As contractual agriculture expands, contract design offers a non-regulatory opportunity to reduce non-point source pollution. A risk programming analysis of seed corn contract designs illustrates a tractable empirical principal-agent model, and shows that grower risk preferences affect contract...

The rapidity of change has left scant opportunity for investigation of the consequences of biotechnology adoption on long-term ecosystem or economic system functioning. Economic theory suggests that, if the "Biotechnology Revolution" is left to market forces alone,there will be neglected public...

The Food Quality Protection Act of 1996 (FQPA) transforms the regulation of pesticide residues on food in the United States. Three changes are prominent. First, under the FQPA, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is authorized to develop uniform pesticide residue tolerances for both...

Implementation of the Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA) is fraught with difficulty due to the divergent perspectives and demands of stakeholders in the process. In "Part I: Agricultural Producer Concerns," the authors reviewed the concerns of food producers about potential FQPA threats to farm...

The future of the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) will be a pivotal issue in the 1995 farm bill debate. Established under the Food Security Act of 1985, the original objectives of the CRP were to provide a voluntary form of supply control and to reduce soil erosion by retiring highly erodible...

This paper addresses the potential of the Environmental Quality Incentives Program to become the first true green payment program, one which is not directly linked to farm income goals as all conservation programs have been in the past, even in contrast to the Conservation Reserve Program and...

The current debate surrounding the reauthorization of the omnibus farm legislation has refocused policy makers' attention on an expanding set of public goals envision for the Farm Bill. Whereas early Farm Bills mainly addressed farm income goals, recent Farm Bills have given major attention to...

Sustainable agricultural research and education have gained acceptability within the land-grant system in less than a decade, an impressive change. Attitudes were changed by a set of forces which include lobbying by sustainable agriculture advocates, requests from farmers as a result of the...