Withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) could be costly for U.S. beef exports to Japan given existing trade agreements such as the Japan-Australia Economic Partnership Agreement (JAEPA). We estimate the demand for imported beef in Japan by source and product and assess the impact of tariff reductions on exporting countries. Our results suggest JAEPA will result in considerable increases in Australian beef exports to Japan, largely at the expense of the U.S. beef. However, similar tariff reductions for U.S. beef could eliminate these negative effects and even result in a net increase in beef imports from both countries.

Agritourism is a consumer-driven innovation that producers are exploring as a means to diversify and grow farm-based revenues. In order to help guide management and policy decisions, we conduct an exploratory spatial data analysis and find that travel infrastructure, region and rurality, characteristics of the local economy, and proximity to outdoor attractions are all significantly associated with the probability of a county being an agritourism hot spot. Mapping our primary spatial analysis’ residuals, we further identify counties with unique agritourism market conditions as a starting point to identify best practices that other regions interested in agritourism development might follow.

Policy-critical, micro-level statistical data are often unavailable at the desired level of disaggregation. We present a Bayesian methodology for “downscaling” aggregated count data to the micro level, using an outside statistical sample. Our procedure combines numerical simulation with exact calculation of combinatorial probabilities. We motivate our approach with an application estimating the number of farms in a region, using count totals at higher levels of aggregation. In a simulation analysis over varying population sizes, we demonstrate both robustness to sampling variability and outperformance relative to maximum likelihood. Spatial considerations, implementation of “informative” priors, non-spatial classification problems, and best practices are discussed.

Influence of land tenure and property rights (LTPRs) on farmers’ willingness to accept (WTA) incentives to embrace climate-smart agriculture (CSA) to combat land degradation was examined with choice experiment data collected from 1,138 farmers drawn across 16 States in Nigeria. Data analysis within random-effect and mixed logit framework revealed the existence of strong linkages between the payment vehicle, LTPRs and farmers’ CSA preferences. While farmers who were dependent on leased and/or communal lands expressed implicit dislike for CSA-related investments, the majority with freehold titles, particularly those with registered titles, expressed positive WTA incentives to embrace CSA and combat land degradation.

Although most global forest economic studies have found that warming is likely to increase forest supply, these studies have examined only the limited warming expected through 2100. This study extends the analysis out to 2250 to test much higher levels of warming to examine very long term effects. Future warming is predicted to steadily increase forest productivity, with global timber supply predicted to increase through 2250, even with warming up to 11 °C warming. However, natural forestland and biomass will shrink. This result suggests far future forests will not be able to hold the same stock of carbon they hold today.

New wheat-breeding techniques, such as hybridization and genetic modification, show increasing yield potential. This study involves estimating multi-output multi-input production technology by stochastic frontier techniques to evaluate the economic value of this yield potential. An input-oriented distance function is formulated and applied to European Farm Accountancy Data of 23 European countries. Based on the analysis, an average shadow value is derived for the increase in the marginal yield of wheat that corresponded to 18.87 €/ha. Further, technical change, technical efficiency, and returns to scale are measured for different European regions.

We study changes in farming in the Marcellus region associated with unconventional natural gas drilling activity. Due to concerns raised by the popular press, we consider 18 different county-level agricultural variables. While we find no significant changes in the number of farms or land in farms in drilling counties relative to non-drilling counties, there is an increase in median farm sizes, indicating potential consolidation in drilling counties. Despite anecdotal evidence suggesting a transition away from dairy farming to either beef or hay production, we find no support for this at the county level.