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This study presents results of an analysis of 1060 academic articles published in the Australian Journal of Agricultural Economics and the Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics from 1957 to 2015. Trends in research topics over time identified by the study include a decline in research on agricultural topics offset by growth in publications related to natural resources, the environment, trade, food and international development. Other trends include an increase in the average number of co-authors on each paper, a gradual increase in authorship by females, changes in the shares of top contributing institutions, increases in collaboration between institutions and a steady increase in the number of authors from outside Australia or New Zealand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on long‐term ethnographic fieldwork with Seasonal Worker Programme (SWP) workers in south‐east Australia, I reflect in this paper on the experience of interminable temporariness and on its implications for the structural conditions underpinning contemporary horticultural labour in Australia. Although in many ways reflective of the specificities of a unique historical moment, the interminable temporariness experienced through the COVID‐19 pandemic also speaks to broader, enduring conditions produced within contemporary Australian agriculture. Here, the restructuring of the agri‐industry produces for many what Lauren Berlant describes as the "impasse" or "crisis ordinariness" of life under neoliberalism. At the same time, logics of development—including racialized imaginaries and border regimes—articulate with agricultural guest worker schemes in ways that seek to fix whole populations and regions in relations of suspended hope. In this context, I argue, the pandemic exposed and intensified structural vulnerabilities and unequal distributions of risk, which are encoded in the political economy of farm work in Australia, while also cleaving open new, if tentative, possibilities for agency and solidarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As governments encourage circular economy (CE) initiatives, markets for waste recirculation are taking shape. But implementation is in its infancy and material circuits are emergent. Early food waste CEs shaped by commercial players emphasise capital investment, routinised forms of waged labour, processing sites distant from food waste sources, and transactional relationships. Less well understood is the potential for vernacular circularity beyond market-based, transactional frames. This paper reports from a collaborative research exercise with a non-profit community farm in nonmetropolitan Australia, seeking to connect with cafés to access food waste for composting. Cafés are a nexus of production and consumption, ubiquitous in the contemporary multicultural Australian context, and therefore ideal for grassroots CEs. Ten local cafes participated, reviewing existing food waste practices, motivations for circularity, and contextual factors including the regional setting. We found that food waste circularity emerges via divergent pathways related to enterprise type and scale, environmental values of actors, place embeddedness, and local relationships. These pathways reflect the place-based attributes and diverse sustainability values of residents and businesses in the coastal, industrial city of Wollongong, where the study is based. Contrasting distant, transactional circuits, are more-than-transactional food waste pathways, developed by microscale actors shaping vernacular material flows and "hacking" public provision of Food Organic and Garden Organic (FOGO) waste services to mobilise environmental values and community relationships. Overlooked by "big policy" more-than-transactional relationships bind producers, intermediaries and consumers in closer loops and, in so doing, enrich place and facilitate an ethic of care for soil and land. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper surveys significant contributions made by Australian and New Zealand ( ANZ) agricultural and trade economists to our understanding of the extent to which price- and trade-distorting policies affect domestic and international prices and markets for agricultural products and economic welfare. It begins with the theory of policy impacts on producer and consumer prices and value added by farmers. It then surveys efforts to measure the extent of distortions due to such policies, first in Australia and New Zealand and then in other regions of the world. ANZ economists' efforts to use models to estimate the market and welfare effects of policies nationally and globally are then assessed, before attention turns to their ex ante estimates of the effects of trade agreements. The paper's Supporting Information includes a brief survey of attempts to understand the political economy forces behind those various policies and their recent reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agricultural markets and marketing policies in Australia have changed markedly in recent years. In part, this has occurred because of conscious deregulation of previous price support and stabilisation schemes. Occasionally, the changes occurred because of poor administration and spectacular default. Previous price and marketing policies schemes provided differential rates of assistance with adverse consequences for resource allocation. Pricing arrangements affected marketing institutions and marketing costs beyond the farm gate, domestically and internationally. The conceptual basis of agricultural marketing analysis was contested. Private and public roles were confused, including between Commonwealth and state governments. Key principles of agricultural marketing and policy development in Australia are illustrated in the paper by reference to commodities with different histories and economic characteristics: wool, wheat, dairying and meat. Special emphasis is given to market information and price discovery. In line with continuing urbanisation and modern logistics, retail marketing of agricultural products has also been transformed. This has become controversial as a policy issue. Competition issues, the economic behaviour and performance of supermarkets, and their effects on farmers and consumers are also introduced in the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers one explanation for the institutional basis of food insecurity in Australia, and argues that while alternative food networks and the food sovereignty movement perform a valuable function in building forms of social solidarity between urban consumers and rural producers, they currently make only a minor contribution to Australia's food and nutrition security. The paper begins by identifying two key drivers of food security: household incomes (on the demand side) and nutrition-sensitive, 'fair food' agriculture (on the supply side). We focus on this second driver and argue that healthy populations require an agricultural sector that delivers dietary diversity via a fair and sustainable food system. In order to understand why nutrition-sensitive, fair food agriculture is not flourishing in Australia we introduce the development economics theory of urban bias. According to this theory, governments support capital intensive rather than labour intensive agriculture in order to deliver cheap food alongside the transfer of public revenues gained from rural agriculture to urban infrastructure, where the majority of the voting public resides. We chart the unfolding of the Urban Bias across the twentieth century and its consolidation through neo-liberal orthodoxy, and argue that agricultural policies do little to sustain, let alone revitalize, rural and regional Australia. We conclude that by observing food system dynamics through a re-spatialized lens, Urban Bias Theory is valuable in highlighting rural-urban socio-economic and political economy tensions, particularly regarding food system sustainability. It also sheds light on the cultural economy tensions for alternative food networks as they move beyond niche markets to simultaneously support urban food security and sustainable rural livelihoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduces a series of articles focusing on agricultural and resource economics in Australia. Changes in Australian agricultural economics profession; Role of agricultural-led economic growth on poverty alleviation; Environmental problems experienced in Murray-Darling Basin; Wool industry in Australia; Generic advertising of agricultural commodities.

This paper investigates the dynamic relationships between research and development (R&D) expenditure and productivity growth in Australian broadacre agriculture using aggregate time series data for the period 1953 to 2009. The results show a cointegrating relationship between R&D and productivity growth and a unidirectional causality from R&D to TFP (total factor productivity) growth in Australian broadacre agriculture. Using the dynamic properties of the model, data from beyond the sample period are analysed by employing the variance decomposition and the impulse response function. The findings reveal that R&D can be readily linked to the variation in productivity growth beyond the sample period. Furthermore, the forecasting results indicate that a significant out-of-sample relationship exists between public R&D and productivity in broadacre agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of free trade agreements (FTAs) has been increasing as such agreements help reduce barriers to trade. This paper estimates the agricultural trade creation and export diversion effects of Australia's free trade agreements (FTAs) at the aggregate and disaggregate levels, using the Poisson pseudo‐maximum‐likelihood (PPML) estimator. It includes 24 of Australia's major trading partner countries comprising FTA and non‐FTA members and covers 22 years from 1996 to 2017. The heteroscedasticity robust regression error specification test (RESET) confirms the relevance of PPML over the Ordinary Least Square (OLS) estimator. Results showed that China–Australia, Korea–Australia, Australia–USA and Japan–Australia have larger trade creation effects in the agricultural sector. At the commodity level, variation in trade creation effects is estimated from the different trade agreements. Among the selected commodities, the larger effects were generated in trade in sugar and wine by the implementation of the majority of the trade agreements. Overall, the trade creation was greater than the export diversion of the FTAs. The findings of the study have implications for Australia's future trade agreements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous papers in this issue of Economic Papers have dealt with some substantive issues surrounding food security. The purpose of this article was different. We provide a general commentary on other Australian agricultural policy issues where the rhetoric of food security is used to exaggerate the challenges faced and/or to support solutions to some challenges that are expensive and unrealistic. This article comprises opinion based on historical observations of the agricultural policy process in Australia and the underlying principles of mainstream agricultural economics. It does not offer detailed empirical analysis of the issues discussed. The issues discussed are irrigation in the Murray-Darling Basin, prospects for agricultural production in northern Australia, especially irrigation development, the bias in favour of further processing of agricultural products (value adding), food imports and foreign ownership, and the effects of Asian economic development on Australian agriculture and agricultural trade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I use the Monash Multi-Country model – a dynamic Computable General Equilibrium model of China, Australia and the Rest of the World – to analyse the effects of removing border protection on wheat and rice in China. The analysis points to the possibility that removing border protection on wheat and rice may lead to an increase in rural income in China. This is mainly due to the following two factors. First, removing border protection on wheat and rice not only leads to a contraction in agricultural activities, but also leads to an expansion in manufacturing and services activities. Second, on average, rural households in China obtain over half of their income from manufacturing and services activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australian and New Zealand research on the economics of natural resource management ( NRM) has a relatively short history. Defining NRM as including water, fisheries, agricultural land, nature conservation and forestry, 65 per cent of all Australasian journal articles in the area have been published since 2005. The most researched NRM issue is water, followed by fisheries and agricultural land. Most of the NRM issues with a high level of economic research are issues that have had major policy initiatives in place at around the time of the studies, highlighting the high policy relevance of most of the research. For each NRM issue, we identify important contributions that have been made by Australian economists. These include the design and implementation of well-functioning water markets, the provision of strong critiques of agricultural NRM programs, advice on the design and implementation of individual transferable quotas for fisheries and many more. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In February 2016, the 60th Annual Conference of the Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society ( AARES) was held in Canberra, 20 years since we added 'and Resources' to the Society's name and Journal. As one way of commemorating those anniversaries, a pre-Conference workshop was held to highlight the contributions of the Society's agricultural and resource economists. Papers were solicited with the expectation that they would be presented in a way that is accessible for the broad membership of the Society and that revisions would be published along with reviewer comments in the Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics ( AJARE). This Special Issue is the upshot. This article introduces the Issue and the other articles in it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Feral animals are commonly constructed as the scourge of the Australian landscape. The transgressive act of introduced, domestic animals going wild elicits strong emotive responses within the community, often conceived in a kind of Freudian spectre of das unheimliche (the uncanny/ unhomely), as the once familiar becomes uncontrolled, strange and frightening. Meanwhile, exponential global growth in human populations, and the resulting strain on the environment and food security, is necessitating the rethinking of meat consumption. In Australia, while the stigma surrounding feral animals has historically inhibited their consumption, feral meat is regarded by a growing body of advocates as an environmentally favourable alternative to farmed meat, allowing not only the avoidance of animal suffering within the industrial agriculture model, but also benefitting ecosystems through the removal of damage-wreaking interlopers. This paper explores the feral turn and its contemporary manifestations as a growing food movement in Melbourne. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports some findings from an investigation of educational practice in ten (formal and informal) education for sustainability (EfS) initiatives, to characterise exemplary practice in school and community education for sustainability, considered crucial to Australia’s future. The study focused on rural/regional Australia, specifically New South Wales sites in the Murray-Darling Basin (crucial to Australian agricultural economy, under substantial environmental threat, undergoing significant social and demographic change). The research used and explored new developments in practice theory, aiming to achieve innovative rich characterisations of individual and extra-individual (cultural, discursive, social, material) aspects of practice. The study aimed to derive implications for theory, policy and practice in relation to sustainability and EfS, practice theory, education, and more specifically education for the professions (including the initial education and continuing professional development of educators). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Novel transport model with unprecedented large number of variables affecting cost and time. • High flexibility to accommodate a variety of transport supply chains. • Strong link to GIS allowing for spatial mapping of transport movements. • National scale application for entire industry sectors. • Tested in various case studies which analyse road upgrades, flood events and use of rail. Abstract Transport infrastructure is essential to moving over 85 million tonnes of agricultural products and 30 million cubic metres of timber from farms and production areas to domestic and international markets each year in Australia. Agriculture supply chains in Australia are characterised by long distances with transport costs accounting for up to 40 percent of the market price. Targeted infrastructure investment and/or regulatory changes can substantially reduce transport-related logistics costs. To provide a comprehensive view of transport logistics costs and benefits due to infrastructure investments and regulatory changes in agriculture and forestry supply chains, CSIRO developed a computer-based tool – the Transport Network Strategic Investment Tool (TraNSIT). TraNSIT optimises transport routes for upto hundreds of thousands of enterprises and millions of vehicle trips between farms and their markets, providing information on routing to maximise cost efficiencies. Through an Australian Government initiative, TraNSIT was applied to over 30 commodities representing 98% of Australian agricultural and plantation forestry volume transported by road and rail. TraNSIT is now a comprehensive logistics tool that has been applied to the largest agricultural supply chain dataset ever assembled in Australia. This paper provides an overview of TraNSIT, its adaptation to agriculture and forestry logistics as part of the project, and its application to several case studies in Australia including new road links, rail versus road and flooding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tilletia indica, the cause of Karnal bunt of wheat, is the target of strict quarantine regulations by most wheat-growing countries and its presence raises trade barriers to wheat exports. The international diagnostic protocol currently used in Australia involves the tentative identification of the spores based on morphology followed by germination of the spores and a molecular protocol to confirm the identity. This paper reports on the development of an enhanced protocol by the incorporation of a highly sensitive one-tube molecular assay for T. indicaand related Tilletiaspecies found as grain contaminants. The enhanced protocol reduces the amount of time and labour required in microscopy and bypasses the germination of Tilletiaspores in the processing of samples. An economic analysis has been performed to compare the economic costs of the current and the enhanced protocol and their relative performance in different scenarios. The results indicated that the current protocol would be more economical in the monitoring and identification of T. indicain current infested areas. However, the enhanced protocol is significantly more economical and sensitive for use in an exotic pest incursion scenario or a survey to demonstrate area of freedom. The enhanced protocol also reduces the elapsed time before a definitive identification can be achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The worldwide need to improve water use efficiency within irrigated agriculture has been recognised in response to environmental concerns and conflicts in resource use. Within the Australian cotton industry, the imperative to reduce water use and optimise irrigation management through the understanding of risk, using information generated by computerised decision aids was identified and subsequently developed into the HydroLOGIC irrigation management software. This paper summarises the attributes of the HydroLOGIC irrigation management software, with particular emphasis on functionality and its application to irrigation decisions within the Australian cotton industry. The software development process is documented to provide direction for future software application initiatives, with particular emphasis on a process of user feedback, evaluation and support requirements providing direction to software development. On-farm experiments throughout the development period allowed the validation of internal software logic, irrigator decision processes, and the OZCOT cotton growth model. The software demonstrated the ability to improve yield and water use efficiency by optimising strategic and tactical irrigation decisions in the Australian furrow irrigation cotton production system. In 7 of the 11 on-farm experiments conducted, the use of HydroLOGIC helped improve overall field water use efficiency by optimising the timing of irrigation events or by indicating further irrigations would not provide yield or maturity benefits. The paper also presents useful insights into the development of software targeted for irrigation utilising in-field measurements of soil water, crop growth and a crop growth simulation model. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The Jurien Bay Marine Park, Australia, is known for its pristine seascapes, including views of the ocean and of the coastline. To aid the management of the various seascapes, this paper estimates aspects of the social value of these seascapes through the use of a contingent valuation study. Positive and negative preferences for change were accommodated within the survey design and model estimation. A single-function extended spike model was employed to estimate the willingness to pay (WTP) for protection of the seascapes, and was later constrained to a restricted version of a spike model. The restricted model identified that a proportion of the population had a positive preference for change within the seascapes, but a larger proportion had a negative preference, resulting in a positive net WTP to maintain seascapes in their current condition. Seascapes with coastal views were determined as having the highest social value; however, the value of the ocean seascapes followed closely behind. The positive welfare estimate for natural seascapes provides a reason for their preservation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australians are among the largest consumers of marijuana in the world, and estimates show that their expenditure on marijuana is approximately twice that on wine. In the present paper, the evolution of Australian marijuana prices over the last decade is analysed, and a decline in real terms by almost 40 per cent is shown. This decline is far above that experienced by most agricultural products. Why has this occurred and what are the implications? One possible reason is the adoption of hydroponic growing techniques that have enhanced productivity and lowered costs and prices. Another reason is that laws have become softer and penalties reduced. Patterns in prices are found that divide the country into three broad regions: (i) Sydney, where prices are highest; (ii) Melbourne and Canberra, which have somewhat lower prices; and (iii) everywhere else, where marijuana is cheapest. An exploratory analysis indicates the extent to which the price declines have stimulated marijuana consumption and inhibited the consumption of a substitute product, alcohol. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changes are investigated in the Australian agricultural economics profession, 1975-99, using a conventional microeconomics framework of supply and demand for agricultural economists. Aggregate exogenous factors such as changes in the agricultural and tertiary education sectors, and changes in beliefs about the proper role of government, have changed both supply and demand conditions for agricultural economists. The profession has responded by shifting its focus away from narrowly agricultural policy, especially marketing policy, towards areas of market failure such as environmental and natural resource issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globalizing tendencies within capitalism are leading to important alterations in the structure of agricuItural production and the ways food companies are involving themselves in processing and marketing. Increasingly, finance capital and transnational agribusiness have sought ways to influence, and in some cases redirect, farming activities in Australia. The penetration of farming structures by corporate capital has been hastened by state deregulation. Rather than providing detailed empirical evidence, this paper presents a broad synthesis of recent Australian research with the aim of informing readers otherwise unaware of events in the Antipodes of the forms and impacts of agri-food change in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to extend studies of agrariainism among United States farmers by looking at the ideology of Australian farmers and critically examining the explanations put forward for the development of agrarian viewpoints. Five hundred and fifty South Australian cereal/ sheep Farmers were surveyed and their commitment to agrarianism (compared with farmers in previously published United States studies. The similarities suggest an alternate explanation that takes account of the patterns of development in both countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a model of structural change in the farming sector in which natural and economic crises decrease farmers' work satisfaction, farm profitability, and the decision to stay in farming. Using data from the Australian Regional Well-being survey, activity choice modeling, and a structural equation approach, we test the hypothesis that these crises-induced effects then cause structural change in Australian agriculture. We find that external shocks, such as drought or economic downturn, negatively affect farmers' welfare, which in turn causes structural change through revised activity choices. Our empirical findings also indicate that specific adjustment strategies such as buying additional water titles or reducing input use are insufficient to mitigate adverse crises effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Australian and New Zealand agricultural and resource economics profession has made a significant contribution in the field of climate policy and analysis of the energy sector. Much of this contribution has been based on quantitative economic modelling which had its roots in the earlier computable general equilibrium modelling on domestic policy and trade in which the profession was heavily involved from the 1970s onwards. By far the largest share of model development and analysis has been sponsored by government and conducted in the public sector, but in more recent years, there has been some shift into the private sector. However, the trend to the use of much more complex integrated assessment models in assessing the impacts of climate change and responses to new policy instruments raises the issue of whether more government support of quantitative modelling will be required in future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contributions of Australian economists to understand the effects of a boom export industry are reviewed. Effects are considered on: the real exchange rate; output, prices and factor incomes of the boom industry, other trade-exposed industries and nontraded industries; and national income and its distribution. Theoretical models and empirical models are reviewed. Different effects are considered for supply-side- versus demand-side-driven booms, and then for the price increase, investment increase and production increase phases of the boom. Evaluations of industry and macroeconomic policy options are canvassed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the beginning Agricultural economics in the Antipodes has encompassed farm management in various guises, from the farm economics of firms to the farm management economics of a firm to farm management research. Theoretical advances in the inter-disciplinary task of farm management analysis, built on economics as the core discipline, make a sound foundation for farm management to be enriched by related disciplinary areas, which will further enhance analytical and problem-solving capacities. Nowadays though, as in the past, the potential outstrips the application, meaning farmer advice, policy analysis and research investment evaluation are much the poorer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses economic-base theory and input-output modelling to examine the structure of a regional rural economy in New South Wales, Australia, drawing important policy implications for economic planners. The most salient trend has been a shift in the area's dependence from agriculture to mining over the recent decade. However, the level of diversity of the region's industrial composition has altered very little. Mining is also contributing to significant net leakage of employment income from the region. Mining should therefore not necessarily be considered as the key future opportunity for economic development. Instead, a number of industry sectors, particularly those that foster innovation and technology, can be harnessed to drive future regional growth. In addition, a tourism marketing strategy promoting the region's food, wine and other distinctive attributes should play an integral role in future development planning. These prescriptions are highly transferable to similar rural economies experiencing a shift to mining. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses paper on marketing of agricultural products in Australia by Griffith and Watson. Topics discussed include assessment of the impact of economics research in agricultural marketing by economists, dependency of farmers on local buyers for marketing their products, and cost of production formula that had been demolished by biologist Keith Campbell in 1944.

The article discusses study on farm management by researchers Bill Malcolm and Vic Wright. Topics discussed include contribution by Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society (AARES) members to evolution of farm management economics in Australia and New Zealand, influence of the New South Wales (NSW) Department of Agriculture on the development of the farm management discipline and appointment of state government regional economists funded by Commonwealth Extension Services Grant.

The onset of the grain price spikes in late 2007 heralded a heated discussion among economists and policy makers on the source of the problem and appropriate policy responses. The subsequent rounds of price surges hit landless poor consumers hard, and transferred billions of dollars from them to landowners worldwide. Economists offered a list of highly plausible explanations for the recent jumps in grain price levels. Key findings included the large harvest shortfalls caused by climate change, energy prices, and fertilizer prices, as well as demand increases due to the large and persistent annual income increases in India and China. Several declared various combinations of the above factors to be a 'perfect storm' in grain markets. In fact little more than a quick series of online searches easily reveals that only the last is plausible as a major cause of recent grain price jumps. In particular there was no major global grain production shortfall. On the other hand biofuels mandates, relatively neglected in many studies, introduced a new source of grain demand that tightened markets and drove up prices. The disconnect between economic analysis and easily verified facts is a disturbing feature of recent economic analyses of grain markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of ecosystem services in agro-ecosystems is often poorly understood by those in agricultural production. Yet food production, itself an ecosystem service, is critical to the survival of humanity and dominates much of the world's terrestrial and marine environments. There is a need to address the under-estimation of ecosystem services in farmland and develop concepts, policies and methods to evaluate them. In this paper, we develop a conceptual framework and consult with agro-industry experts to identify the impacts of different agricultural practices on ecosystem services. We also identify the ecosystem services crucial to the long term functioning of agroecosystems in Australia. Our results demonstrate that the regulating ecosystem services are the most relevant to all of the agriculture sectors we examined. Most concern is the recognised impact that the agricultural sector has had on ecosystem services provision. Results from our survey indicate that the agricultural sector in Australia negatively impacts on all regulating and supporting ecosystem services, despite the importance of these services in the process of agricultural production. We conclude with various policy arguments for better and more explicit recognition of ecosystem services in the management of agroecosystems. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Policy makers in the agricultural sector are confronted with challenges which might drive land use change and ultimately agricultural profitability to a substantial degree. The challenges include questions around climate variability, demographic changes, use of land for bio-fuel production and ensuring an increase in food production. As profitability triggers many agri-business decisions, knowledge about the existing socio-economic landscape and the economic profile of a region as well as potential impacts on profits provides useful contextual information when agricultural policies are designed. Given the upcoming challenges and their associated uncertainties, it is important to ensure that a map of agricultural profit can be reproduced in a scenario and simulation setting which will allow exploring uncertainties around the impacts on agricultural profits as well. There is however currently no flexible system in operation which allows for a consistent update of a map of agricultural profits in Australia or elsewhere. This paper describes a process that has been developed to produce a map of agricultural profit for Australia for the year 2005/2006. The process involves a complex data architecture that accounts for heterogeneous information that is collected by a variety of institutions across different scales. All information can be comfortably queried and query results can be forwarded for immediate processing and subsequent visualisation in a geographic information system (GIS). To facilitate the production of profit maps in the future, the system provides flexibility regarding an update of new economic information but it can also be linked to maps that show an updated distribution of land use. A map of agricultural profit on a large scale and regular updates thereof will help understand profit trends in time and across space. It will help identifying regions that have a lower economic profile and will inform decisions regarding the design of regulatory policies. As these maps are developed using national scale data, we do not recommend using the results at the farm level but we suggest using separate catchment scale profit assessments to calibrate the national scale profit map. The proposed system is well suited to be used in various land use management and economic scenarios and will represent a step forward regarding a scenario impact assessment on agricultural profits. It will also help understand the economic benefit of land use on a large scale. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: We discuss the role and characteristics of water markets in Australia in facilitating efficient water allocation. Administrative, regulatory and/or political barriers to effective functioning of water markets are reviewed with a focus on the southern Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) region of Australia. A mathematical model is developed to estimate the costs of existing restrictions and the benefits from potential changes in water markets (e.g., removing barriers in temporary water markets). The modelling results reveal that expanding trade leads to an increase in mean annual net returns from AU $2502 million to AU $2590 million (i.e., an increase of AU $88 million). When the current volume restrictions, exchange rates, and trading charges are accounted for, mean annual net returns reduced from AU $2590 million to AU $2573 million (i.e., a reduction of AU $17 million). The exclusion of any of the three southern MDB states from the interstate water trading imposes significant costs. If South Australia, New South Wales or Victoria withdraws from the water market, net returns are reduced by AU $27 million, AU $31 million and $63 million, respectively. The paper outlines the policy implications of strategies to remove market barriers and to facilitate efficient and effective water trading. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Farming has been the basis to work, culture and social forces for millennia. It still dominates the lives of most of the world''s poorer people, but in post-industrial western countries agriculture''s contribution to national economies is now minor. Nevertheless, most OECD countries’ agricultural policies are aimed at maintaining the size of this sector even where this conflicts with its economic significance or adversely affects the environment. Australia has a first world economy, but a third world export profile, with 20% of its export value derived from agriculture. Although it is efficient in agricultural man-power, this sector consumes 70% of the water and 60% of the land resources of the continent to produce food for an estimated 55 million people. Agricultural policies maintain the productivity of the sector, but are ineffective in stemming the associated environmental degradation, biodiversity loss and rural population decline. As in other post-industrial societies, Australia needs to re-define what its agriculture sector represents, environmentally and socially. This will require greater reappraisal of property rights, public and private benefits and legal structures supporting both. More effective alternative policies are needed for large tracts of unproductive farmland where environmental and social decline are endemic. This paper explores alternative options that offer more balanced prospects in the face of current paradoxes, including paying farmers directly for stewardship services, providing better incentives for retiring non-productive areas from agricultural land use, and retiring watersheds, streamlines and other areas of essential environmental function from agricultural production for better biodiversity conservation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Recent environmental changes and trade liberalisation have significant implications for the way farming will be conducted in future. The number of farming families has decreased by 46% between 1971 and 2006 (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2006, Customised Data), therefore the re-evaluation of farming methods seems appropriate. Traditional family farming, co-operative and corporate farming, as well as cross-boundary farming is discussed. The latter is a form of collective farming: it means individual title, but collective ownership and management. These issues will be examined through a literature review and commentary. This system has worked well for many years in Europe (ABC Landline 2001). In Australia, a group of academics and landholders worked this system successfully for six years; it was called common property resources system (Williamson, Brunckhorst & Kelly 2003). It encouraged flexibility and shared labour, and there was economic, ecological and environmental success. Why was the system abandoned? Rural communities depend upon the sustainability of the surrounding land and farms, but the persisting drought and degradation of the land has led to a decline in the social and economic viability of life in rural areas. Sustainability requires a re-thinking of the landscape, which, in turn, requires a re-thinking of eco-ethical values and biodiversity, as well as having a holistic approach. Can cross-boundary farming be an approach to save the Australian family farm? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fertiliser, water and pesticides have enabled agricultural enterprises to improve yields and quality of produce, plus reduce risks to production. Increased awareness of the impacts of agriculture has resulted in attempts to quantify its effects on the environment. This paper examines some of the implications of recently developed environmental performance indicators, comparing the results from Australia and New Zealand with those from other developed countries with an agricultural history. Australia's overall performance is apparently poor (ranking 20th globally), despite a high score in environmental, health, because of the high use of available water. In contrast, New Zealand's performance appears to be high (ranking 1st), but the data used for the indicators are outdated and it is known that environmental hot spots, particularly to do with land use intensification, exist. Difficulties associated with the collection and analysis of the data used for the indicators are discussed, as is the new research that is addressing areas of concern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic illiteracy is abundant in farm management analysis. Failure to understand that economics is the core discipline of farm-management analysis and failure to apply the whole-farm approach leads to wrong questions being asked and wrong answers being given. The power of economic thinking is in making sense of resource allocation questions in farm systems characterised by much complexity and powerful dynamics. The challenge for those who continue to work in farm management economics is to re-establish theoretically sound farm-management analysis based on economics as the core discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The changing role of the nation state in agri-food systems is illustrated through a case study of the Supermarket to Asia, a recent policy initiative of the Australian government. The Supermarket to Asia provides a policy discourse that fills gaps created through policies of deregulation and self-reliance. It involves the creation of bureaucratic mechanics that straddle the public-private interface and gives explicit attention to small and medium-sized enterprises. In these ways, the state constructs a new set of relations, alliances and allegiances with agri-food capital. The durability of these arrangements depends on the extent to which these policy arrangements are perceived to be consistent with the new realities of global agri-food trade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analysis of home consumption pricing by Giblin and Copland in the 1930s preceded the development of an identifiable Australian agricultural economics profession. They demonstrated that costs of increasing domestic prices of agricultural products above export levels would be borne largely by lightly assisted exporters and hinder their development. This work was taken up later within a framework of computable general equilibrium modelling. Now largely of historical interest, their work sheds light on likely consequences of some past policy debates ‑ of protection all round in the 1920s and tariff compensation in the 1970s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses study on farm management by researchers Bill Malcolm and Vic Wright. Topics discussed include influence of microeconomics on farm management work, impact of big data on the agricultural sector and need for farms to participate in the design of supply chain linkages along with impact of technology on allocation of costs and benefits to food supply chains.

The article discusses review of booming sector economics of agriculture and resource by John Freebairn. Topics discussed include trading gains increased as the result of resource export price increases relative to import prices, Real Gross Domestic Product (RGDP) per capita adjusted to incorporate trading gain changes and unemployment during recessions.

Summary: The past 30 years of restoration activities in Australia has been mere cautious fiddling in the face of continental‐wide native habitat loss, fragmentation and degradation. A fundamental principle of conservation is to address threats at the scale of the threatening processes. This is still not happening for two reasons: we do not know how to effectively restore at scale, and if we did, there is no demand because it does not pay. The first problem of developing the technologies needed for large‐scale revegetation will largely be solved if we collectively demand revegetation at scale. Such a scale of demand by Australian governments (taxpayers) is only likely if a permanent Natural Heritage Trust is created for long‐term funding complemented by a price on carbon pollution. That will take a lot of political will. The other big opportunity is to create demand for large‐scale revegetation cofunded by farmers to improve their farm's long‐term productivity, resilience and economic viability. This requires sustained R&D supported by novel partnerships with the massive Australian agricultural market. Native vegetation must move from the margins to the mainstream if scale is to be achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyse a rich panel dataset of farm production to determine the potential for broadacre farms in Western Australia to increase productivity through exploiting economies of scale and increasing technical efficiency. Using stochastic frontier analysis, we find that the majority of farms are operating below the optimal scale and would benefit from expansion, suggesting that a documented trend towards larger farms is desirable. We also observe a reasonable proportion of farms significantly below the efficient frontier, while differences between regional production functions and the metafrontier further contribute to inefficiency. Determinants of technical inefficiency were examined in the efficiency effects model; the adoption of technologies was aligned with reducing inefficiency, particularly in the cropping sector. This suggests the deployment of existing technologies should be a priority for both farmers and policy‐makers to further improve the efficiency of broadacre farms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Potato (Solanum tuberosumL.) production in Victoria, Australia is an important horticultural industry. Tuber quality is maintained by avoiding injuries during harvest and subsequent handling. This study examined characteristics of both tubers and handling techniques that effect surface injury response to impact. Laboratory drop tests subjected cultivar ‘Atlantic’ to impacts ranging between 1.47 and 3.92 km/s2and examined effects of small (120 ± 5 g) and large (262 ± 15 g) tuber mass, and core temperatures of 7°C, 12°C and 20°C, on the development of surface injury. Larger tuber mass, colder temperature and impacts over 1.96 km/s2generally contributed to surface injuries of larger diameter. Tuber surface injury regression models were successfully used to estimate conditional probability of tuber injury on the worst impact sites on grading lines. Two assessed lines had the potential to damage over 5% of the crop if potato tubers were cold (7°C) and large. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Environmental economics has been an increasingly significant focus for AARES and its members. Significant contributions began in the 1960s and 1970s with conceptual insights into the causes for market failure and the design of appropriate policy responses. The practical orientation of the profession led to the development and application of analytical tools in a wide array of contexts. Prominent amongst these have been nonmarket valuation, market-based policy instruments and the private sector provision of environmental protection. Interaction with natural and social scientists has been a feature. Cross-fertilisation has resulted to define emergent fields such as behavioural economics and ecological economics. Multidisciplinary endeavours have also grown in areas such as ecosystem service provision and integrated assessment modelling. These areas are likely to expand further with the ongoing contribution of core elements of the economics discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Risk and uncertainty issues have been long addressed by members of AARES, reflecting the importance of the issue in agriculture, particularly in Australia. Members have been among the most innovative developers of methods and insights, around the world, as is reflected in the many publications in journals beyond the domestic shores. It seems, given the recent keen attention to such issues in the Australian literature and beyond, that, with high probability, members will continue to make strong contributions to this area of agricultural and resource economics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Innovation in agriculture - itself an innovation some 10,000 years ago - is at the centre of many economic and social issues, either as a cause of problems or a solution to them. From the beginning, but especially over the past 150 years, innovation has transformed agriculture and in doing so has contributed to the transformation of whole economies. The consequences have been profoundly important for lives and livelihoods, generally favourable, but almost always with some undesirable consequences for at least some people. Economic and policy issues arise because agricultural research is subject to various market failures, because the resulting innovations and technological changes have important economic consequences for net income and its distribution among individuals and among factors of production, and because the consequences are difficult to discern and attribute among causes. These issues have been studied by economists and documented in the literature on the economics of innovation in agriculture that began as such in the 1950s, around the time of the creation of the Australian Agricultural Economics Society. Members of that nascent society were early contributors to this emerging field of study and have played disproportionately significant roles in it over the ensuing decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]