Modern society is currently facing a cascade of environmental crises. Moving forward, it will be the job of current and future generations to develop sound and creative approaches to addressing them. This book attempts to provide insight into the ways in which society can confront modern agricultural, environmental, and resource challenges. In particular, it provides an economic lens with which to examine and confront these issues. The first part of the book introduces a general economic framework that can be used to analyze these issues. Subsequent chapters rely on this framework to introduce and explain specific concepts in agricultural, environmental, and resource economics, including (but not limited to) non-renewable and renewable resource management, pesticide use, and climate change. The book develops quantitative tools that the readership can use to analyze and better understand the complexities of these challenges. Each chapter includes specific applications, and an accompanying Appendix includes a longer list of practice problems that can be brought into courses as exercises.

Modern society is currently facing a cascade of environmental crises. Moving forward, it will be the job of current and future generations to develop sound and creative approaches to addressing them. This book attempts to provide insight into the ways in which society can confront modern agricultural, environmental, and resource challenges. In particular, it provides an economic lens with which to examine and confront these issues. The first part of the book introduces a general economic framework that can be used to analyze these issues. Subsequent chapters rely on this framework to introduce and explain specific concepts in agricultural, environmental, and resource economics, including (but not limited to) non-renewable and renewable resource management, pesticide use, and climate change. The book develops quantitative tools that the readership can use to analyze and better understand the complexities of these challenges. Each chapter includes specific applications, and an accompanying Appendix includes a longer list of practice problems that can be brought into courses as exercises.

The research and review papers presented in this volume provide an overview of the main issues, findings, and open questions in cutting-edge research on the fields of modeling, optimization and dynamics and their applications to biology, economics, energy, finance, industry, physics and psychology. Given the scientific relevance of the innovative applications and emerging issues they address, the contributions to this volume, written by some of the world's leading experts in mathematics, economics and other applied sciences, will be seminal to future research developments and will spark future works and collaborations. The majority of the papers presented in this volume were written by participants of the 4th International Conference on Dynamics, Games and Science: Decision Models in a Complex Economy (DGS IV), held at the National Distance Education University (UNED) in Madrid, Spain in June 2016 and of the 8th Berkeley Bioeconomy Conference: The Future of Biofuels, held at the UC Berkeley Alumni House in April 2015.

Concerns about energy security, uncertainty about oil prices, declining oil reserves, and global climate change are fueling a shift towards bioenergy as a renewable alternative to fossil fuels. Public policies and private investments around the globe are aiming to increase local capacity to produce biofuels. A key constraint to the expansion of biofuel production is the limited amount of land available to meet the needs for fuel, feed, and food in the coming decades. Large-scale biofuel production raises concerns about food versus fuel tradeoffs, about demands for natural resources such as water, and about potential impacts on environmental quality. The book is organized into five parts. The introductory part provides a context for the emerging economic and policy challenges related to bioenergy and the motivations for biofuels as an energy source. The second part of the handbook includes chapters that examine the implications of expanded production of first generation biofuels for the allocation of land between food and fuel and for food/feed prices and trade in biofuels as well as the potential for technology improvements to mitigate the food vs. fuel competition for land. Chapters in the third part examine the infrastructural and logistical challenges posed by large scale biofuel production and the factors that will influence the location of biorefineries and the mix of feedstocks they use. The fourth part includes chapters that examine the environmental implications of biofuels, their implications for the design of policies and the unintended environmental consequences of existing biofuel policies. The final part presents economic analysis of the market, social welfare, and distributional effects of biofuel policies.

Colleagues and friends of Dan Yaron submitted the following tributes. While each submission comes from an individual who knew Dan in a very different way, they all remark on his immeasurable contributions to the field of agricultural eco nomics, his unique approach, which combines his training and experience with his scientific background, and the admirable professionalism and civility that was apparent in every project he undertook. His work, initially inspired by the chal lenge of farmers in the arid Negev, eventually took him to the United States to work with universities and to serve on commissions furnishing his research with global applicability. Dan is not only admired for his enormous contributions to the vast body of research available in his field, but also for the commitment and dedi cation he epitomized. He will be greatly missed by those of us who were fortunate enough to make his acquaintance. ELIFEINERMAN The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Rehovot, Israel Dan Yaron, my teacher and mentor of blessed memory, was a man of wisdom, thought, counsel and deeds. His many talents, his endless energy and his ambition led him to blaze new trails in research, to ask the relevant questions while separat ing the wheat from the chaff, and to answer them while mastering the most ad vanced scientific analyses."

The concepts and techniques presented in this volume originated from the fields of dynamics, statistics, control theory, computer science and informatics, and are applied to novel and innovative real-world applications. Over the past few decades, the use of dynamic systems, control theory, computing, data mining, machine learning and simulation has gained the attention of numerous researchers from all over the world. Admirable scientific projects using both model-free and model-based methods coevolved at today's research centers and are introduced in conferences around the world, yielding new scientific advances and helping to solve important real-world problems. One important area of progress is the bioeconomy, where advances in the life sciences are used to produce new products in a sustainable and clean manner. In this book, scientists from all over the world share their latest insights and important findings in the field. The majority of the contributed papers for this volume were written by participants of the 3rd International Conference on Dynamics, Games and Science, DGSIII, held at the University of Porto in February 2014, and at the Berkeley Bioeconomy Conference at the University of California at Berkeley in March 2014. The aim of the project of this book "Modeling, Dynamics, Optimization and Bioeconomics II" follows the same aim as its companion piece, "Modeling, Dynamics, Optimization and Bioeconomics I," namely, the exploration of emerging and cutting-edge theories and methods for modeling, optimization, dynamics and bioeconomy.

In recent years, development policy has responded to an increasing concern about natural resource degradation by setting up innovative payment for environmental services (PES) programs in developing countries. PES programs use market and institutional incentives in order to meet both environmental and poverty alleviation objectives. However, their optimal design, implications for the rural poor, and how these initiatives integrate into international treaties on global warming and biodiversity loss are still being discussed. This book addresses these issues by scrutinizing analytical tools, providing policy insights and stimulating debate on linkages between poverty alleviation and environmental protection. In particular, it turns attention towards the role of environmental services in agricultural landscapes as they provide a living for many poor in developing countries. It serves as a valuable reference for academics and students in various disciplines, as well as for policy makers and advisors. This book is a co-publication between Springer and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

This volume explores the emerging and current, cutting-edge theories and methods of modeling, optimization, dynamics and bio economy. It provides an overview of the main issues, results and open questions in these fields as well as covers applications to biology, economy, energy, industry, physics, psychology and finance.

The majority of the contributed papers for this volume come from the participants of the International Conference on Modeling, Optimization and Dynamics (ICMOD 2010), a satellite conference of EURO XXIV Lisbon 2010, which took place at Faculty of Sciences of University of Porto, Portugal and from the Berkeley Bio economy Conference 2012, at the University of California, Berkeley, USA.

The success of Brazil in the large-scale production and use of fuel ethanol has been widely discussed and analyzed by other countries interested in adopting policies designed to encourage the use of biofuels. Within this context, certain questions arise: Could the Brazilian experience be replicated in other countries? What were the conditions that enabled the creation of the Brazilian Proalcool (National Ethanol Program and what lessons can be learned? To examine these issues, it is important to understand the functioning of the key, interconnected markets (those for sugarcane, sugar and ethanol), which, from their inception, were the objects of extensive government intervention until 1999. Two main conditions enabled the creation of Proalcool: robust production of sugarcane and sugar (tightly regulated by the government, which applied the numerous regulations then in place); and the military regime that was in place at the time, whose decision-making and enforcement powers were quite broad, facilitating the carrying out of the necessary actions, as well as making it easier to coordinate the activities of the various stakeholders and sectors involved. This book increases understanding of the functioning of the sugarcane supply chain in Brazil, not only during the phase of government intervention but also in recent years (in the free-market environment). The lessons, positive and negative, gleaned from the Brazilian experience can contribute to reflection on and the development of alternative modalities of biofuel production in other countries, making the book of interest to scholars and policy-makers concerned with biofuel and renewable resources as well as economic development.

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.

This book presents the first thorough economic analysis of current agricultural biotechnology regulation. The contributors, most of whom are agricultural economists working either in universities or NGOs, address issues such as commercial pesticides, the costs of approving new products, liability, benefits, consumer acceptance, regulation and its impacts, transgenic crops, social welfare implications, and biosafety. Richard E. Just is distinguished University Professor and former Chair, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of Maryland at College Park. Julian M. Alston is Professor, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of California at Davis. David Zilberman is Chair, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of California at Berkeley.

Flexible Incentives for the Adoption of Environmental Technologies in Agriculture identifies and structures more flexible economic incentives for the achievement of environmental goals in agriculture. It provides a conceptual framework and presents case studies that analyze how flexible incentives can address environmental problems that are caused by agricultural production. The book brings together economists, agency personnel and political economists for the purpose of exploring how new cutting-edge economic tools could be developed and applied to environmental problems. The goal of the book is to complement and to expand the economic theory of environmental regulation and technology adoption with new research findings. The key theme of this book is the important role technology takes when addressing environmental problems. New technologies and technical development are broadly defined to include economic instruments, innovative ways to communicate environmental information, new economic institutions, and education. This book is designed for public and private policymakers, government analysts, teachers, researchers and students who specialize in the fields of natural resources, agricultural economics and environmental regulation. It provides a fresh perspective on what types of incentives may be used to lead us to the desired environmental outcomes and offers new ideas about the types of economic instruments that may achieve these outcomes.

Knowledge generation and transfer mechanisms are being transformed in important and controversial ways. Investment in research and development has increased in response to recognition that scientific productivity is tightly connected to economic dynamism. Patent protection has been expanded in order to stimulate higher levels of private investment. Intellectual property rights held by public organizations and researchers are now increasingly transferred to private organizations to accelerate the diffusion and enhance the value of knowledge produced by public agencies and universities. Additionally, new institutions such as university offices of technology transfer, venture capital markets, and a variety of consortia in knowledge-intensive industries are being established throughout the United States and in other parts of the world. These changes have led to a repositioning of the state in systems of innovation and an increase in the proprietary character of technical information. The purpose of this book is to review and analyze i) contemporary transitions in agricultural knowledge generation and extension arrangements from an empirical perspective, and ii) emerging and contradictory perspectives as to how knowledge systems can be assessed effectively. The authors aim to provide the reader with a better understanding of the implications of new biotechnologies and new intellectual property rights regimes on public-private relations in science, the extent to which benefits from scientific knowledge are being appropriated by private sector actors, the diversity and possible outcomes of privatization initiatives in extension, and prospects for public goods production and ecological sustainability given contemporary trends. The book presents contrasting views on the degree of complementarity and substitution between private and public sector investments in research and extension. Recognizing that the labels `public' and `private' are incomplete and at times misleading descriptions of the structure and function of coordinating bodies in social systems, the analyses highlight ways in which public and private spaces and modes of functioning combine. In addition to illustrating a broad range of analytic methodologies useful for studying organizational questions in knowledge systems, the authors identify the implications of a range of past and potential institutional innovations.

Interest in biofuels began with oil shocks in the 1970's, but the more rapid development and consumption of biofuel industry in recent years has been primarily driven by mandates, subsidies, climate change concerns, emissions targets and energy security. From 2004 to 2006, fuel ethanol grew by 26% and biodiesel grew by 172%. As biofuel production continues to expand, investments in capacity expansion and research and development have been made. The 2008 food crisis emphasized the need to re-examine biofuel consequences. Biofuels remain an important renewable energy resource to substitute for fossil fuels, particularly in the transportation sector, yet biofuels' success is still uncertain. The future of biofuels in the energy supply mix relies on mitigating potential and improving the environmental gains. This book brings together leading authorities on biofuel from the World Bank to examine all of the impacts of biofuel (economic, social, environmental) within a unified framework and in a global perspective, making it of interest to academics in agricultural and environmental economics as well as industry and policy-makers.

This is an open access book. This edited volume discusses topics in environmental economics with a focus on sustainability, conservation, and responsible resource management. Written in memory of Peter Berck, Professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of California, Berkeley, the chapters expand upon his insights about the connections between human activities and the natural world.  The volume includes a selection of research on agriculture, energy, forestry, fisheries, land use, recycling, and conservation – all parts of the broad question of how natural resources can meet human needs while avoiding environmental degradation. Written from a 21st century perspective, with concerns about climate, renewable energy, biodiversity, and sustainable development, this volume will be of interest to researchers and students of agricultural and resource economics.

This volume celebrates the life and career of Gordon Rausser, pioneer and leader in natural resource economics, while critically overviewing the emerging literature in the field. As the chair of the Agriculture and Resource Economics department at UC Berkeley, Rausser led the transformation of the department from a traditional agricultural economics department to a diverse resource economics department addressing issues of agriculture, food, natural resources, environmental economics, energy, and development. This book builds on this theme, showcasing not only the scope of Rausser's work but also key developments in the field. The volume is organized into two parts. The first part speaks about the lessons of Gordon Rausser's career, in particular, his role as a leader in different spheres, his capacity to integrate teaching and entrepreneurship, and his impact on the world food system. The second part will address some of the significant developments in the field he contributed to and how it relates to his work. The chapters include contributions from modern leaders in the economics field and cover diverse topics from many subfields including public policy, public finance, law, econometrics, macroeconomics, and water resources. Providing an excellent reference, as well as a celebration of a pivotal figure in the field, this volume will be useful for practitioners and scholars in agricultural and resource economics, especially the many individuals familiar with Gordon Rausser and his career.

In its second volume, this book aims to link the academic research with development in the real world and provide a historical and institutional background that can enrich more formal research. The first section will include an assessment of the evolution and the state of the nascent second-generation biofuel as well as a perspective on the evolution of corn ethanol and sugarcane ethanol in Brazil. It will also include a historical and institutional background on the biofuel industry in Brazil that has global lessons, and later, provide a technical overview of major analytical tools used to assess the economic, land use and greenhouse gas implications of biofuel policies at a regional and global level. Additionally, the book analyzes the various drivers for land use change both at a micro-economic level and at a macro-economic level. It presents studies that apply regional and global economic models to examine the effects of biofuel policies in the US, EU and Brazil on regional and global land use, on food and fuel prices and greenhouse gas emissions. These papers illustrate the use of partial and general equilibrium modeling approaches to simulate the effects of various biofuel policies, and includes studies showing the effects of risk aversion, time preferences and liquidity constraints on farmers decision to grow energy crops for biofuel production. By presenting the tools of lifecycle analysis for assessing the direct greenhouse gas intensity of biofuels, this handbook investigates the types of indirect or market mediated effects that can offset or strengthen these direct effects. It will include tools to assess the direct and indirect effects of biofuel production on greenhouse gas emissions in the US and Brazil, and ultimately provide a comprehensive background to understand the state of biofuel in the present and how to analyze their implication.

This volume summarizes the current state of knowledge in the economic literature of management of agricultural biotechnology and biodiversity in agricultural and economic development. It identifies key issues confronting policy makers in managing biodiversity and biotechnology and provides a broad, multi-disciplinary analysis of the linkage between the two. It is especially innovative in its use of plant genetic resource management as the basis for is analysis.

This book is open access under a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO license. The book uses an economic lens to identify the main features of climate-smart agriculture (CSA), its likely impact, and the challenges associated with its implementation. Drawing upon theory and concepts from agricultural development, institutional, and resource economics, this book expands and formalizes the conceptual foundations of CSA. Focusing on the adaptation/resilience dimension of CSA, the text embraces a mixture of conceptual analyses, including theory, empirical and policy analysis, and case studies, to look at adaptation and resilience through three possible avenues: ex-ante reduction of vulnerability, increasing adaptive capacity, and ex-post risk coping. The book is divided into three sections. The first section provides conceptual framing, giving an overview of the CSA concept and grounding it in core economic principles. The second section is devoted to a set of case studies illustrating the economic basis of CSA in terms of reducing vulnerability, increasing adaptive capacity and ex-post risk coping. The final section addresses policy issues related to climate change. Providing information on this new and important field in an approachable way, this book helps make sense of CSA and fills intellectual and policy gaps by defining the concept and placing it within an economic decision-making framework. This book will be of interest to agricultural, environmental, and natural resource economists, development economists, and scholars of development studies, climate change, and agriculture. It will also appeal to policy-makers, development practitioners, and members of governmental and non-governmental organizations interested in agriculture, food security and climate change.

This book provides an overview of the state of animal agriculture and present methodologies and proposals to develop policies that result in sustainable and profitable animal production that will protect human and environmental health, enhance livelihood of smallholders and meet consumer needs. The book combines lessons of the past, factual foundation to understand the present, analytical tools to design and improve policies, case studies that provide both empirical grounding and applications of some of the strategies suggested in this book, and finally, a proposal for the way forward.

The research and review papers presented in this volume provide an overview of the main issues, findings, and open questions in cutting-edge research on the fields of modeling, optimization and dynamics and their applications to biology, economics, energy, finance, industry, physics and psychology. Given the scientific relevance of the innovative applications and emerging issues they address, the contributions to this volume, written by some of the world's leading experts in mathematics, economics and other applied sciences, will be seminal to future research developments and will spark future works and collaborations. The majority of the papers presented in this volume were written by participants of the 4th International Conference on Dynamics, Games and Science: Decision Models in a Complex Economy (DGS IV), held at the National Distance Education University (UNED) in Madrid, Spain in June 2016 and of the 8th Berkeley Bioeconomy Conference: The Future of Biofuels, held at the UC Berkeley Alumni House in April 2015.

In its second volume, this book aims to link the academic research with development in the real world and provide a historical and institutional background that can enrich more formal research. The first section will include an assessment of the evolution and the state of the nascent second-generation biofuel as well as a perspective on the evolution of corn ethanol and sugarcane ethanol in Brazil. It will also include a historical and institutional background on the biofuel industry in Brazil that has global lessons, and later, provide a technical overview of major analytical tools used to assess the economic, land use and greenhouse gas implications of biofuel policies at a regional and global level. Additionally, the book analyzes the various drivers for land use change both at a micro-economic level and at a macro-economic level. It presents studies that apply regional and global economic models to examine the effects of biofuel policies in the US, EU and Brazil on regional and global land use, on food and fuel prices and greenhouse gas emissions. These papers illustrate the use of partial and general equilibrium modeling approaches to simulate the effects of various biofuel policies, and includes studies showing the effects of risk aversion, time preferences and liquidity constraints on farmers decision to grow energy crops for biofuel production. By presenting the tools of lifecycle analysis for assessing the direct greenhouse gas intensity of biofuels, this handbook investigates the types of indirect or market mediated effects that can offset or strengthen these direct effects. It will include tools to assess the direct and indirect effects of biofuel production on greenhouse gas emissions in the US and Brazil, and ultimately provide a comprehensive background to understand the state of biofuel in the present and how to analyze their implication.

The success of Brazil in the large-scale production and use of fuel ethanol has been widely discussed and analyzed by other countries interested in adopting policies designed to encourage the use of biofuels. Within this context, certain questions arise: Could the Brazilian experience be replicated in other countries? What were the conditions that enabled the creation of the Brazilian Proálcool (National Ethanol Program and what lessons can be learned? To examine these issues, it is important to understand the functioning of the key, interconnected markets (those for sugarcane, sugar and ethanol), which, from their inception, were the objects of extensive government intervention until 1999. Two main conditions enabled the creation of Proálcool: robust production of sugarcane and sugar (tightly regulated by the government, which applied the numerous regulations then in place); and the military regime that was in place at the time, whose decision-making and enforcement powers were quite broad, facilitating the carrying out of the necessary actions, as well as making it easier to coordinate the activities of the various stakeholders and sectors involved. This book increases understanding of the functioning of the sugarcane supply chain in Brazil, not only during the phase of government intervention but also in recent years (in the free-market environment). The lessons, positive and negative, gleaned from the Brazilian experience can contribute to reflection on and the development of alternative modalities of biofuel production in other countries, making the book of interest to scholars and policy-makers concerned with biofuel and renewable resources as well as economic development.

This volume explores the emerging and current, cutting-edge theories and methods of modeling, optimization, dynamics and bio economy. It provides an overview of the main issues, results and open questions in these fields as well as covers applications to biology, economy, energy, industry, physics, psychology and finance. The majority of the contributed papers for this volume come from the participants of the International Conference on Modeling, Optimization and Dynamics (ICMOD 2010), a satellite conference of EURO XXIV Lisbon 2010, which took place at Faculty of Sciences of University of Porto, Portugal and from the Berkeley Bio economy Conference 2012, at the University of California, Berkeley, USA.

Interest in biofuels began with oil shocks in the 1970's, but the more rapid development and consumption of biofuel industry in recent years has been primarily driven by mandates, subsidies, climate change concerns, emissions targets and energy security. From 2004 to 2006, fuel ethanol grew by 26% and biodiesel grew by 172%. As biofuel production continues to expand, investments in capacity expansion and research and development have been made. The 2008 food crisis emphasized the need to re-examine biofuel consequences. Biofuels remain an important renewable energy resource to substitute for fossil fuels, particularly in the transportation sector, yet biofuels' success is still uncertain. The future of biofuels in the energy supply mix relies on mitigating potential and improving the environmental gains. This book brings together leading authorities on biofuel from the World Bank to examine all of the impacts of biofuel (economic, social, environmental) within a unified framework and in a global perspective, making it of interest to academics in agricultural and environmental economics as well as industry and policy-makers.