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American Indian and Alaska Native tribes are uniquely affected by climate change. Indigenous peoples have depended on a wide variety of native fungi, plant and animal species for food, medicine, ceremonies, community and economic health for countless generations. Climate change stands to impact the species and ecosystems that constitute tribal traditional foods that are vital to tribal culture, economy and traditional ways of life. This paper examines the impacts of climate change on tribal traditional foods by providing cultural context for the importance of traditional foods to tribal culture, recognizing that tribal access to traditional food resources is strongly influenced by the legal and regulatory relationship with the federal government, and examining the multi-faceted relationship that tribes have with places, ecological processes and species. Tribal participation in local, regional and national climate change adaption strategies, with a focus on food-based resources, can inform and strengthen the ability of both tribes and other governmental resource managers to address and adapt to climate change impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last two centuries, the reallocation of labor out of agriculture has been a dominant feature of structural change and economic growth in the United States. This paper uses an accounting framework founded in economic theory to decompose this reallocation into three components: a demand-side effect due to the low income elasticity of demand for agricultural goods (Engel effect), and two supply-side effects, one due to differential sectoral productivity growth rates (Baumol effect), and the other to differential capital deepening. The results show that the Engel effect accounts for almost all labor reallocation until the 1950s, after which the Baumol effect becomes a key determinant. Our framework provides a unified account of long-run structural change, and demonstrates that historical interpretations and theoretical models that emphasize only one dimension of this process cannot properly account for the dramatic history of labor reallocation in the United States. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

We present a joint study of the U.S. structural transformation (the decline of agriculture as the dominating sector) and regional convergence (of southern to northern average wages). We find empirically that most of the regional convergence is attributable to the structural transformation: the nationwide convergence of agricultural wages to nonagricultural wages and the faster rate of transition of the southern labor force from agricultural to nonagricultural jobs. Similar results describe the Midwest's catch-up to the Northeast (but not the relative experience of the West). To explain these observations, we construct a model in which the South (Midwest) has a comparative advantage in producing unskilled labor-intensive agricultural goods. Thus it starts with a disproportionate share of the unskilled labor force and lower per capita incomes. Over time, declining education/training costs induce an increasing proportion of the labor force to move out of the (unskilled) agricultural sector and into the (skilled) nonagricultural sector. The decline in the agricultural labor force leads to an increase in relative agricultural wages. Both effects benefit the South (Midwest) disproportionately since it has more agricultural workers. With the addition of a less than unit income elasticity of demand for farm goods and faster technological progress in farming than outside of farming, this model successfully matches the quantitative features of the U.S. structural transformation and regional convergence, as well as several other stylized facts on U.S. economic growth in the last century. The model does not rely on frictions on interregional labor and capital mobility, since in our empirical work we find this channel to be less important than the compositional effects the model emphasizes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on factor input efficiency and technological bias with application to the U.S. agriculture. Technical progress is an important factor contributing to growth. In a "disembodied" form, its impact on a factor input is measured in terms of the ratio of that input measured in both efficiency and conventional units. It is customary to use value added rather than gross output when measuring the technological bias resulting from differences in the growth rates of inputs expressed in efficiency units. In this paper, authors consider a linear homogeneous production function in the form of a mathematical equation. The data used in the study were drawn from the U.S. farm sector and covers the period 1949 to 1970. The time series used include measures of value-added by the farm sector, the number of man-hours worked, the wage rate, the total capital stock in existence including machinery, livestock, crops and financial assets; and interest rate, consisting of the average rate on loans charged by the production credit associations. Value-added was deflated by the index of prices received by farmers; capital was deflated by a GNP price index; and the wage rate was deflated by the consumer price index.

The antebellum period saw the rise of an enormous agricultural reform movement that brought about important innovations in government policy and established new rural institutions such as the annual fair. Ariel Ron shows that these changes largely reflected the particular pathways of northern economic development and had important consequences for the sectional crisis of the 1850s. But they are also worth considering in their own right if we are to understand a countryside that made up the large majority of antebellum society. We know a lot about farmers at the community and regional levels, but we still know very little about how farmers became increasingly interconnected and organized through the fairs, publications, and societies of the agricultural reform movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is widely reported that productivity growth is the main contributor to economic growth in U.S. agriculture. This article provides estimates of economic growth since World War II and decomposes that growth into the contributions of input growth and productivity growth. The analysis is based on recently revised production accounts, now spanning the 1948-2013 period. Our findings are fully consistent with those reported in the literature; productivity growth dominates input growth as a source of economic growth in the agricultural sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban planning practitioners and academics generally view food system planning as a recent area of study, originating little more than a decade ago. Yet, food planning has a long and multifaceted history. Though not theorized as food system planning in most of the secondary literature in planning history, it is not hard to find when we look, even at some of the most familiar, seminal plans and scholarship in planning history. In this article, we trace the broad continuities and major changes in North American food planning, focusing on physical planning, regional economic development, and community economic development from the age of colonization to the present. The planners of early American cities necessarily organized urban environments and metropolitan infrastructure around agriculture, and some helped to build an international food economy. Since the nineteenth century, professional planners and their grassroots counterparts have struggled to manage the challenges posed by the industrial food system and society, in which the place of agriculture in the city is more ambiguous and contested. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Community-focused agriculture has been heralded as a development strategy to induce local economic growth. This study examines county-level linkages between community-focused agriculture and growth in total agricultural sales and economic growth more broadly. Using Census of Agriculture data, regional growth models are estimated on real personal income per capita change between 2002 and 2007. We find no association between community-focused agriculture and growth in total agricultural sales at the national level, but do in some regions of the United States. A $1 increase in farm sales led to an annualized increase of $0.04 in county personal income. With few exceptions, community-focused agriculture did not make significant contributions to economic growth in the time period analyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the importance of adopting a systemic production and human-centered approach for producing energy and food in the U.S. It states that adopting the approach offers a great potential for creating a sustainable food systems for the planet and generates local economic development. It also mentions that the creation of sustainable infrastructures and energy systems can help develop an entire region.

The article presents abstracts on city planning-related topics, including visions of waterfront development in postindustrial Philadelphia, the construction of a town planning perception of Colombo, and city planning and the U.S. census.

The article discusses the relations between economic growth and economic progress. The author states that economic growth and progress have not moved in tandem in the U.S. He suggests that social democracy and a guaranteed income policy are possible means to achieve a rough equality between growth and progress. However, he does not argue that a high level of gross domestic product (GDP) is a social evil. A large GDP per capita means that a society has moved out of subsistence farming, a prerequisite for complex, urban societies. Moreover, he asserts that economic growth does not automatically translate into a rising degree of security in the consumption of fundamental needs for the least advantaged.

Mangroves line one quarter of the world's tropical coastlines, and approximately 117 countries and territories have mangrove resources within their borders. Although over recent years mangrove deforestation has occurred at a phenomenal rate worldwide, there have been few economic studies of the underlying causes. The article attempts such an analysis and particularly examines the role of economic development, with specific reference to those activities that may result in mangrove deforestation, in determining the area of mangrove left within a country. The article develops a model of economic activity and mangrove conversion. From this model, a relationship is established between remaining mangrove area, economic activity, and other important causative factors. The mangrove area relationship is estimated empirically for a cross-section of 89 countries. Results show that shrimp aquaculture and agriculture are significantly associated with mangrove loss across all countries, whereas the higher the level of GDP per capita the more mangrove area remains. The number of protected areas, length of coastline and political stability were also important in determining the remaining mangrove area of a country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We have used the Michigan Model of World Production and Trade to simulate the economic effects on the United States, Japan, and other major trading countries/regions of the Doha Round of WTO multilateral trade negotiations and a variety of regional/bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs) involving the United States and Japan. We estimate that an assumed reduction of post-Uruguay Round tariffs and other barriers on agricultural and industrial products and services by 33 per cent in the Doha Round would increase world welfare by $686.4 billion, with gains of $164.0 billion for the United States, $132.6 billion for Japan, and significant gains for all other industrialised and developing countries/regions. If there were global free trade with all post-Uruguay Round trade barriers completely removed, world welfare would increase by $2.1 trillion, with gains of $497.0 billion (5.5 per cent of GNP) for the United States and $401.9 billion (6.2 per cent of GNP) for Japan. Regional agreements such as an APEC FTA, an ASEAN Plus 3 FTA, and a Western Hemisphere FTA would increase global and member country welfare but much less so than the Doha multilateral trade round would. Separate bilateral FTAs involving Japan with Singapore, Mexico, Chile and Korea, and the United States with Chile, Singapore and Korea would have positive, though generally small, welfare effects on the partner countries, but potentially disruptive sectoral employment shifts in some countries. There would be trade diversion and detrimental welfare effects on some non-member countries for both the regional and bilateral FTAs analysed. The welfare gains from multilateral trade liberalisation are therefore considerably greater than the gains from preferential trading arrangements and more uniformly positive for all countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most profound changes in the United States in the past century is the national abandonment of farming as a livelihood strategy. This change is evident both in the exodus of Americans from farming and in the conditions faced by the farmers remaining, most of whom are marginal producers in an increasingly concentrated industry. In this article, we provide a retrospective account of the empirical and sociological fate of family farmers. While sociologists have had longstanding interest in agrarian change, research on contemporary farmers is largely confined to specialty publications, with a loss to the discipline at large. We examine three distinct research traditions that continue to document farm transformation: research on macro-level transformation, community impacts, and household response. While these traditions evolved separately, we describe how they overlap and inform each other. Most notably, research on household and community responses delineates meso- and micro-level institutional factors that extend macro-level theory. Research on the contemporary farm population offers an alternative context in which to intenogate conventional accounts of economic development; such research yields insights about aspects of social life being rediscovered as part of the new economy and continues to pull sociologists into politically charged public policy debates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Looks at the changes that are taking place in the United States rural economy as the 21st century begins. Role of agriculture in the rural economy; Use of technological advances; Products suited to parts of rural United States where economic development is needed; Challenge of boosting human capital in the rural areas; Problem with uneven growth in rural areas.

It has become fashionable to advocate faster economic growth as the elixir to cure all that ails American society. Surely average annual growth rate in the neighborhood of 2 percent is anemic, whether one views it in historical terms or by the current standards of the economies of China and Southeast Asia. Faster growth produces all sorts of good things, such as lower budget deficits, more new jobs, higher incomes and rising living standards. Cutting income taxes alone is not going to energize the economy sufficiently to prevent a rise in the budget deficit. On the basis of experience — the author also bear the scars of the 1981-82 cycle-those deficits can lead to a variety of negative effects, ranging from a diminution of investment capital available for private business expansion to scaring the Fed into tightening the flow of money and credit. Subsidies inherently divert resources away from their most productive uses. Subsidies to agriculture are the largest component of the subsidy category.

The nation whose agriculture is analyzed in this article is almost solely that of the United States. Other nations will be brought into it only where international trade and other relations are involved. The analysis begins with a statement of the relative magnitude and importance of agriculture in the nation's economy, and past trends in the same, according to several measures. This is followed by projections of the changes in these magnitudes by 1975 and after, and accompanying changes in land use. Then, comes an analysis of the welfare aspects of the subject, how agriculture is sharing in the national income and improvements in living, and the outlook for the same. The magnitude and importance of agriculture in the nation's economy can be measured in several ways, with wide differences in the results. No one of these measures gives the whole picture. Two series on the farm labor force are given in the article, the first, that of the United States Bureau of the Census, which includes only those whose usual or chief activity is in agriculture, and the second, that of the United States Department of Agriculture, which counts all persons working on farms regardless of chief activity.