Climate change will likely impact the ecosystem services and biodiversity generated from conserved land. Land conservation can also play a significant role in achieving cost-effective mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions. In this special issue we feature seven papers from the 2017 NAREA Workshop, “Climate Change and Land Conservation and Restoration: Advances in Economics Methods and Policies for Adaptation and Mitigation.” The articles include papers furthering the methodological frontier; portfolio optimization, dynamic rangeland stocking, and global timber harvest models, and those highlighting innovative applications; climate smart agricultural practices in Nigeria and Vietnam, welfare impacts on birding, and carbon and albedo pricing.

U.S. per capita seafood consumption is historically high due to population and income growth and consumer preference shifts toward healthy protein options. Despite this expansion, U.S. fisheries, especially those in the Great Lakes region, no longer fulfill domestic demand due to pressure on fish stocks and regulatory constraints. Instead, aquaculture and imports fill the gap. Rainbow trout, yellow perch, and walleye—three species historically produced in the North Central Region (NCR)—exemplify such trends. To expand marketing opportunities for NCR aquaculture producers, this study estimates willingness to pay (WTP) for these species and several search and credence fish attributes. We designed and distributed a survey instrument to collect hypothetical choice experiment responses from U.S. seafood consumers. Using a random utility framework, we estimate mean total WTP for trout, yellow perch, and walleye of $19.99/lb., $15.89/lb., and $17.37/lb., respectively. Further, we identify average price premia of $1.64/lb., $1.97/lb., and $0.84/lb. for NCR-sourced, wild-caught, and fresh fillet attributes. Our analysis also captures regional preferences. Mean WTP estimates for yellow perch and walleye, which are native to the Great Lakes, are significantly higher inside the NCR. Further, trout commands a higher premium outside the NCR than within, suggesting potential market segmentation for the analyzed species.

We investigated two potential mechanisms facilitating local food procurement in schools, food hubs, and funded farm to school policies. Using all three waves of the USDA’s farm to school census, we assessed the factors that support school districts that have stated an intention of beginning a farm to school program. We find that neither food hubs nor funded policies have an impact on farm to school programming. Instead, it is large-scale farms that play a role in the farm to school supply chain. Coupled with the positive impact of school size and receipt of increased federal funding, this suggests that while both cost and transactional barriers impact school procurement, current policy solutions are insufficient. This study improves our understanding of the role of facilitation mechanisms on farm to school implementation in the United States.

The US craft brewery industry has grown steadily in recent years before the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. The majority of small, independently owned craft breweries rely on tasting rooms for revenues and profits. Using data collected from a survey of tasting room visitors from 21 craft breweries in New York, this research investigates factors influencing visitors’ customer satisfaction (CS) and the link between brewery tasting room CS and sales performance. The results show that brewery interior ambience, beer tasting execution, and friendliness and knowledge of servers are the main factors influencing CS in tasting rooms. Furthermore, results suggest that higher CS levels increase visitors’ purchase likelihood and beer purchase amounts (by volume and value). These findings indicate that breweries should focus on such factors as strengthening staff training, enhancing tasting room ambience, and improving beer tasting execution that have the highest positive influence on CS to increase sales. This study has implications for the rapidly growing craft brewery industry in the USA.

This study details the results of an experimental intervention designed to address the issue of price anchoring in the choice experiment framework. The intervention, which informs respondents of the tendency to anchor choices on potentially arbitrary pieces of information, is applied to a choice experiment used to examine consumers’ willingness to pay for local and/or organic tomatoes in Northern New England and develops three primary contributions. First, evidence from this study shows that anchoring effects are present. Second, providing information to consumers plays a mitigating role on these effects; price anchoring changes willing to pay estimates between 44% and 51% and exposure to anchoring-specific cheap talk is associated with a reduction in these anchoring effects between 60% and 80%. These results are explained through decreases in price sensitivity induced by increasing the mean price vector and subsequent increases in price sensitivity due to the information intervention. Finally, this study reveals that consumers are willing to pay a substantial price premium for locally grown tomatoes, from $0.96 to $1.12 per pound, offering some guidance for policy regarding growing practice and farm land use as regional coalitions support local agriculture expansion in the Northeast.

The issue of solid waste management has risen to national prominence in the last decade, fueled by increasing waste disposal costs and changing public attitudes. This situation presents a major opportunity for economists to use their applied microeconomics skills to assist state and local governments manage waste in a cost effective fashion. While findings from formal research efforts may ultimately make their way into the decision-making process, perhaps economists can play an even more significant role in emphasizing the importance of the most basic economic concepts and principles for sound decision making in solid waste management or the many other areas in which local public choices are made. These areas would include at least the following: opportunity cost, marginal analysis of costs and benefits, and the role of economic incentives.

Trust is considered an important factor for successful collective action in groups of smallholder farmers. A prime example is collective commercialization of agricultural produce through producer organizations. While previous research has focused on trust as an exogenous determinant of participation in groups, this article tests whether trust within existing groups can be improved using a training program. We conduct a cluster-randomized controlled trial in rural Senegal to identify the effects of training members and/or leaders with respect to commercialization on intragroup trust. Our design allows identifying both direct treatment effects of having participated in the training and spillover effects on farmers who did not partake. Looking at different measures of trust in leaders’ competence and motives and of trust in members, we find that participating in the training significantly enhances both trust in leaders and trust in members. For trust in leaders, we also find a strong spillover effect. Our findings suggest that relatively soft and noncostly interventions such as group training appear to positively affect trust within producer organizations.

The idea of green infrastructure (GI) has generated great interest and creativity in addressing a range of challenging and expensive environmental problems, from coastal resilience to control of combined sewer overflows (CSOs). The appeal of GI stems from its cost savings compared to traditional “gray” infrastructure and the multiple benefits it provides, including biodiversity, aesthetics, and carbon sequestration. For example, a “green” approach to controlling CSOs in New York City saved $1.5 billion compared to a “gray” approach. Despite these advantages, GI still does not have detailed design and reliability specifications as compared to engineered gray infrastructure, potentially hindering its adoption. In this paper, we review some of the potential applications of GI in modern environmental science and discuss how reliability and associated (un)certainty in net benefits need to be addressed to realize the potential of this new approach.

This article uses baseline data from an observational study to estimate the determinants of racial and gender disparities in obesity. Samples of low-income workers in Minneapolis and Raleigh reveal that respondents in Minneapolis have lower body mass indices (BMIs) than respondents in Raleigh. There are large, statistically significant race and gender effects in estimates of BMI that explain most of the disparity between the two cities. Accounting for intersectionality—the joint impacts of being Black and a woman—reveals that almost all the BMI gaps between Black women in Minneapolis and Raleigh can be explained by age and education differences.

A cost curve for livestock auction markets was estimated using a frontier function estimator. This estimator has the advantages of consistency and asymptotic efficiency (for certain disturbance specifications). The one-sided residuals satisfy theoretical requirements for cost curves and allow estimates of operational efficiency. Results indicate little size savings above 50,000 LMU, (12 percent of markets in 1976). Estimated operational inefficiencies ranged from 0 to 45 percent. Total technical efficiency (size diseconomies plus operational inefficiencies) are high for some markets and some size groups. Little consolidation is predicted for the industry because the estimated cost of technical inefficiency is small compared to distance related costs (e.g., transport and shrink).

The interaction of the planting flexibility and conservation compliance provisions from the 1985 and 1990 farm bills was evaluated using an integrated systems model. Results showed that flex and compliance policy in combination reduced net returns and government costs, diluted environmental benefits of conservation compliance, and increased grower responsiveness to market signals, compared with conservation compliance alone. Strict compliance and higher flex levels were the most detrimental to farm income and environmental goals. Decoupling in current and future policy proposals will promote conservation goals. Budgetary reductions in future farm policy could reduce conservation incentives.

This study examines the drivers of land use in a shifting cultivation system with forest fallow. Forest fallow provides on-farm soil quality benefits, local hydrological regulation, and global public goods. An optimal control model demonstrates that farmers have an incentive to fallow less than is socially optimal, though market failures limiting crop production can have a countervailing effect by encouraging fallow. An econometric model estimated using data from the Brazilian Amazon suggests that fallowing does not result from internalization of local fallow services but instead is associated with poor market access and labor and liquidity constraints.

Artificial Christmas trees have gained an increasing market share, causing concern to natural Christmas tree producers. Primary data was used to test a hypothesized sequential probit model of buyer characteristics. The model predicted the probability of using or displaying a Christmas tree, then if a use decision was made, the probability of displaying a natural tree. The people who are likely to display trees are Christian, practice other secular Christmas rituals, have children, and spend Christmas at home. Those who use natural trees are younger, white, have a higher income, and live in a single-family dwelling.

According to the 1974 U.S. Census of Agriculture, $31.7 million worth of greenhouse vegetables were produced on a covered area of 37.2 million square feet. Though this represents less than 2 percent of total fresh market vegetable production in the country, traditionally greenhouse vegetables have provided high quality produce during months when field production is at a low level. This has been especially the case in the Northcentral and Northeast regions where a relatively large and affluent population of the metropolitan areas demands a year round supply of fresh vegetables. Much of the greenhouse production relates to the growing of salad items. Tomatoes are the single most important crop accounting for roughly two-thirds of the covered area and value of all greenhouse vegetables. In 1974, 63 percent of the U.S. covered area for tomatoes was located in the Northcentral region, 10 percent in the Northeast and the rest in the South and the West.

It has been hypothesized that differentially applied environmental regulations create pollution havens, as firms will choose to invest in countries with lax environmental standards. Using a theoretical model of pest control adoption and an empirical spatial equilibrium model, we examine one such environmental regulation, a U.S. ban on methyl bromide, to determine if an agricultural pollution haven will be created in Mexico. Alterations in agricultural production location, trade patterns, and methyl bromide use are determined. We find that, under the assumptions held, Mexico will not dramatically increase its use of methyl bromide following the ban. Sensitivity analysis to this result is conducted.

This paper considers the effect of economic progress in the nonfarm sectors of urban-industrial areas on the viability of the current farm structure in the United States. These urban-industrial areas may be located in nonmetropolitan counties that are often considered part of “rural America” (Bender, et al.) Furthermore, they are best defined as those areas of nonmetropolitan America that have clusters of employment opportunities. These clusters are increasingly dominated by an array of trade and service activities although they are of lower order in the central place hierarchy than found in metropolitan areas. For example, basic medical services may be provided but there is an insufficient local market to justify many specialized medical services.

The demand for electricity in the residential sector is estimated to have become less elastic for the recent period of rising real prices as compared to earlier periods of stable or falling real price. Several possible reasons for this are investigated and we conclude that demand appears to be asymmetric with respect to price in both the short and long run. We then examine whether or not this is an important factor for forecast accuracy and public policy.

In recent decades, urban encroachment and increasing environmental regulation have impacted California's dairy industry. A complicated set of environmental legislation affects dairies in the state, and can differ depending on location, creating the possibility for within-state pollution havens. This article details the regional, state, and federal environmental regulation of California's dairy industry, and examines data to see if it matches a hypothesis of regulation affecting dairy location. Using county-year data, we show evidence of changing dairy location within the state matching times of local legislative action. The Central Valley gained production, while the more regulated and urban-affected Los Angeles area lost. Large dairies have increased by 150 percent in the Central Valley, even as the number of small farms in the region declined by 40 percent. More rigorous analysis is necessary to discern the relative impacts of land prices and regulation on dairy location.

Rural America can only be defined as non-urban America. It includes nearly all of America's land area and is home for over one-fourth of the nation's people. Although some rural areas are very prosperous and even in the not-so-prosperous regions, some individuals and families have succeeded in their economic endeavors, there seems always to have been an inordinate amount of poverty and a slow erosion of opportunity-generating activity in many or, more likely, most rural regions.

The Atlantic Sea Scallop fishery has grown tremendously over the past twenty years. The location and magnitude of harvestable biomass fluctuates dramatically due to both natural variation and the explicitly spatial management system designed to allow small individuals to grow larger and more valuable. These fluctuations in natural advantages can have profound effects on fishing ports. We use methods from economic growth literature to show that ports with lower initial scallop landings have grown the fastest. Furthermore, good access to biomass influences long-run changes in landings, although this effect exhibits considerable variability across ports. We also find evidence of returns to scope, suggesting that ports with other fishing activities could be well positioned to attract new scalloping activity when stock conditions are favorable. Further investigation of the largest ports using time-series methods also shows a high degree of variability; there are long-run relationships between scallop fishing and harvestable scallop stock in some ports, short-run relationships in some ports, and no relationship between the two in others. We interpret this as evidence that heterogeneity in the natural productivity of the ocean combined with explicitly spatial fisheries management has induced a spatial component to the port-level response to changes in biomass availability.