Author: Maurizio Canavari
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1461506093
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 369
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Book Description
This book contains a selection of the papers presented at the Joint Conference on Food, Agriculture, and the Environment, which was held in Bologna, Italy, on June 12-14, 2001. This was the seventh gathering of a biennal meeting born from a cooperation agreement between US and Italian academic and research institutions. This round of the Conference was organized in the Faculty of Agriculture in Bologna by the Dept. of Agricultural Economics and Engineering (DEIAgra) and the CNR Land and Agri-System Management Research Centre (GeST A-CNR) of Bologna. There were two main reasons for the choice of this location: fIrst, the Conference was dedicated to Maurizio Grillenzoni and Franco Alvisi, two colleagues and friends who passed away in recent years, and who committed themselves and played an important role in developing the collaboration agreement and promoting the past Conferences; second, in the year 2000 the Faculty of Agriculture in Bologna celebrated its fIrst centennial, and this Con ference was part of a wide set of events organized to highlight the relevant role of the Faculty in the research activity, both at an Italian and international level. The Conference papers were articulated both in plenary and concurrent sessions, dealing with key topics for agricultural economists. A structure similar to the Conference was adopted for grouping the papers into the four sections contained in this book: • food, nutrition, and quality, focusing i. e.
Author: Nicoletta Batini
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 1642831611
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 318
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Book Description
The Economics of Sustainable Food details the true cost of food for people and the planet. It illustrates how to transform our broken system, alleviating its severe financial and human burden. The key is smart macroeconomic policy that moves us toward methods that protect the environment like regenerative land and sea farming, low-impact urban farming, and alternative protein farming, and toward healthy diets. The book's multidisciplinary team of authors lay out detailed fiscal and trade policies, as well as structural reforms, to achieve those goals. Chapters discuss strategies to make food production sustainable, nutritious, and fair, ranging from taxes and spending to education, labor market, health care, and pension reforms, alongside regulation in cases where market incentives are unlikely to work or to work fast enough. The authors carefully consider the different needs of more and less advanced economies, balancing economic development and sustainability goals. Case studies showcase successful strategies from around the world, such as taxing foods with a high carbon footprint, financing ecosystems mapping and conservation to meet scientific targets for healthy biomes permanency, subsidizing sustainable land and sea farming, reforming health systems to move away from sick care to preventive, nutrition-based care, and providing schools with matching funds to purchase local organic produce.--Amazon.
Author: Mary Jane Angelo
Publisher: Environmental Law Inst
ISBN: 9781585761609
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 335
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Book Description
In the groundbreaking Food, Agriculture, and Environmental Law, leading environmental legal scholars Mary Jane Angelo, Jason Czarnezki, and Bill Eubanks, along with five distinguished contributing authors, undertake an exploration of the challenging political and societal issues facing agricultural policy and modern food systems through the lens of environmental protection laws. Through this exploration, the authors seek to answer difficult questions about the need for new approaches to agricultural policy and environmental law to meet 21st Century concerns surrounding climate change, sustainable agriculture, accessibility to healthy foods, and the conservation of natural resources and ecosystem services. This is the first book to examine both the impact of agricultural policy on the environment and the influence of environmental law on food and agriculture. The authors present a brief historical overview of agricultural policy as it has adapted to satisfy shifting demands and new technologies, and its role in shaping not only the current farming system and the rural economy, but also the value which we ascribe to our natural resources relative to agricultural production. The authors then explain in detail the components of the current farm bill; analyze the ecological impacts of the modern farming system encouraged by our nation s agricultural policy; and examine the interplay between agriculture, food production and distribution, and existing environmental and related laws. They conclude with several concrete proposals to reform agricultural policy that serve as models of how to enhance sustainability in our farming and food system. This book supplies a comprehensive, timely, and cohesive guide on the intersection of agriculture and the natural environment. It achieves this goal through an interdisciplinary lens, engaging diverse perspectives to provide both a practical and academic examination of the environmental impacts of current farm policy, the applicability of environmental regulatory mechanisms to agriculture and food, and reform proposals to combat environmental harms while protecting farmers economic interests as well as the rural communities they bolster. As a result, this work serves as the quintessential text for bringing these issues to the classroom in a variety of fields, including law, public policy, agricultural economics, and environmental science.
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 030930783X
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 444
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Book Description
How we produce and consume food has a bigger impact on Americans' well-being than any other human activity. The food industry is the largest sector of our economy; food touches everything from our health to the environment, climate change, economic inequality, and the federal budget. From the earliest developments of agriculture, a major goal has been to attain sufficient foods that provide the energy and the nutrients needed for a healthy, active life. Over time, food production, processing, marketing, and consumption have evolved and become highly complex. The challenges of improving the food system in the 21st century will require systemic approaches that take full account of social, economic, ecological, and evolutionary factors. Policy or business interventions involving a segment of the food system often have consequences beyond the original issue the intervention was meant to address. A Framework for Assessing Effects of the Food System develops an analytical framework for assessing effects associated with the ways in which food is grown, processed, distributed, marketed, retailed, and consumed in the United States. The framework will allow users to recognize effects across the full food system, consider all domains and dimensions of effects, account for systems dynamics and complexities, and choose appropriate methods for analysis. This report provides example applications of the framework based on complex questions that are currently under debate: consumption of a healthy and safe diet, food security, animal welfare, and preserving the environment and its resources. A Framework for Assessing Effects of the Food System describes the U.S. food system and provides a brief history of its evolution into the current system. This report identifies some of the real and potential implications of the current system in terms of its health, environmental, and socioeconomic effects along with a sense for the complexities of the system, potential metrics, and some of the data needs that are required to assess the effects. The overview of the food system and the framework described in this report will be an essential resource for decision makers, researchers, and others to examine the possible impacts of alternative policies or agricultural or food processing practices.
Author: Gerald D. Toland, Jr.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315459515
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 364
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Book Description
Policy analysis is a dynamic process of discovery rather than a passive exercise of memorizing facts and conclusions. This text provides opportunities to "practice the craft" of policy analysis by engaging the reader in realistic case studies and problem-solving scenarios that require the selection and use of applicable investigative techniques. US Agricultural and Food Policies will assist undergraduate students to learn how policy choices impact the overall performance of agricultural and food markets. It encourages students to systematically investigate scenarios with appropriate positive and normative tools. The book emphasizes the importance of employing critical thinking skills to address the complexities associated with the design and implementation of twenty-first-century agricultural and food policies. Students are asked to suspend their personal opinions and emotions, and instead apply research methods that require the careful consideration of both facts and values. The opportunities to build these investigative skills are abundant when we consider the diversity of modern agricultural and food policy concerns. Featuring case studies and critical thinking exercises throughout and supported by a Companion Website with slides, a test bank, glossary, and web/video links, this is the ideal textbook for any agricultural policy class.
Author: Andrew Barkley
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134689314
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 196
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Book Description
Many issues in food and agriculture are portrayed as increasingly polarized. These include industrial vs. sustainable agriculture, conventional vs. organic production methods, and global vs. local food sourcing, to name only three. This book addresses the origins, validity, consequences, and potential resolution of these and other divergences. Political and legal actions have resulted in significant monetary and psycho-social costs for groups on both sides of these divides. Rhetoric on many issues has caused misinformation and confusion among consumers, who are unsure about the impact of their food choices on nutrition, health, the environment, animal welfare, and hunger. In some cases distrust has intensified to embitterment on both sides of many issues, and even to violence. The book uses economic principles to help readers better understand the divisiveness that prevails in the agricultural production, food processing and food retailing industries. The authors propose solutions to promote resolution and depolarization between advocates with seemingly irreconcilable differences. A multifaceted, diverse, but targeted approach to food production and consumption is suggested to promote social well-being, and reduce or eliminate misinformation, anxiety, transaction costs and hunger.
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309084946
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 269
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Book Description
This report is a congressionally mandated review of the US Department of Agriculture's Research, Education, and Economics (REE) mission area, the main engine of publicly funded agricultural research in the United States. A changing social and scientific context of agriculture requires a new vision of agricultural research-one that will support agriculture as a positive economic, social, and environmental force. REE is uniquely positioned to advance new research frontiers in environment, public health, and rural communities. The report recommends that REE be more anticipatory and strategic in its use of limited resources and guide and champion new directions in research.
Author: Amir Kassam
Publisher: Woodhead Publishing
ISBN: 0128164115
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 478
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Book Description
Given the central role of the food and agriculture system in driving so many of the connected ecological, social and economic threats and challenges we currently face, Rethinking Food and Agriculture reviews, reassesses and reimagines the current food and agriculture system and the narrow paradigm in which it operates. Rethinking Food and Agriculture explores and uncovers some of the key historical, ethical, economic, social, cultural, political, and structural drivers and root causes of unsustainability, degradation of the agricultural environment, destruction of nature, short-comings in science and knowledge systems, inequality, hunger and food insecurity, and disharmony. It reviews efforts towards ‘sustainable development’, and reassesses whether these efforts have been implemented with adequate responsibility, acceptable societal and environmental costs and optimal engagement to secure sustainability, equity and justice. The book highlights the many ways that farmers and their communities, civil society groups, social movements, development experts, scientists and others have been raising awareness of these issues, implementing solutions and forging ‘new ways forward’, for example towards paradigms of agriculture, natural resource management and human nutrition which are more sustainable and just. Rethinking Food and Agriculture proposes ways to move beyond the current limited view of agro-ecological sustainability towards overall sustainability of the food and agriculture system based on the principle of ‘inclusive responsibility’. Inclusive responsibility encourages ecosystem sustainability based on agro-ecological and planetary limits to sustainable resource use for production and livelihoods. Inclusive responsibility also places importance on quality of life, pluralism, equity and justice for all and emphasises the health, well-being, sovereignty, dignity and rights of producers, consumers and other stakeholders, as well as of nonhuman animals and the natural world. Explores some of the key drivers and root causes of unsustainability , degradation of the agricultural environment and destruction of nature Highlights the many ways that different stakeholders have been forging 'new ways forward' towards alternative paradigms of agriculture, human nutrition and political economy, which are more sustainable and just Proposes ways to move beyong the current unsustainable exploitation of natural resources towards agroecological sustainability and overall sustainability of the food and agriculture system based on 'inclusive responsibility'
Author: Steve Martinez
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
ISBN: 1437933629
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 87
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Book Description
This comprehensive overview of local food systems explores alternative definitions of local food, estimates market size and reach, describes the characteristics of local consumers and producers, and examines early indications of the economic and health impacts of local food systems. Defining ¿local¿ based on marketing arrangements, such as farmers selling directly to consumers at regional farmers¿ markets or to schools, is well recognized. Statistics suggest that local food markets account for a small, but growing, share of U.S. agricultural production. For smaller farms, direct marketing to consumers accounts for a higher percentage of their sales than for larger farms. Charts and tables.
Author: Kimberly Etingoff
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1771883855
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 386
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Book Description
This title includes a number of Open Access chapters. As we realize the ways in which our food systems contribute and respond to climate change, sustainable agriculture becomes increasingly crucial. It is a complicated, multi-dimensional issue, which should be considered from a variety of angles. This compendium includes the perspectives of science, economics, sociology, and policy. The editor and contributors present an international and comprehensive perspective that examines the concept of sustainability as it applies to the food supply chain from farm to fork.
