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Issue 21, July 2006
In This Issue
* Senate inquiry into the extent and economic impact of salinity * National evaluations of the NHT and NAP * Recent CRC publications
* Taking a closer look at multiple criteria analysis and economic evaluation. By Stefan Hajkowicz
* Social costs of herbicide resistance: the case of resistance to glyphosate. By Sally Marsh, Rick Llewellyn and Stephen Powles
* Public benefits, private benefits and the choice of policy tool for land-use change. By David Pannell
* Farmer's decision parameters on diversification and supply responses to dryland salinity. By Richard Culas
* Overview of the Economic and Social Assessment Subprogram of the CRC
Welcome to the latest issue of SEA News. Salinity has been in the news again after a story aired on Channel 9's Sunday program on the 28th of May. Lively debate followed and can be read (and added to) at the CRC Salinity's online forum: http://forum.crcsalinity.com/forum/index.php.
In this issue there are three papers from the 2006 Australian Agricultural and Resource Economic Society conference: firstly a paper on multi-criteria analysis by Stefan Hajkowicz; secondly a paper on the social costs of herbicide resistance by Sally Marsh, Rick Llewellyn and Stephen Powles; and thirdly a paper on diversification by farmers and supply responses to dryland salinity.
In this issue we also have a paper by Dave Pannell on public and private benefits and the choice of policy instruments. Dave has been presenting the public-private framework (a framework for choosing environmental policy instruments based on public and private benefits) through Pannell Discussions and this paper is a consolidated version of seven short discussion papers.
Please contact us on seanews@agric.wa.gov.au if you have any news or views, an article for publication or feedback on our newsletter. Until the next issue...
Best regards
Felicity Byrne and Robyn Hean
Senate inquiry into the extent and economic impact of salinity
The report from the Senate inquiry into the extent and economic impact of dryland salinity was released on the 28th of March 2006. The report included 23 recommendations to the Australian Government. The report "Living with salinity - a report on progress" is available online at: http://www.aph.gov.au/Senate/committee/ecita_ctte/salinity/index.htm.
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National evaluations of the NHT and NAP
Eight of the ten national evaluations of the Natural Heritage Trust and National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality have been completed. The evaluation reports are available online at http://www.nrm.gov.au/monitoring/national-evaluations/index.html.
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CRC Salinity publications
Recent CRC Salinity publications available from the CRC website: http://www.crcsalinity.com.au/publications/publications.php
Focus on Salt - June 2006; Focus 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.
Salt Magazine - June 2006; SALT Magazine brings you success stories from people tackling dryland salinity on their land or in their area.
Salinity Updates - July 2006; Updates of CRC activities by state.
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Taking a closer look at multiple criteria analysis and economic evaluationStefan Hajkowicz"This paper examines the role of MCA for economic appraisal of agricultural, natural resource and environmental policy options" |
Multiple criteria analysis (MCA) has been widely applied within the field of natural resource management since the 1970s. During this period MCA has undergone considerable methodological advancement with numerous methods for capturing decision maker preferences, ranking or scoring decision options, handling uncertainty and presenting results. This paper explores the role of MCA within the economist’s evaluation toolkit, which also contains benefit cost analysis (BCA), cost effectiveness analysis (CEA) and cost utility analysis (CUA). A process for selecting an appropriate evaluation tool is proposed, which is partly dependent on the extent to which environmental goods can be valued in monetary units.
The full paper is available here
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Social costs of herbicide resistance: the case of resistance to glyphosateSally Marsh, Rick Llewellyn and Stephen Powles"(determination of) optimal use of glyphosate by individual farmers should consider not only the direct costs and benefits to farmers, but also other possible social costs associated with the loss of glyphosate efficacy" |
Social costs and externalities associated with herbicide resistance have not generally been considered by economists. The economics of managing herbicide resistance in weeds has focused on cost-effective responses by growers to the development of resistance at the individual farm and field level. In this paper we argue that the increasing possibility of widespread glyphosate resistance presents a case where social costs associated with glyphosate resistance need to be considered when assessing optimal use of this herbicide resource at the farm level. Social costs associated with the loss of glyphosate efficacy include potential failure of herbicide-resistant crop systems, reduced use of conservation tillage techniques, and a potential greater reliance on herbicides with greater health and environmental risks.
The full paper is available here
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Public benefits, private benefits, and the choice of policy tool for land-use changeDave Pannell"Projects where positive incentives, negative incentives and extension are the appropriate response are relatively few" |
This
article provides a simple framework for choosing environmental policy
instruments, in the context of environmental managers wishing to influence
the management of private lands to generate benefits for conservation of the
environment or natural resources. The framework is based on levels of public
and private net benefits of changing land management, and a set of simple
rules. It provides a powerful tool for targeting environmental investments
to high-payoff projects, and for selecting policy mechanisms that are most
likely to be cost effective.
The paper is available at:
http://cyllene.uwa.edu.au/~dpannell/dp0601.htm
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Farmer’s decision parameters on diversification and
supply responses to
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Dryland salinity has resulted from clearing of deep-rooted plant species for farming. Farm diversification with trees and perennial pasture species may therefore reverse this problem. However, current opinion is that existing land uses are close to the economic optimum and therefore changes involving perennials may not be viewed by farmers as desirable. Socially there is a trade-off between the opportunity cost of changing existing land use with perennials and current salinity reduction targets. In this context, this paper investigates the economic implications of key decision parameters of farmers on their response to achieve farm diversification involving farming with perennials. This research aims to model diversification and supply responses of, in particular, wheat across the Australian wheat-sheep zone, and between the Southern and Western regions of the GRDC agroecological zones.
The full paper is available here
The 2006 International Association of Agricultural Economists (IAAE) Conference will be held on the Gold Coast, QLD, from the 12th to 18th August 2006. The theme of the conference is Contributions of Agricultural Economists to Critical Policy Issues. See the conference website for more details: www.iaae-agecon.org/AusConf/index.html
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13th Australian Society of Agronomy Conference: Ground-breaking stuff . 10th -14th September 2006. Perth, Western Australia. http://www.agronomy.org.au/events/2006/
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Australian
Forest Growers International Biennial Conference: Sustainable forestry -
everybody benefits. 22nd -25th October 2006. Launceston, Tasmania.
www.conferenceplus.com.au/AFG/
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51st Annual Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics (AARES) Conference, February 13th-16th, 2007 in Queenstown, New Zealand. Paper titles due 22nd September and abstracts due 24th November. See the AARES website for more information: http://www.aares.info/
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
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.
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© Copyright CRC for Plant-based Management of Dryland Salinity 2005 |
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