rotation. For this farming system, the most promising of the systems examined
appears to be so-called "phase farming", involving occasional three year phases
of pasture rather than shorter, more frequent and regular pasture phases. Phase
farming was competitive with the best continuous cropping rotation in a number
of scenarios, particularly where herbicide resistance was at high levels.
Research Methodology
| Including land values in
analysis of land conservation investments
by
Dave Pannell
"It's an area where it's easy to go astray unless you know what you are doing." |
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We would expect that the benefits (and
disbenefits) of land conservation works would be reflected in changes in land
values. Understandably, many people feel that such changes in land value should
be included in economic analyses of the land conservation works. Under certain
conditions, their inclusion can be valid but, most commonly, people argue for
their inclusion in a way that would be invalid, because it results in a double
counting of benefits. This brief article explains the problem, and gives
guidance on the "dos and don'ts" of the matter.
For the full article, see this web page:
Regular Bits and Pieces
News and Coming Events
Overview of the SEA Project
This project has a strong integrative focus, bringing together several sustainability issues and considering their biological, physical and economic implications at the whole-farm level. The main issues being researched in the project are soil salinisation, soil acidification, management of herbicide-resistant weeds, farmer adoption of sustainable practices and the economics of monitoring sustainability indicators. Main funding: Grains Research & Development Corporation. Commencement: 01-Aug-97 Completion: 30-Jun-02
People in the SEA Team
Publications available
As well as the
articles summarised in this Newsletter, the SEA Project has a range of
publications available. A list is shown at the following web page address. You
can view and print most of the papers directly in your browser.
Web page:
http://www.general.uwa.edu.au/u/dpannell/seapprs.htm
Papers that focus on
agricultural extension, and adoption and diffusion of innovations in
agriculture:
Web page:
http://www.general.uwa.edu.au/u/dpannell/adoppprs.htm
Papers that focus on
dryland salinity:
Web page:
http://www.general.uwa.edu.au/u/dpannell/saltpprs.htm
Other issues of SEA News
Copyright note: Some articles in SEA news have subsequently been submitted for publication in journals or books. SEA News contains pre-publication versions of these articles. They have not been subject to peer review, and copyright rests with the authors. When an article is formally published, the version on the SEA News web site is not updated to the published version, as this would violate copyright. However, the citation shown on the web page is updated to allow readers to identify the published version. Readers are encouraged to make use of the material present on the web site, provided that its source is acknowledged. Readers who wish to make direct quotes from an article in SEA News should not attribute the quote to a more formal (e.g. journal) published version of the paper without checking the published version, since the quote may have been altered or even omitted from the published version.
If you have any comments about SEA News or wish to make additions to or deletions from our mailing list, contact David.Pannell@uwa.edu.au
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