Denton Marks uses economic analysis, in plain and simple language, to demystify the wine world and to enrich our understanding of it. This remarkable book could well serve as an introduction to the wine industry for economists or as an introduction to economics for the wine industry. Up to date and thorough, Marks has undertaken a prodigious task.' - Orley Ashenfelter, Princeton University, and Co-Founder and President, American Association of Wine Economists, US'What is welcome with Denton Marks's book is its exploration beyond the narrow focus of wine pricing. The outline of how wine fits into key economic processes is illuminating, and the understanding of the political economy of wine is especially helpful. Crucially, the examination of how wine functions as a cultural good is a real expansion of our understanding of its social and economic context, underlining that value is not merely a financial construct but includes intangible, symbolic meaning as well.' - Steve Charters MW, School of Wine and Spirits Business, Burgundy School of Business, France 'Denton Marks's book fills a void in both the economics and the wine-related literature. It offers the economics student insights into the wine world and the wine professionals insights into economic thinking. Certainly, this is the first 'wine economics' textbook.' - Karl Storchmann, New York University, US and Managing Editor, Journal of Wine Economics 'Marks harvests wine's potential as a lens through which to view human economic behavior- and economic misbehavior - taking readers on a sophisticated but accessible and comprehensive tour of the fascinating nooks and crannies of the wine market. Perhaps the crowning achievement is the original and thought-provoking treatment of some of the thorniest philosophical and scientific dilemmas unique to wine, including price signals, asymmetric information, and sensory intersubjectivity. This is a much-needed book from an economist who knows the subject.' - Robin Goldstein, Author of The Wine Trials, Blind Taste, and blindtaste.com/ 'Most professions show a professional interest in wine, and economics is no exception: it can help us understand how wine markets work. But since economics is considered by many as a rather 'dry' subject, wine can boost student enthusiasm for economics. This book exploits those two interests by helping non-economists understand wine producer and consumer behavior and helping college students understand economics.' - Kym Anderson, Wine Economics Research Centre, University of Adelaide and Australian National University, Australia Wine and the wine trade are steeped in culture and history; few products have consistently enjoyed both cultural importance and such wide distribution over time even seen by some as 'an elixir of life'. While wine has been produced and consumed for centuries, what is distinctive about the economics of wine? Professor Marks's book is an accessible exploration of the economics of wine, using both basic principles and specialized topics and emphasizing microeconomics and related research. Drawing upon economic themes such as International Trade and Public Choice, Wine and Economics also relates economic reasoning to management issues in wine markets. The discussion ranges from economic fundamentals and wine and government, to the challenge of knowing what is in the bottle and the importance of wine as a cultural good. This novel and comprehensive introduction to the subject is an invaluable resource for students, scholars and anyone interested in wine and the wine industry.

This volume is a compilation of essays that reviews the current status of agricultural progress in Latin America and evaluates its prospects into the 1990s. Various experts on Latin American affairs offer analyses that examine how economic and political changes over the past two decades, both regional and worldwide, have resulted in an imbalance between stagnation of output growth and modernization. Convinced that stability is vital to agricultural prosperity within the region, this study defines the major obstacles to this goal and develops new strategies to successfully meet the challenge. Although the work's identification of the issues that are common to the entire geographical area is of significant value, the author of each essay brings his unique experience within the particular country to the study, resulting in a review of the diverse agricultural conditions that exist in each country, thereby hoping to stimulate further debate over their specific management. Each chapter studies a different country with reference to prices, technology, government policies, land tenure, and labor markets. The effect of increased democratization and the continuing changes within the major nations of the world figure prominently, and together with numerous illustrative tables, the articles provide up-to-date data that help discern current trends in agricultural growth both within each state and the entire region.

The idea for this book began in Sofia, Bulgaria in September, 1992 when we met to plot a course for our University Affiliations project which had been recently funded by the U.S. Infonnation Agency. We believed that worldng on the book would provide valuable learning experiences for all the cooperators, and that the book itself would make a useful contribution to understanding the economic transition process and its policy implications. We recognized that a project of this nature would require the skills and knowledge of many people. To those 34 additional contributors to this volume, and to the many other friends, colleagues, and experts who gave generous advice, we give our sincerest thanks. We also acknowledge with thanks the support of several organizations to a reality. Much of the that transfonned this book from an idea research reported here was a major part of an educational project funded by the University Affiliations Program of the U.S. Information Agency. The project linked the University of California, Berkeley, Wye College of London University, and the Research Institute of Agricultural Economics, Sofia, in a cooperative effort to improve the quality of policy analysis. The research provided hands-on experience necessary for effective teaching in this area.

Land quality and land degradation affect agricultural productivity and food security, but quantifying these relationships has been difficult. Data are extremely limited and outcomes are sensitive to the choices that farmers make. The contributors to this book - including soil scientists, geographers, and economists - analyse data on soils, climate, land cover, agricultural inputs and outputs, and a variety of socio-economic factors to provide new insights into three key issues: * the extent to which differences in land quality generate differences in agricultural productivity across countries * how farmers' responses to differences or changes in land quality are influenced by economic, environmental, and institutional factors, and * whether land degradation over time threatens productivity growth and food security at local, regional, and global levels. This book can be thoroughly recommended to policymakers, public and private sector researchers, university faculty and graduate students, and non-profit organizations for use in research, education, and decision-making.

American Fascism and the New Deal demonstrate how fascist ideas gained popularity in the Associated Farmers of California during the 1930s and 40s. It shows that the politics of the intervening decades created economic and political policies that planted the seeds for these fascist ideas by forming alliances between the corporate-private realm and the state-public realm. These same alliances made FDR and subsequent political figures rethink the direction they wanted to take American democracy. Through a careful analysis of the Associated Farmers of California, Nelson A. Pichardo Almanzar and Brian Kulik show how the AFC formed positions in direct alliance with fascist ideas, but also why these ideas resonate with so many people even to this day. The analysis presented in American Fascism and the New Deal will be of particular interest to sociologists, especially social movement theorists; Chicana/o studies scholars; political scientists; business ethicists; and historians.

A topical and authoritative examination of the current crisis in the fishing industry, offering a political analysis of the reasons for the crisis and suggesting ways in which this might be overcome. The contributors include fishery officials and scientists as well as academics. The focus is mainly on the European fishing industry, with issues including political bargaining in the EU, the working of quota arrangements, the status of marine scientific knowledge and the industry's management structures in different countries.

This book analyses the drivers of specific common pool resource problems, particularly in fisheries and forestry, examining the way in which private and public regulation have intervened to fight the common pool resource problem by contributing to the establishment and maintenance of property rights. It focuses on the various forms of regulation that have been put in place to protect fisheries and forestry over the past decades - both from a theoretical as well as from a policy perspective - comparing the concrete interaction of legal and policy instruments in eight separate jurisdictions.

Although the history of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is dominated by a process of centralisation, growing pressures to integrate agri-environmental problems into the CAP have revealed the need to embrace decentralised approaches in an efficient federal structure. Indeed, in recent years it has become increasingly evident that the agricultural sector must undergo fundamental changes in order to enter an era of sustainable development. The authors do not believe that this will be an easy process, not only because agricultural policies in Europe are dominated by specific interest groups, but primarily because integrating environmental aspects into the CAP requires difficult institutional change at different levels. Centralised decision making at the EU level has characterised recent agricultural policy and the authors argue that centralised and hierarchical governance structures may fail to produce adequate solutions if they are not linked to regional and more diverse institutional arrangements. They demonstrate how these new institutional arrangements should be designed and how this change can be organised. In particular, they highlight the need for cooperation, and the participation of farmers, as a strategy to cope with agri-environmental issues and resource management problems. Addressing the value of co-operative strategies to achieve sustainable development and cope with agri-environmental problems, this book will be of great interest to agricultural economists and those with an interest in ecological reforms of agricultural policies. It will also be particularly relevant to policymakers within EU nations, as well as policymakers within the countries of Eastern and Central Europe who will be amongst the first to be admitted to the EU in the next wave of expansion.

The book describes the context within which the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union has been established, the basic mechanisms of the policy for the main sectors of agricultural production, and their adaptation over time in line with changes in the broader world economy; the changes in Eastern Europe, the problems of developing countries and the GATT—WTO Agreement in particular. An introduction by Franz Fischler, European Commissioner with responsibility for Agriculture, sets the scene for Community policy beyond 2000.

Systems approaches for agricultural development are needed to determine rational strategies for the role of agriculture in national development. Mathematical models and computer simulation provide objective tools for applying science to determine and evaluate options for resource management at field, farm and regional scales. However, these tools would not be fully utilizable without incorporating social and economic dimensions into their application. The second international symposium, Systems Approaches for Agricultural Development (SAAD), held in Los Banos, 6-8 December 1995, fostered this link between the biophysical sciences and the social sciences in the selection of keynote papers and oral presentations, a selection of which are included in these books. The contents further reflect how systems approaches have definitely moved beyond the research mode into the application mode. The large number and high quality of interdisciplinary research projects reported from different parts of the globe, to determine land use options that will meet multiple goals and yet sustain natural resource bases, is a key indicator of this coming of age'. At the farm level, where trade-off decisions between processes and products (commodities) feature strongly, much progress is also evident in the development of systems-based tools for decision making. At the field level optimization of resource use and minimizing environmental effects has become of major concern for which systems approaches are indispensable. The books, of which Volume I deals with regional and farm studies level and Volume II with field level studies, will be of particular interest to all agricultural scientists and planners, as well as students interested in multidisciplinary and holistic approaches to agricultural development."

Systems approaches for agricultural development are needed to determine rational strategies for the role of agriculture in national development. Mathematical models and computer simulation provide objective tools for applying science to determine and evaluate options for resource management at field, farm and regional scales. However, these tools would not be fully utilizable without incorporating social and economic dimensions into their application. The second international symposium, Systems Approaches for Agricultural Development, held in Los BaAos, 6-8 December 1995, fostered this link between the bio-physical sciences and the social sciences in the choice of keynote papers and oral presentations, a selection of which is included in this book. The book's contents further reflect how systems approaches have definitely moved beyond the research mode into the application mode. The large number and high quality of interdisciplinary research projects reported from different parts of the globe, to determine land use options that will meet multiple goals and yet sustain natural resource bases, is a key indicator of this coming of age'. At the farm level, where trade-off decisions between processes and products (commodities) feature strongly, much progress is also evident in the development of systems-based tools for decision making. This book will be of particular interest to all agricultural scientists and planners, as well as students interested in multidisciplinary and holistic approaches for agricultural development.

"Du Puis' book is a rich and frothy drink, well worth consuming, just like its subject."--"New York History"

"This is an entertaining, informative, and tightly argued book, one well worth adding to any food library."
"Gastronomica"

"An excellent social history of the development of milk drinking and production in the United States."
--"American Studies"

"Very readable and extremely well documented...DuPuis provides great insights throughout by reflecting on the thoughts of influential thinkers."
--"Choice"

"DuPuis is able to dive beneath the controversy that milk engenders today. Instead, she presents an informative, balanced history of milk production and consumption--how we get our milk and why we drink so much of it."
--"E," Westport, CT

For over a century, America's nutrition authorities have heralded milk as "nature's perfect food," as "indispensable" and "the most complete food." These milk "boosters" have ranged from consumer activists, to government nutritionists, to the American Dairy Council and its ubiquitous milk moustache ads. The image of milk as wholesome and body-building has a long history, but is it accurate?

Recently, within the newest social movements around food, milk has lost favor. Vegan anti-milk rhetoric portrays the dairy industry as cruel to animals and milk as bad for humans. Recently, books with titles like, "Milk: The Deadly Poison," and "Don't Drink Your Milk" have portrayed milk as toxic and unhealthy. Controversies over genetically-engineered cows and questions about antibiotic residue have also prompted consumers to question whether the milk they drink each day is truly good for them.

In Nature's Perfect FoodMelanie Dupuis illuminates these questions by telling the story of how Americans came to drink milk. We learn how cow's milk, which was associated with bacteria and disease became a staple of the American diet. Along the way we encounter 19th century evangelists who were convinced that cow's milk was the perfect food with divine properties, brewers whose tainted cow feed poisoned the milk supply, and informal wetnursing networks that were destroyed with the onset of urbanization and industrialization. Informative and entertaining, Nature's Perfect Food will be the standard work on the history of milk.

The West African Sahel is the transition zone between the Saharadesert in the north of Africa and the more humid Sudanian zones in the south. Although diverse in many ways, the Sahelian countries have the common problem of a fragile agricultural sector. This predicament is mainly caused by low inherent soil fertility, limited and unpredictable rainfall, frequent droughts, and wind erosion that accelerates soil degradation and desertification, compounded by To assure food production in the future, means rapidly growing populations. of declining soil fertility and increasing must be found to offset the trends soil degradation through wind erosion. This is a challenge for agricultural research. Since 1985, the Special Research Program 308 'Adapted Farming in West Africa' at the UniversityofHohenheimin collaboration with the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) in Niger, has pursued the developmentof agricultural innovations for smallholder farmers in one of the most ecologically fragile regions of the world. The prevention of soil degradation, the restoration and maintenance of soil fertility, and the increase of land and labor productivity are key objectives of this multidisci plinary research program. From the beginning, a major focus of research has been wind erosion.

"A clearly written analysis that takes into account the international context in which the company operated, its characteristics as a business enterprise, and its relationship with banana workers, local entrepreuneurs, and regional governments in two key banana zones."
--"The Journal of American History"

"A significant contribution to a growing body of scholarship."
--"Journal of Latin American Studies"

"Bucheli's narrative is theoretically informed...This book deserves consideration by groups of specialists who do not necessarily overlap: business historians, Latin America specialists, and international business scholars.
--"Economic History Society"

"Of interest not only to students of Latin American history, but also to those concerned with how large US companies function when they invest heavily in developing countries."
--"Choice"

a"Bananas and Business" covers such new ground, both in its postwar history of Columbia and in its analysis of UFCas managerial dicision making, that Bucheli does not need the straw man he laboriously dismantles.a
-- Ian Wliiam Read, Stanford University

"This is an excellent addition to our knowledge about the UFCO....based on an exhaustive analysis of the primary sources...and a thorough understanding of the logic of the multinational enterprise. Bucheli has shown that there is indeed room for a further study of UFCO and this may will inspire others to revisit this controversial company."
--"International Affairs"

"A major contribution to both Latin American and international business history. Marcelo Bucheli challenges stereotyped views of the role of multinationals in developing countries by examining theevolving dynamic relationship between the US firm, local entrepreneurs, politicians and workers. Bucheli demonstrates the complex and nuanced role of multinationals in the creation of the global economy."
--Geoffrey Jones, Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School

"Through a case study of two Colombian banana zones, based on unique access to United Fruit's internal archives, the author challenges the simplistic portrayal of UFCO as politically all-powerful and harshly exploitive by addressing the problems with declining profitability and risk the company faced over the long-term and the complex interactions through which local banana planters, plantation workers, and local and national governments influenced company decisions. This book makes a major contribution to the political economy of multinational corporations in Latin America and the new business history, and it highlights the agency of local entrepreneurs."
--Catherine LeGrand, Associate Professor of History, McGill University

"Bucheli has crafted an excellent study."
--"American Historical Review"

For well over a century, the United Fruit Company (UFCO) has been the most vilified multinational corporation operating in Latin America. Criticism of the UFCO has been widespread, ranging from politicians to consumer activists, and from labor leaders to historians, all portraying it as an overwhelmingly powerful corporation that shaped and often exploited its host countries. In this first history of the UFCO in Colombia, Marcelo Bucheli argues that the UFCO's image as an all-powerful force in determining national politics needs to be reconsidered. Using a previously unexplored source--theinternal archives of Colombia's UFCO operation--Bucheli reveals that before 1930, the UFCO worked alongside a business-friendly government that granted it generous concessions and repressed labor unionism. After 1930, however, the country experienced dramatic transformations including growing nationalism, a stronger labor movement, and increasing demands by local elites for higher stakes in the banana export business.

In response to these circumstances, the company abandoned production, selling its plantations (and labor conflicts) to local growers, while transforming itself into a marketing company. The shift was endorsed by the company's shareholders and financial analysts, who preferred lower profits with lower risks, and came at a time in which the demand for bananas was decreasing in America. Importantly, Bucheli shows that the effect of foreign direct investment was not unidirectional. Instead, the agency of local actors affected corporate strategy, just as the UFCO also transformed local politics and society.

Plant Factory Basics, Applications, and Advances takes the reader from an overview of the need for and potential of plant factories with artificial lighting (PFALs) in enhancing food production and security to the latest advances and benefits of this agriculture environment. Edited by leading experts Toyoki Kozai, Genhua Niu, and Joseph Masabni, this book aims to provide a platform of PFAL technology and science, including ideas on its extensive business and social applications towards the next-generation PFALs. The book is presented in four parts: Introduction, Basics, Applications, and Advanced Research. Part 1 covers why PFALs are necessary for urban areas, how they can contribute to the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals, and a definition of PFAL in relation to the term "indoor vertical farm." Part 2 presents SI units and radiometric, photometric, and photonmetric quantities, types, components, and performance of LED luminaires, hydroponics and aquaponics, and plant responses to the growing environment in PFALs. Part 3 describes the indexes and definition of various productivity aspects of PFAL, provides comparisons of the productivity of the past and the present operation of any given PFALs, and compares PFALs with one another from the productivity standpoint by applying the common indexes. Part 4 describes the advances in lighting and their effects on plant growth, breeding of indoor and outdoor crops, production of fruiting vegetables and head vegetables, and concluding with a focus on a human-centered perspective of urban agriculture. Providing real-world insights and experience, Plant Factory Basics, Applications, and Advances is the ideal resource for those seeking to take the next step in understanding and applying PFAL concepts.

Using a political-economic approach supplemented with insights from human ecology, this volume analyzes the long-term dynamics of food security and economic growth. The book begins by discussing the nature of preindustrial food crises and the changes that have occurred since the 19th century with the ascent of technical science and the fossil fuel revolution. It explains how these changes improved living standards but that the realization of this improvement was usually dependent on government support for smallholder modernization. The author sets out how the evolution of food security in different regions has been influenced by farm policy choices and how these choices were shaped by local societal characteristics, international relations and changing configurations in metropolitan countries. Separate chapters are devoted to the interaction of this evolution with debates on food security and economic growth and with international economic policies. The final chapters highlight the new challenges for global food security that will arise as traditional sources of biomass production and the more easily extractable reserves of fossil biomass become depleted or can no longer be used. Overall, the book emphasizes the inadequacy of current explanations with regard to these challenges. It explores what is needed to ensure a sustainable future and calls for a rethinking of these issues; a necessary reflection in today's unstable global political situation.

This book is about climate change and its relation to agriculture and rural livelihoods. It starts by providing a basic understanding of climate change science followed by the relation of climate change to agriculture, the impact of which is discussed based on the particular impact of climate change on plant and animal physiology. The book further discusses the inclusion of the agriculture sector in various international climate change negotiations. It also reviews the cost and opportunities for agricultural projects through international climate change regimes, specifically the Clean Development Mechanism under the Kyoto Protocol. With this background, the book finally proceeds to an explanation of the methodologies used to assess the impact of climate change on agriculture and empirically discusses its impact on agriculture and rural livelihoods in Nepal.

The chapters collected here explore a number of different issues, including the operation of the tariff-rate quotas established under the Uruguay Round Agreement, the implications of sanitary and phytosanitary restrictions on trade, and the growing controversy over genetically modified organisms. In addition, several chapters analyze the interaction between agricultural trade and environmental concerns. The relative prosperity in U.S. agriculture that attended the passage of the Federal Agriculture Improvement and Reform Act of 1996 was followed by a general decline in U.S. agricultural prices from 1998 to 2000. This trend in declining prices continues through the year 2001, despite the movement toward more liberalized agricultural trade. Trade liberalization has been the result of a variety of factors, including the implementation of the Uruguay Round Agreement, and the establishment of a variety of regional trade agreements, such as the North America Free Trade Agreement. Needless to say, in the face of falling agricultural prices and increasingly liberalized agricultural trade, the agricultural policy scene is an extremely complex one, both locally and globally. This volume does not pretend to offer a single, systematic prescription for what the next agricultural policy should be. Rather, the arguments and analyses contained herein are intended to highlight several issues that must be considered in the continuing debates on agricultural policy.

Since the mid-1970s, the tropical savanna, known as Cerrado, has been transformed into one of the world's largest grain-growing regions. This book explores how and by what Brazil achieved inclusive and sustainable growth in the Cerrado.

As a result of the regional debt crisis, most governments of Latin America in the 1980s entered into a process of profound policy change, from an import substitution oriented strategy to a focus upon export-promotion, with an emphasis upon market liberalization. According to mainstream economic theory, the effect of this shift would be to favour agriculture. This book, with contributors from Latin America and Europe, surveys the results on agriculture of a decade of policy change.

Infinity Fish: Economics and the Future of Fish and Fisheries is a practical and science-based reference that demonstrates how to value the benefits from restored marine ecosystems to sustain ocean and fishery resources for years to come. It discusses ecological and economical aspects to support the preservation of marine resources by understanding cost-benefits of fishery management systems. The book explains the economic benefits of restoring ecosystems that have been overexploited and how to maintain fisheries in a sustainable level. Infinity Fish: Economics and the Future of Fish and Fisheries is a useful reference to a wide range of audiences. It is for those who wish to make systematic efforts to develop their fisheries sector, scientists and researchers, anyone in fisheries management, marine resource management, economists, fish farmers, policy makers, leaders and regulators, operations researchers, as well as faculty and students.

Within the context of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (CPB) was established as an implementing agreement. The CPB is an international agreement establishing the rights of recipient countries to be notified of and to approve or reject the domestic import and/or production of living modified organisms (LMOs). Decisions regarding import/production are to be on the basis of a biosafety assessment. Article 26.1 of the CPB allows for the (optional) inclusion of socio-economic considerations (SECs) into that biosafety assessment process. This book compiles expert assessments of the issues relevant to SEC assessment of LMOs and fundamental for decisions regarding whether to undertake such assessments at all. It includes an overview of the inclusion of SEC assessment in the regulation of LMOs that looks at the rationale for the inclusion of SECs, in the context of the existing science-based risk assessment systems. This book reviews the various factors that can and have been suggested for inclusion in SEC assessment, and provides a meaningful dialogue about the contrasts, benefits and tradeoffs that are, and will, be created by the potential move to the inclusion of SECs in the regulation of LMOs, making it of interest to bothacademics and policy-makers."

In addition to constituting an evolving area of inquiry within the social sciences, agricultural certification, and particularly its Fair Trade and organic components, has emerged as a significant tool for promoting rural development in the global South. This book is unique for two reasons. First, in contrast to existing studies that have tended to examine Fair Trade and organic certification as independent systems, the studies presented in this book reveal their joint application within actual production settings, demonstrating the greater complexity entailed in these double certification systems through the generation of contradictions and tensions compared with single certification systems. Second, the authors, who are both Asian, reveal the realities of applying Fair Trade and organic certification systems within Asian agriculture. In doing so, they challenge the fact that most Fair Trade studies have been undertaken by Western scholars who have tended to focus on Latin American and African producers. Drawing on a wealth of grounded case studies conducted in India, Thailand, and the Philippines, this pioneering study on double certification makes a significant contribution to studies on Fair Trade and organic agriculture beyond Asia.