Issue 18, March 2005

In This Issue

Editorial

In brief

* PhD Scholarship * SALT Magazine and Focus on Salt

Articles

* Someone has to pay... any volunteers? By Dave Pannell

* Novel multi-disciplinary approaches suggest profitable and sustainable farming systems for valley floors at risk of salinity, by Ed Barrett-Lennard et al.

Research Methodology

* Adoption of conservation tillage in Australian cropping regions: an application of duration analysis, by Frank D'Emden et al.

Coming events

Regular items

* Overview of SEA News

* Overview of the Economic and Social Assessment Subprogram of the CRC

* Publications available

Editorial

Welcome to SEA News in 2005. We hope everyone had a happy and safe Christmas and a great start to the New Year. The annual AARES conference was held in February and in this newsletter we feature a contributed paper to the conference by Frank D'Emden, Rick Llewellyn and Michael Burton. Also in this issue is an article by Ed Barrett-Lenard et al. that was presented at the Bendigo Salinity Solutions conference last August, and an article by David Pannell on voluntary vs regulatory policy mechanisms for promoting environmental protection.

Please contact us on seanews@agric.wa.gov.au if you would like to submit an article to SEA News. As always, we welcome feedback from readers on the articles we feature, as well as the newsletter itself.

Felicity Flugge and Robyn Hean

In brief

PhD Scholarship available with Monash University

PhD Scholarship in Econometrics/Agricultural Economics, applications close 31st March 2005. The successful candidate will work on econometric models of Australian broadacre agriculture, with a focus on interactions between the beef, sheep meat, wool and grains industries. Details here

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SALT Magazine and Focus on Salt

The CRC for Plant-based Management of Dryland Salinity is now publishing SALT magazine and Focus on Salt.

SALT Magazine is published by the CRC Salinity in partnership with the Meat & Livestock Australia and Australian Wool Innovations Ltd (through Sustainable Grazing on Saline Lands) to communicate productive, profitable solutions for dryland salinity. SALT Magazine brings you success stories from people tackling dryland salinity on their land or in their area. The CRC publishes SALT Magazine bi-annually to share personal stories of success in managing dryland salinity in a straightforward style.

Focus on Salt is a technical newsletter published each quarter by the CRC Salinity in partnership with the CRC Landscape Environments and Mineral Exploration (LEME). It brings you updates of the CRC's research and development projects and other investments, dryland salinity initiatives, management options, events and activities and news from your region.

Subscription to both publications is free and you can subscribe by going to the Salinity CRC website, and clicking on either the SALT magazine icon or Focus magazine icon. Alternatively, electronic versions of the magazines can be downloaded from the website.

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Pannell Discussions

Recent "Pannell Discussions" include water policy, adoption and discounting.

Check them out at Dave's website: www.general.uwa.edu.au/u/dpannell/welcome

Articles

Someone has to pay… any volunteers? Voluntary vs regulatory approaches to environmental protection in agricultural landscapes of Australia David Pannell "A challenge is to develop policy frameworks that are sufficiently flexible to accommodate the most appropriate policy approach for given environmental, economic and social circumstances"

A range of policy mechanisms for promoting changes in private land management to enhance environmental protection are considered. The mechanisms involve varying emphases on voluntarism and regulation. The paper examines four key questions relevant to the choice of policy approach: What drives change in private land management? Who should pay? What are the target outcomes? How well do particular policy mechanisms perform? Key conclusions include that each of the policy mechanisms can be appropriate for particular circumstances for particular environmental issues. A key challenge is to develop policy frameworks that are sufficiently flexible to accommodate the most appropriate policy approach for given environmental, economic and social circumstances. The most appropriate approach can vary considerably between circumstances, even for the same environmental problem. Policies that are designed without sufficient flexibility, sophistication or information can often be ineffective and/or inefficient.

The full paper is available here (139KB)

Developing farming systems that improve the resilience of landscapes and farm businesses threatened by salinity will be a key test for agricultural research over the next generation. For local groundwater systems such as those in the south-west of Western Australia, the future for the valley floors will be most influenced by the management decisions of landholders on the land threatened by salinity. This paper illustrates the convergence of new R&D that offers real prospects of low risk, high return farming systems for valley floors.

The full paper is available here (24KB)

Research Methodology

Adoption of conservation tillage in Australian cropping regions: an application of duration analysis Francis H. D’Emden, Rick S. Llewellyn and Michael P. Burton "duration analysis can satisfactorily inform researchers about the significance and magnitude of effect that time-dependent variables have on the time to adoption"

Agricultural adoption studies in the past have often concentrated on the effects of cross-sectional data on the probability of adoption using techniques such as logit and probit modelling. More recently, Duration Analysis has been used to incorporate time-dependent elements of innovation diffusion by modelling the time to adoption. This paper illustrates the use of Duration Analysis by modelling no-till adoption in southern Australian cropping regions using both cross-sectional and time-dependent variables. The results indicate that some endogenous and exogenous time-dependent variables are significant and highly influential in estimations of the probability of no-till adoption over time.

The full paper is available here (200KB)

Coming events

Permaculture: Creating Pathways to Sustainability. A 1 day symposium being held as part of the 8th Australian Permaculture Convergence, 11th April 2005, Eltham Community and Recreation Centre, Eltham, Victoria. Click here for a pdf brochure.

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2005 National Workshop of the Economics and Environment Network (EEN). 5th-6th May 2005, Canberra, ACT. Further details about the EEN workshops including a Registration Form are available at http://een.anu.edu.au/workshop.html

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15th International Farm Management Association (IFMA) Congress. 15th-19th August 2005, Campinas, Sao Paulo, Brazil. http://www.ifma15.org/

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4th National Environmental Management Systems (EMS) in Agriculture Conference. 17th-20th October 2005, LaTrobe University, Beechworth, Victoria. Further information is available online at
www.cdesign.com.au/ems2005.

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The Fourth National Native Grasses Conference will be held at Burra in South Australia, 11-13 October 2005. It is being organised by the Stipa Native Grasses Association in conjunction with the Native Grass Resources Group, Mid North Grasslands Working Group (SA) and Central West Conservation Farmers Association (NSW). Click here for further details on submitting an abstract.

Regular items

Overview of SEA News

SEA News is a newsletter on bioeconomic and social research on Sustainability and Economics in Agriculture. SEA News contains unpublished and working papers which focus on a wide range of sustainability and economic issues for agriculture. Issues covered include salinity, market-based instruments, adoption of innovations, greenhouse, ethics, policy and more. Through SEA News, we hope to introduce you to a large and diverse area of research which might otherwise escape your notice.

Overview of the Economic and Social Assessment Subprogram of the CRC

The objective of the Economic and Social Assessment subprogram of the CRC for Plant-based Management of Dryland Salinity is to evaluate economic performance of actual and potential CRC outputs and develop policy options recognising the socio-economic opportunities and constraints that lead to the adoption of new land use systems. Research involves computer modelling, surveys, experimental economics, and analysis of a range of economic, social and bio-physical data. More information about the projects of the subprogram can be found on the CRC website:  http://www.crcsalinity.com.au/pages/subprograms.aspx?SUBPROGRAMID=13

Publications available

A full list of articles featured in this and previous issues of SEA News as well as articles not featured can be found using either the topic index or author index.

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.