Agriculture, in addition to producing food, hides and fibre, also provides many other goods and services not priced in the market. These include environmental outputs such as rural amenities and disamenities, but also social and cultural functions. The economic value of these non-market goods and services of agriculture can be assessed by estimating how much purchasing power people would be willing to give up to acquire those outputs if they were forced to make a choice. The contingent valuation method (CVM) is one of the most widely used methodologies developed for the measurement of the value of non-market goods.

In order to achieve economic efficiency, research organizations have established rigorous, quantitative methods for priority setting. One such organization, the Rockefeller Foundation, has drawn on this report to help determine the research goals it should emphasize in its funding. A review of the problem of priority setting is presented followed by a discussion of approaches that have been used previously. Several chapters demonstrate how a number of areas of plant science research have contributed to gains in rice productivity and also assess the current challenges of genetic improvement and pest control. The economic framework for priority setting and previous methods are reviewed, followed by a series of country case studies which provide more practical applications.

Publisher Description

In this title, originally published in 1981, author Robert P. Taylor calls for a greater understanding of rural energy supply and consumption patterns in the developing countries. Here, Taylor specifically examines the rural energy development in China as it is the world’s largest developing country in terms of population, and it has encountered many of the rural energy problems common in other developing countries. This study provides an analysis of China’s rural energy economy from before 1949 to a general discussion of achievements in rural energy development and the rural energy economy in 1981. This is an ideal title for students interested in environmental studies and development studies.

This title was first published in 2002: This volume represents some of the proceedings of the 24th conference of the International Association of Agricultural Economists (IAAE) held in Berlin, Germany, in August 2000. The papers in this volume include the president's address, the Elmhirst Lecture and a selection of 20 contributed papers. It also includes panel discussion reports, reports on the discussion groups and mini-symposia, poster paper abstracts, and the synoptic view presented at the close of the conference by the new president of the IAAE, Joachin von Braun. The theme of the 24th conference was "Tomorrow's Agriculture: Incentives, Institutions, Infrastructure and Innovations", reflecting the rapid advances being made in the application of biotechnology in both the developed and developing worlds.

Human demand for water resources is rising at an alarming rate in response to rapid population growth, rival development requirements, and the depletion of ecological resources. In this book, Okbazghi Yohannes examines the various facets of the competition for water resources among the ten Nile River Basin countries as they compete to harness the river's resources for purposes of irrigation-based agriculture and hydropower-based industrialization. Through a careful investigation of the rival states' strategies to capture greater shares of water resources, Yohannes assesses the lasting impact on the watershed ecology in the basin and on the hydrological demand of the river itself. He proposes the formation of a radically different water regime to address the looming demographic crisis, the stark regional food insecurity, and the region's collapsing hydro-ecology. This book shows how the effort to construct a regional water regime cannot be separated from the necessity to construct an ecologically sustainable internal water regime in each co-basin state, particularly in terms of ecological resources conservation and ecosystem services protection.