Category: hydroponic agriculture

Since these issues imply that managers are, at best, imperfect agents in carrying out the goals of firm owners, they imply that a discussion of firm efficiency should consider managerial incentives separately from the intentions of owners.Vining and Boardman survey the empirical literature on firm efficiency under manager-controlled and owner-controlled organizational structures, and find strong evidence that owner-controlled firms are more efficient.They further argue that the problem of having management carried out by agents other than firm owners is more acute in the public sector, where firm owners – the citizens of a nation – are necessarily uninvolved in management decisions.By contrast, the private sector may possess a mix of manager-controlled and owner-controlled firms, and is therefore more efficient on average.Shleifer argues that the agency problem is more acute in state-owned firms even when they are compared to private firms that are manager-controlled, because a nation’s citizens are an intrinsically diffuse group who have limited ability to specify and monitor the behaviors of firm managers.Shapiro and Willig additionally suggest that public managers may be more likely to have personal goals that conflict with efficiency, as they tend to pursue political careers that benefit from goals such as maximizing the employment of the firm.Hart and Willig illustrate how agency problems are mitigated by competition: As the level of industry competition increases, owners gain useful information from observing other similar firms in the market, and are better able to gauge the extent to which their own managers are exerting efforts to reduce costs.If public firms suffer from greater information deficiencies in the absence of competition, due to their relatively poor ability to monitor firms, then the gains from observing other firms should be greater to them.Consequently, an increase in the level of industry competition due to an increase in the number of firms should increase the efficiency of state-owned firms relative to private firms.It is important to note that the effects of competition in mitigating agency problems are driven by information gleaned from comparable firms.Thus, ebb flow trays as both the similarity and number of direct competitors increases, efficiency gains should be realized.

By contrast, if a market is perceived to be competitive solely because of potential competition that has not manifested in direct competitors , or solely because of indirect competition from substitute markets where firms have different cost structures, then one would not expect efficiency gains through the agency channel.This argument is strengthened if central government term limits prevent repeated interactions with firms, so that politicians do not have a long-term interest in avoiding the moral hazard problem of public firms by punishing them for inefficient behavior.As competition levels rise, soft budget constraints may reduce the relative efficiency of state firms to private firms in two ways: First, if firm profits are reduced as the level of competition increases, then the danger of shutdown for a private firm increases with competition.Thus, private managers and employees faced with the prospect of unemployment and may increase their efficiency, regardless of whether contracting problems misalign their incentives when the threat of shutdown is less imminent.Second, public firms with soft budget constraints may not only be less responsive to losses brought on by competitive forces because they do not face a credible threat of shutdown, they may actually perform more poorly once they are subsidized by the government.Beyond the point when a firm relies on the government for support, its managers have little incentive to improve efficiency, as reductions in profit will be offset by increases in government funding,and increases in profit will be offset by reductions in government support.Note that the incentive problems created by soft budget constraints may be mitigated through contracting: both firm owners and the government bodies who fund state-owned firms have incentives to avoid managerial slack, since supporting a firm that makes losses detracts from other potentially beneficial projects.It is thus possible that governments could at least partially reduce the effects of soft budget constraints by rewarding managers for efficient behavior.However, as described in Section 1.2.1.1, specifying contracts may be especially challenging in public enterprises.Aside from agency problems and soft budget constraints, several other differences between private and state-owned firms are put forth in the literature.While these differences do not appear to be affected by the level of competition faced by firms, and are therefore not the focus of this paper, they are important because they affect level differences between public and private firms, and provide some context for the fact that the empirical literature largely finds private firms to be more efficient than private firms, independent of competition.In this section, I briefly describe the most important differences between state-owned and private firms that affect productive efficiency, but are not affected by the level of competition faced by firms.

Governments commonly and explicitly set goals for public firms other than profit maximization, and a subset of these goals may conflict with productive efficiency.An example can be found in public works programs and other government projects intended to provide employment opportunities: a government might employ more workers than are strictly necessary to produce a given level of output, if it is more committed to increasing employment than to minimizing costs.Similarly, a government may be more reluctant than a private firm to reduce the size of its workforce, should efficiency demand such reductions.For example, a common goal of public firm ownership is to address market failures caused by issues such as natural monopoly conditions.While a public firm designed to address monopoly problems would typically reduce prices and increase quantities relative to a private firm under imperfectly competitive circumstances, the direction of average cost changes is generally unclear as quantities are increased from the point of maximal profit.Moreover, such goals do not affect the underlying cost function that the firm follows, as a function of quantity.Similarly, a public firm with the goal of providing goods or services that are deemed to be under provided by the private sector need not be cost-inefficient in providing those goods or services.To accurately examine the literature on how competition affects the relative efficiency of state-owned and private firms, this study imposes a few constraints on the papers reviewed: First, I limit my survey to studies that compare ownership effects in non-transition economies, and therefore omit examples from China, the former Soviet Union, and parts of central and Eastern Europe.The main reason for this constraint is that economies transitioning from Communist structures simultaneously made many economy-wide changes, and separating the effects of regulatory changes, increased competition, and privatization programs is particularly challenging.In addition, as Megginson and Netter observe, “the data from transition economies is much worse and much more limited than from nontransition economies.” Second, I generally avoid studies that measure productive efficiency solely with metrics that combine revenue and cost data.Many influential studies on private and state-owned firm differences use statistics that depend on output prices to measure “efficiency”- such as marginal profit, return on assets, or the ratio of revenue to costs.While these measures are clearly important in gauging performance differences, they pose issues in measuring productive or cost efficiency that are compounded when efficiency is being compared across different competitive environments.As Boles de Boer and Evans point out: “profits and rates of return may not be good indicators of efficiency as they will reflect any departures from Ramsey pricing which may be possible because of the dominant position of the company.”

Private and public firms might also be expected to exhibit different price-setting behaviors as the level of industry competition varies, which affect any measures of efficiency that depend on prices.In particular, private firms with market power can profitably increase prices relative to the social optimum, while state-owned firms that have allocative efficiency goals might not.Then, measures of efficiency that are sensitive to output prices would overstate the relative cost efficiency of private firms in imperfectly competitive settings – since they would rise when revenues increased – and relative efficiency gains would attenuate as conditions approached perfect competition.Empirical evidence supports this expectation: Bonin, Hasan, and Wachtel use a number of measures to compare public and private bank performance, and find that public banks outperformed private banks in all measures that used costs alone.When measures that incorporated revenues and costs were instead used, private banks outperformed public banks.Both Caves and Christiansen and Laurin and Bozec study “TFP”differences between two Canadian railroads and use the same data, but reach different conclusions about their relative efficiencies.Laurin and Bozec use a TFP calculation that depends on revenue shares, and find that the private railroad is more efficient than the state-owned one.Caves and Christiansen intentionally choose a measure that uses output cost elasticitices instead of revenue shares due to the issues cited above,flood and drain tray and find no differences between the efficiency of the public and private railroad after 1987.Their conclusions differ presumably because of price differences, and not cost efficiency differences, between the railroads.Since it is ambiguous whether whether price-inclusive measures of relative efficiency are adjusting due to cost reductions or revenue increases, I focus on studies that include measures of efficiency based on output per unit of cost.However, I also consider evidence from studies that use price-inclusive efficiency measures in highly competitive environments, since price setting behavior should be limited or non-existent in these contexts.Table A.1 lists 21 studies that estimate the relative efficiency of private and state-owned enterprises, and that give indications of the level of competition studied.Of these, 9 studies examine firms in non-competitive environments; 7 studies examine competitive environments; 4 studies examine firms in monopolistically competitive or oligopolistic environments; and, 1 study examines firms in a variety of competitive environments separately.Where possible, I used four-firm concentration ratios for each industry to establish the competition level7 : Firms operating in industries with four-firm concentration ratios under 20% were deemed competitive; those with ratios between 30% and 80% were monopolistically competitive or oligopolistic; those with ratios above 80% were considered to be non-competitive.When four-firm ratios were not available, I used the number of industry competitors faced by firms, along with descriptions and assessments of the competitive environments provided by authors.

Aside from establishing the appropriate competition category for each study, author descriptions provided additional relevant details about the competitive environment, such as levels of indirect competition faced from substitute markets, any potential but unrealized competition faced from recently lowered barriers to entry, the extent to which firms competed internationally or regionally, the regulatory environment within which firms operated, and the extent of product differentiation within the industry.Because of the variance in methodologies and measures of efficiency, comparable measures of the extent of the efficiency gap between private and public firms were not available across studies.Nonetheless, by examining the porportion of studies that find significant differences between ownership types at each level of competition, a pattern emerges.Figure A.1 separates the 21 studies according to the level of competition they examine, and their findings on the relative efficiency of ownership types.7 of the 10 studies that take place in monopolistic settings find that private firms are more efficient than state-owned firms, while the other 3 find no significant differences in ownership types.In monopolistically competitive or oligopolistic environments, 3 of 5 of studies find private firms more efficient, and 2 find no differences; and, in competitive environments, only 4 of 8 studies find gains to private firms, 3 studies report no differences, and 1 study finds that public firms are more efficient.Clearly, no conclusions can be drawn from these coarse results alone.The studies vary widely in the number of firms they consider, the data they examine, and the methods they use.Additionally, contextual differences likely play a large role in explaining the variation in findings: Some studies examine static environments where state-owned and private firms co-exist, while others look at privatization programs that often occured along with market liberalization measures and regulatory changes.The governments running state-owned firms had a variety of stated and observed goals for their firms, different policies regarding subsidization of public firms, and may have differed in their abilities to monitor firm managers.Private firms may have been more or less efficient depending on the regulatory constraints under which they operated.To gain some insight into how competition might affect ownership differences, Section 1.3.3 reviews in greater detail the findings of the literature.While most studies considered in this paper examine firms within a single level of competition, I begin with the single study that separately examines ownership effects across both competitive and non-competitive environments.La Porta and Lopez-de-Silanes study the effects of privatization for 218 state-owned enterprises in Mexico.

One mechanism that could underlie the development of such systems is the dual role that erosion can play in influencing soil fertility.Erosion removes soil and associated nutrients from surface soils, often limiting the productive capacity of agricultural ecosystems.However, erosion also exposes rock and little weathered soil near the surface, making the effective age of the soil much younger than that of the geological substrate from which it was formed.This effect has the potential to enhance the fertility of both erosional and depositional areas.Studies that have used strontium isotopes as tracers of nutrient sources within native forest ecosystems in Hawai’i show that although the supply of nutrients derived from the weathering of soil minerals is depleted on stable geomorphic surfaces of the older islands , the weathering source is rejuvenated and soil fertility is enhanced on lower slopes and in alluvial areas of those same landscapes.Palmer and others evaluated soil fertility, erosion, and their potential contribution to precontact agriculture on constructional geomorphic surfaces, slopes and valley bottoms on the wet windward side of Kohala volcano of the Island of Hawai’i–the oldest portion of the youngest island in the archipelago.Leeward Kohala supports a large rainfed agricultural system that is bounded by well-defined thresholds in climate and soil fertility ; the soil fertility threshold occurs where cumulative weathering and leaching have depleted soil minerals to the point that they no longer supply substantial quantities of nutrients or buffer atmospheric acidity.This threshold shifts to progressively lower rainfall levels in progressively older substrates across the Hawaiian archipelago.Based on soil properties at the leeward soil fertility threshold, Palmer and others concluded that: soils on constructional surfaces of windward Kohala are too infertile to support intensive rainfed agriculture, at least as it was practiced in leeward Kohala; erosion has a positive but small effect on soil fertility on slopes and alluvial areas in small stream valleys; and rock-derived nutrients dissolved in the streamwater used to irrigate pond fields sufficed to meet the nutrient demands of intensive pond field agriculture in these smaller valleys.

Palmer and others also analyzed soils in Pololu¯ Valley, a large valley in windward Kohala; there,ebb and flow bench soil fertility on lower slopes and alluvium was enriched substantially relative to constructional surfaces or to smaller valleys.They suggested that most of the material transported by erosion in the small valleys was derived from low-fertility soils in the surrounding uplands, whereas most of the material in the large valley came from its steep and little-weathered walls.Despite the fertility of lower-slope soils in the large Pololu¯ Valley, its slopes are extremely steep all the way to the alluvium on the valley floor, and there is no evidence of intensive rainfed agriculture having been practiced on these slopes.Similar slope profiles occur in Waipi’o and Waimanu Valleys in windward Kohala; these are the largest valleys on the Island of Hawai’i, and their alluvial valley floors supported the most intensively irrigated areas on the island.In contrast, most large valleys on older islands in the archipelago have very different slope profiles, with an accumulation of gradually sloping colluvial material between their steep walls and relatively flat alluvial floors.Why do large valleys on the older versus the younger islands in the Hawaiian Archipelago differ in structure? Are soils of the colluvial lower slopes on older islands fertile enough to support intensive rainfed agriculture? Could differences in valley structure have shaped pathways of agricultural development and intensification in pre-contact Hawai’i? In this article, we compare topography, soil fertility, and associated agricultural potential in two large Hawaiian valleys, Pololu¯ on the island of Hawai’i and Halawa on the much older island of Moloka’i.We test the hypothesis that the geological processes of erosion and subsidence influenced pathways of agricultural development and intensification in these landscapes.We focused on Pololu¯ and Halawa Valleys because they are comparable in size, relatively accessible, and because the archaeological remnants of Hawaiian agriculture have been surveyed in both.Pololu¯ Valley is the westernmost of seven large valleys on the windward northeastern flank of Kohala Volcano, the oldest subaerial portion of the Island of Hawai’i.Most of the lava within Pololu¯ Valley is from the Pololu¯ volcanic formation, older tholeiitic basalts that erupted from 400 to 600 ky before present; younger flows of the later alkalic Hawı formation cover much of the surrounding uplands and spill into the Valley.Wave-cut sea cliffs flank Pololu¯ Valley on both sides, and the valley itself is from 200- to 400-m deep.

Pololu¯ has a long history of Hawaiian occupation ; it was colonized by AD 1200 , and evidence of both irrigated pondfields and rainfed agricultural systems can be found on the broad, relatively flat floor of the valley.Halawa Valley is the easternmost of four large valleys on the windward flank of east Moloka’i.The east Moloka’i volcano emerged approximately 1.8 million y before present, and later alkalic eruptions covered most of its surface around 1.4 my ago.Like Pololu¯ , Halawa Valley is flanked by sea cliffs, and the main valley itself is approximately 300-m deep.Halawa has a pre-contact cultural sequence dating from at least AD 1300.Its extensive irrigation systems are intact; a total of 693 pondfield terraces have been recorded in nine separate irrigation complexes.The colluvial slopes above the irrigation systems on the valley floor exhibit dense archaeological landscapes of residential and rainfed agricultural features.We characterized the modern topography of Pololu¯ and Halawa Valleys using a 10-m digital elevation model provided by the National Elevation Dataset.Four 200-m-wide topographic swaths were selected to represent slope profiles in each valley, one near the valley outlet to the ocean, two in the center, and one just below the major waterfalls that bound the upper margin of the valley cores.Together, these transects sample more than 25% of each valley.The minimum, maximum, and mean elevations in the across-swath direction were computed for each point along the long dimension of the topographic swath.We compared mean elevations from each of the swaths by normalizing elevation and distance along the swath, and centering the swaths on the minimum swath elevation.Second, we calculated the distribution of slope angles across the full surface of each valley using a low-pass filter on the NED-DEM with a cut-off frequency of 0.05 m-1 to characterize the overall valley morphology by removing topography related to small individual gullies and ephemeral streams.From this filtered DEM, we extracted all filtered slope values within Pololu¯ and Halawa, summarizing these values as a cumulative distribution that denotes the fraction of the mapped valleys whose slopes are less than a given value.We sampled alluvial and colluvial soils within each of the valleys, and along transects on upland soils on both sides of each valley; locations where soils were collected are shown in Figure 1.We collected integrated soil samples from 0- to 30-cm depth following protocols similar to those of Vitousek and others , using a tiling shovel to expose a 30-cm profile and collecting an integrated sample across this depth.This depth generally encompassed the soil that was churned by cultivator’s digging sticks —and in earlier studies , the chemistry of these integrated 30- cm samples correlated well with deeper profiles collected across Kohala Volcano.Moreover, analyses of the 30-cm samples provided consistent thresholds that defined the distribution of pre-contact rainfed agricultural systems.Samples on the upland transects were collected systematically at approximately 500-m intervals, and sample positions were recorded via GPS.In Halawa Valley, slope and alluvial samples were collected on transects reaching from alluvial soils near the main stream up to sloping colluvial soils, continuing upslope above any remnants of Hawaiian agriculture to the base of the cliffs that surround the valley.The basal slopes of Pololu¯ are much steeper, and transect sampling was not feasible; instead, we collected alluvial and lower-slope soils widely across the valley and at the lowest portion of its steep slopes.

Most of the alluvial and lower-slope samples were collected within long-abandoned Hawaiian agricultural systems.Soils were air-dried, sieved , and then divided into three homogenous sub-samples, and all analyses were carried out as described in the supplemental material to Vitousek and others.Briefly, one sub-sample was analyzed for total C and N using an elemental analyzer; a portion of this sub-sample also was extracted using the method of Kuo and analyzed for resin-extractable phosphorus using an Alpkem RFA/2 Auto Analyzer.A second sub-sample was analyzed for cation exchange capacity and exchangeable Ca, Mg, Na, and K at the University of California, Santa Barbara, using the NH4OAc method at pH 7.0.The third sub-sample was shipped to ALS Chemex and analyzed for total concentrations of Ca, Mg, Na, K, P, Sr, and Nb using lithium borate fusion and X-ray fluorescence spectrometry.Duplicate samples were incorporated in each procedure.These measurements include some that reflect the forms of elements that are available to biota on relatively short time scales ,4x8ft rolling benches and others that represent the total pools of elements and/or the cumulative effects of weathering.Available forms of elements can be dynamic; measurements reflect what was in the soil at the time of sampling, but those pools can change on annual time scales and certainly are likely to have been influenced by human land use, both pre- and post-European contact.Total element pools are a more conservative measure; they include forms that are not immediately available to organisms, but they reflect the integrated outcome of additions and losses of elements playing out at time scales of decades or longer.Soils were collected across broad rainfall gradients in and around the two valleys—particularly in the uplands , where sample locations received from about 1450– 3420 mm y-1 of rain at Pololu¯ and from around 875 to 2200 mm y-1 at Halawa.Consequently, mean values of soil properties must be compared with caution.The distribution of soil properties with variation in rainfall provides a more direct measure of differences between valleys and among slope positions within valleys.These distributions are illustrated for base saturation and the percentage of P remaining in Figure 4; both of these measures are relatively stable indicators of soil fertility that correlate well with the boundaries of intensive rainfed agriculture in leeward Kohala.Both base saturation and P remaining decline with increasing rainfall in the uplands surrounding both valleys, consistent with numerous measurements of both 30 cm and deep soils along rainfall gradients in Hawai’i.Where rainfall ranges overlap between the valleys, Halawa soils are substantially lower in both base saturation and P remaining than are Pololu¯ soils—again consistent with numerous measurements that show declining soil fertility with increasing substrate age in Hawai’i.Alluvial and colluvial soils within both valleys had much higher base saturation and P remaining than did upland soils with similar rainfall.Although the uplands surrounding both Pololu¯ and Halawa Valleys are nutrient-depleted and infertile, with most samples falling well below the thresholds that bounded intensive Hawaiian rainfed systems , the slope and alluvial soils are well above these fertility thresholds.Not surprisingly, the remnants of intensive pre-contact agriculture were absent in the uplands and abundant in the alluvial areas of both valleys and the lower slopes of Halawa.Similar patterns of variation with rainfall and slope position were observed for most soil measurements, excluding only total C, N, and P.We summarize these comparisons in Tables 1 and 2, comparing slope and alluvial soils in each valley with upland soils that fall within a similar range of rainfall.Because Halawa Valley is both older and has much lower rainfall than Pololu¯ , we confine our statistical comparisons to slope positions within each valley and its surrounding uplands—although upland Halawa soils are systematically less fertile than Pololu¯ soils at comparable rainfall.Analyses of variance for most soil properties yielded significant differences with sample position in both valleys ; for these properties, in every case uplands were significantly lower in fertility/nutrient availability than were slope and alluvial positions, and slope did not differ significantly from alluvium.Total element pools displayed different patterns.There too analyses of variance yielded significant differences with sample position in both valleys.For C and N, upland soils had significantly higher concentrations than slope and alluvial soils in both valleys; slope and alluvium did not differ significantly.For total P, upland and alluvial soils had significantly higher concentrations than slopes at Pololu¯ , whereas upland soils had significantly lower total P than slope or alluvial soils at Halawa.We suggest that the greater total C and N pools of upland soils reflect their greater effective age, relative to slope and alluvial soils.

Another cultivated legume, peanut/maní , was domesticated in South America in the prehispanic era, likely in eastern Bolivia, northern Argentina, Paraguay, and Southern Brazil , where its cultivation then spread across South America. Peanuts are best suited to sandy, well-drained loamy soils; for optimal yields, peanuts require steady, warm temperatures and only a moderate amount of water, as well as a four to five month growing period . The optimal growing ranges for peanuts in the Andes range from approximately 0 to 1,000 masl . Along with other members of the Fabaceae family, peanuts would have been beneficial for their nitrogen-fixing properties when planted in fields alongside other cultigens. High in protein, peanuts were prepared and consumed in a multitude of ways: roasted, fried, salted, boiled, and ground, used as additives in sauces and in some cases for chicha production . While various scholars consider peanuts to be a luxury item primarily associated with elite contexts, the widespread nature of this practice is not particularly well understood. Milk also can be extracted from peanuts in a manner similar to almond milk; peanut milk, along with pressed peanut oil, was used for a variety of medicinal purposes, including to treat 140hemorrhoids, as a laxative, and to soothe colicky infants . Cotton/algodónwas cultivated widely along the coast and in the Amazon in the prehispanic era, primarily for its vegetable seed fiber, the raw material for a large volume of textile products . Domesticated in the Preceramic Period ca. 2600 B.C., cotton domestication, along with squashes/gourds and other root crops, was underway in northern Peru before maize arrived . Aside from its primary economic use in textile production, oil from pressed cotton seeds also is consumed, and cotton seeds, leaves, and fibers possess a variety of medicinal uses, including as a diuretic, to treat hemorrhoids, dental abscesses, ear aches, coughs, and fevers . Irrigated fields in coastal yunga zones are ideal for growing cotton, as cottons are sun-loving plants, but cultivation requires an abundance of water. The highlands are too cold and the eastern slopes of the Andes generally are too humid for the plant to thrive . Newly planted fields yield their first crops after approximately eight months growth; however,mobile grow system the best fibers are harvested from plants that are four or five years old .

Gourd/mate , along with cotton, was domesticated in the Preceramic Period and served primarily as an industrial plant. On the Peruvian coast, evidence for domesticated bottle gourd comes from the Middle Preceramic Siches Complex , and from the La Paloma site in the Chilca Valley of central Peru ; squash, guava, and Phaseolus beans also were documented at La Paloma . The flesh generally is too bitter to eat , but gourds generally are used to make durable containers and floats. Although ubiquitous in the archaeological record, gourd is not a New World native. Rather, it is believed that African gourds were washed out to sea in the Atlantic and floated to coastal Brazil or northern South America . Bottle gourds can be grown throughout the tropics, subtropics, and into the temperate zone. Cultivated widely in the prehispanic era on the coast of Peru, gourd remains have been documented at several Preceramic cites including Huaca Prieta in the Chicama Valley and Guanape in the Virú Valley of northern Peru and at the Buena Vista site in the Chillón Valley of central Peru . An artistic tradition that continues in Peru today is elaborate gourd carving. This practice has great antiquity; indeed, remains of mates buriladoswere recovered from the Preceramic component at Huaca Prieta in the Chicama Valley in Junius Bird’s 1946 excavations. Bird describes the remains of 15 gourds, some dated to 2,000 B.C., with Z-shaped and anthromorphic carvings . Potato/papais cultivated in the Andes from sea level to 4,000 masl . Andean potato crops are renowned for their immense diversity, with seven domesticated species and several thousand land races, as well numerous closely affiliated wild relatives. The potato complex is spread across the Andes in Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador, with early potato cultivation beginning approximately 7,000 years ago . Today, the diversity of potatoes is clustered in the eastern Andean valleys and uplands of south-central Peru and north-central Bolivia, i.e., from the Huancayo and Ayacucho highlands southward to the Cochabamba and Potosí sierras. In many parts of the Andes, growers rotate their potatoes and other crops among scattered field plots, typically sowing potato fields for 1-3 years before rotating the planting to another site .

As environmental factors including pests, diseases, weeds, climate hazards , and soil conditions are common, Andean farmers typically attempt to reduce crop losses by relying on potatoes with broad habitat tolerances . Sammells notes specifically that in highland Bolivia, women plant potatoes, but in rare instances, if no women are available, men will do so. Potatoes are prepared and consumed in a variety of ways, including roasted, boiled, steamed, or freeze-dried into chuño . Potatoes are a common ingredient in soups and stews in Andean cuisine.In addition to consuming the potato tuber for food, the leafy plant of the potato can be cut and fed to animals . Several varieties of squash/zapallowere cultivated during the prehispanic era in Peru, including pumpkin , butternut squash , and winter squash . The domesticated squashes were derived from separate ancestral species; C. maxima may be derived from a wild ancestor C. andreana, found today in Uruguay and Argentina . Remains of squash seeds have been recovered from Peruvian coastal sites dating to ca. 1800 B.C., and C. moschata seeds have been documented in coastal burials dating to 1100 B.C. . Squashes can be cultivated in a variety of climates, including the tropical desert, subtropics, temperate zones, and tropics, but require good soil fertility with abundant organic material . Aside from their technological uses, squash and gourd fruits are edible when eaten young and consumed in many forms, including stews, compotes, and purees; squash flesh is also pickled, and seeds are roasted or toasted. Squashes have a variety of other uses as well, including ornamental ; medicinal ; and as an antiparasitic agent for livestock. Studies have demonstrated that administering ground squash seeds to livestock has proven effective as a form of parasite control ; it is possible that such a veterinary use could have been used in the prehispanic era as well. A number of fruits were recovered in the five archaeological assemblages; these fruits are actively managed in the Moche Valley today or grow wild in the local vegetation. There are many known uses for each, either as food, beverage, medicine, or dye, which I discuss below. Small seeds of fleshy fruits are less likely to be recovered in archaeological assemblages as they are often consumed in their entirety with the fruit; however, seeds from a fleshy fruits including opuntia , elderberry/sauco , golden berry/aguaymanto , passion fruit/maracuyá , and a member of the genus Prunusare present in the assemblages.

Other tree fruits are present in the assemblage as well, in the form of both seeds and rind fragments, including avocado/palta , guava/guayaba , lucuma/lúcuma , and pacay/pacae . When Andean scholars refer to agriculture, they often discuss field cultivation, of maize, beans, cotton, etc.; however, the process of clearing, cultivating and fallowing fields is also tied to choices made with respect to tree management. Tree crop management was an important part of pre-Columbian farming systems; on-farm tree planting has been documented ethnographically in the Andes , and more broadly in tropical agricultural systems in the Americas . Indeed, fruit trees are cultivated along the edges of fields and along canals in the Moche Valley today, as well as in house gardens . Active tree management produces additional comestible resources for communities, and also can provide an alternative or addition to fuel wood and fodder collected from common forests. Certain fruit trees also had elevated importance in Andean cosmologies, as documented for the Inka . Avocado/paltais a cultivated tree with many varieties, distributed throughout the tropical and subtropical Americas, including along the coast, Amazon, and in interande an valleys. Avocado trees required well-drained sandy soils, and spacing is critical to ensure productive crops; avocados trees should be adequately spaced apart so that they are exposed to full sun. Production begins at 5-15 years, and some trees can produce up to 300 fruits . Cultivated primarily for their edible fruits; avocado fruits are very nutritious. They are high in fiber, antioxidants, and vitamins A, B, C, and E. Avocados have a wide variety of uses aside from their comestible use, from cosmetic to medicinal. The pulp of the fruit can be applied as a face mask, and both the fruit pulp and leaves have known medicinal properties from ranging from antidiarrheal,mobile vertical rack anti-diabetic, to analgesic. The ingestion of great quantities of avocado seeds also can serve as an abortive agent. Furthermore, avocado tree hardwoods can be used to make tools . Guava/guayaba is native to Mexico, Central America, and northern South America and are distributed throughout the tropical Americas. Cultivated in humid and dry climates, guavas can be grown up to 1,200 masl.The fruits are consumed raw, but as guava fruits contain high levels of pectin, present day uses in Peru include preparing the fruit into marmalades, jams, and ice creams . Guavas are rich in dietary fiber, folic acid, and vitamin C; indeed, a single guava fruit contains four times the amount of vitamin C as an orange .

Guava also has some documented medical uses, often in the form of infusions prepared with leaves from the guava tree, to treat a range of maladies from gastritris to conjunctivitis to menstrual cramps . Guava tree hardwoods are also used to manufacture wooden tools . Lucuma/Lúcumatrees are distributed throughout the Peruvian coast and highlands, as well as the highland Amazon; indeed, lucuma trees can be cultivated up to 3,000 masl. Adapted to various soils, lucuma trees are most productive when planted in rows spaced 4-5 m apart, and are suitable for mixed cultivation, as they are good shade trees. Production begins at 4-5 years; one tree can produce some 300 fruits and they produce for more than 60 years . Lucuma trees were cultivated in the prehispanic era , with fruits consumed fresh or dried and ground into powder. Lucuma also possesses a range of medicinalproperties, used to combat anemia, to treat skin infections, and as an antidiarrheal. Lucuma trees also produce good quality hardwoods used for tools and other artifacts . Pacay/Pacae trees can be cultivated on the coast, in the highlands, and in the jungle up to 3,000 masl . Like other members of the Fabaceae family, including common beans and lima beans , pacay trees produce abundant root nodules that fix nitrogen; thus, their cultivation benefits the land by increasing fertility levels. They require year round irrigation so are generally grown near river banks or canals, but they produce in abundance, are tolerant of diverse soils, and are resistant to disease and fire . Referred to as “ice cream bean” for its sweet, edible white pulp, pacay fruit is eaten fresh, and also has known medicinal properties ranging from digestive relief to skin cancer treatment. Pacay hardwoods were also used to make wooden tools . Pacay trees were cultivated widely in Peru during the prehispanic era , and pacay fruits are represented in in the Moche sculptural vessel canon . Other Fruits Elderberry/Saucois native to the Andes , and grows up to 3,000 masl. Requiring deep soil and a lot of water, elderberry plants thrive near irrigation canals. Aside from their comestible uses, elderberries have known magical and medicinal properties, including as an aphrodisiac, purgative, expectorant, antitussive, and diuretic. Juice from elderberry fruits also can be applied as an insecticide . Golden berry/aguaymantois native to Peru and is distributed throughout the coast, highlands, and Amazonian region up to 2,000 masl . Cultivated during the prehispanic era, golden berries can be eaten raw, pressed into juice, or dried, and possess many nutritive properties. Since the colonial era, it has been widely introduced into cultivation into other tropical, subtropical, and temperate areas, including China, India, and Malaysia .

Emission of N2O from soils is an extensively studied environmental process, given that N2O is ‘‘at the heart of debates’’ on several prevalent current issues.Approximately two-thirds of total global emission comes from soils; most of the emission from soils is in turn attributed to agriculture.The intrinsic soil properties most commonly mentioned in research studies and models as controlling emission of N2O are texture, pH, organic matter, and ability to supply inorganic nitrogen.Production of N2O in soil is generally attributed to microbiological processes, and therefore the factors that regulate the activity of N2O-producing microorganisms should be the same factors that regulate N2O production.These controlling factors are generally thought to be well recognized, but as research and related commentary on N2O emission from agricultural soils continue to accumulate, the possible role of iron is rarely considered.This is in spite of its known involvement in enzymatic reactions and non-enzymatic reactions that generate N2O.The connection between iron and N2O may have been neglected because iron has never figured prominently in routine evaluations of soil for agronomic research or practical management decisions.Unlike the other soil properties cited above, iron does not have a direct and immediate bearing on the growth of most crops or on the agricultural suitability of a soil from either a physical or a chemical point of view.When it is considered, this is in instances of suspected plant deficiency or toxicity, not in the context of its potential connection with the nitrogen cycle.In addition, compared to other intrinsic properties, soil iron does not dramatically affect the short-term changes in microbiological activity generally associated with N2O production.For these reasons,dutch bucket hydroponic once interest in N2O began to intensify, the previously reported connection with iron was already out of sight.The intent of our work was to reconsider the potential significance of iron in emission of N2O from agricultural soils.Soils were collected from the top 15 cm in 10 agricultural fields throughout California, and were sieved to 2 mm following collection.

Soil pH was measured in 1 M KCl.Percent clay, silt, and sand were determined by a modified pipet method.Total carbon and nitrogen were determined on ball-milled samples by combustion-GC.Just prior to setting up the experiment, inorganic nitrogen was extracted by 0.5 M K2SO4 and determined colorimetrically.Dissolved organic carbon was determined in the same extract by UV-persulfate digestion.We chose two commonly used, contrasting indices to characterize soil iron: that extractable by acid hydroxylamine , an index of reactive iron minerals; and that extractable by pyrophosphate , representing iron complexed with soilorganic matter.FeA was extracted by shaking 0.8 g soil for one hour with 40 ml 0.25 M hydroxylamine hydrochloride in 0.25 M HCl, followed by centrifugation for 30 minutes at 156006 G.FeP was extracted by shaking 1 g soil with 100 ml 0.1 M tetrasodium pyrophosphate for 16 hours, followed by centrifugation for 30 minutes at 156006 G; further centrifugation did not result in any difference in measured iron concentration, indicating that all fine iron colloids had been removed, an important consideration when using this extractant.The concentration of iron in all extracts was determined color imetrically; pyrophosphate extracts were neutralized by a small addition of HCl prior to this determination.All analyses of soil properties were performed in duplicate.These properties are reported in Table 1.As stated above, the properties most commonly believed to control emission of N2O from agricultural soil include texture, pH, organic matter, and the inherent ability of the soil to release inorganic nitrogen.These are intrinsic properties which are not abruptly altered by environmental conditions; in contrast, our treatments were designed to manipulate the most common temporary extrinsic changes that influence N2O production: water content, fertilization, and organic amendments.Since these can vary across a range of values, we necessarily limited our choice of treatments.Fertilizer and compost were either withheld or added at a rate typical of agriculture in California, and two water contents were chosen according to the range expected in agricultural soils.Field capacity, the amount of water a soil can retain against gravity, was chosen as the upper reference point.This is not uncommon, as soil moisture can temporarily exceed field capacity following irrigation or rainfall events.In practice we used water holding capacity to represent field capacity.As a contrasting treatment, we chose 50% WHC.This is near the permanent wilting point of most soils, and it is not likely that soil moisture will fall below this in the field except during unmanaged dry seasons.

Although many intermediate values could have been selected as treatments, we chose to use both ends of a typical spectrum of values in order to present a broad yet concise study.Prior to set-up, WHC was determined as follows: a soil sample was placed into a funnel lined with filter paper, which was then placed into a beaker of water such that just the tip of the funnel was always in contact with water; after the sample ceased to take up water, the sample was allowed to drain, and the moisture content measured.To begin the experiment, the equivalent of 50 g dry soil was placed into cups, which were themselves placed into larger jars containing a small amount of water to avoid desiccation.The larger jars were sealed with lids containing a small foam plug to allow gas exchange with the atmosphere.To imitate the timing typical of agricultural operations, 2 g finely ground finished green waste compost were mixed with the soils and incubated at 40% WHC for seven days.Treatments not receiving compost were similarly incubated.Following this preincubation, each soil received a fertilizer addition according to treatment: none, ammonium sulfate, or potassium nitrate.The amount of nitrogen added was 100 mg kg21 soil, corresponding approximately to a field rate of 150 kg ha21.Fertilizer solution was sprayed onto the soils to reach a water content of 50% or 100% WHC, depending on the treatment.For each soil there were three replicates per treatment.Samples were incubated for 14 days at 22 degrees C.Samples for N2O analysis were taken on days 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 9, and 14 following addition of fertilizer.The jars containing the soil cups were closed with lids containing septa and allowed to stand for one hour.Gas samples were taken at 0, 30, and 60 minutes after closure and transferred to evacuated gas sampling vials.N2O concentration was determined by gas chromatography-ECD detection.At each sampling date, the rate of N2O emission was determined by linear interpolation of the 0, 30, and 60 minute measurements.Cumulative N2O emission over the course of the incubation was calculated using these data, taking the flux measured at a given date to be the average flux for the interval represented by that date.To identify the soil properties that most strongly explained N2O emission in each experimental treatment, we studied the data using partial least squares multivariate analysis, a form of structural equation modeling.This tool is particularly suitable when the number of predicting variables is greater than the number of observed variables, when multicolinearity is expected among predicting variables, and when multivariate normality can not be assumed.PLS ranks the predicting variables by importance based on linear regression models that project the predicting variables and the observed variables to a new, multivariate space.

Prior to subjecting the data to PLS analysis, predicting variables and the observed response were standardized by centering and scaling the data to have a mean of zero and a standard deviation of one.This ensures that the predicting variables are ranked based on how much of the variation is explained when all variables have the same weight.Although correlations among variables are possible, especially in studies that involve soil properties, this does not change the interpretation given by PLS, which depicts the relative importance of each variable separately, independently of intrinsic links between variables.Nevertheless, a correlation matrix is presented as an aid in understanding the relationships between the soil properties used in our study.Following the exploratory PLS analysis, linear regressions between iron and N2O emission were calculated using unweighted, untransformed data, and were considered significant enough to report at P,0.1.All statistical analyses were performed using JMP 10 software.The results of the PLS analysis are shown in Figure 1, where each soil property is ranked according to its ability to explain cumulative N2O emission across all soils.This ranking was performed for each of the 12 different treatments studied.In five of these treatments, iron ranked higher than any other measured soil characteristic in explaining observed emissions.In four additional treatments,dutch buckets system iron was among the top four predictors.As a complementary approach to further investigate the relationship between iron and N2O emission, simple linear regressions were calculated in which N2O data were compared against FeP and FeA.Whereas PLS was used to arrange a suite of soil properties according to their ability to explain N2O emission, regressions indicate, by the value of r2 , how much of the variability in N2O emission can be explained by a single property; regressions also indicate the direction of the effect and degree of importance of the effect.In most cases, a significant relationship between N2O emission and a given variable can be expected when that variable is ranked highly by PLS.In certain cases, however, a variable ranked highly by PLS may not necessarily yield a significant linear relationship when that variable is considered apart from the other variables; conversely, certain treatments in which a variable is not ranked highly by PLS may nonetheless yield a significant regression.The primary reason for this occasional discrepancy is the nature of the PLS procedure: by considering all predicting variables together, new predictors are generated which are composites of the original variables.Table 3 reports the results of the regressions for treatments that showed a significant relationship between N2O emission and either iron index.Despite a dataset of values for N2O emission which spanned more than three orders of magnitude across soils, several notable connections between iron and N2O emission emerged.FeP was significantly related to N2O emission in four treatments, in which it explained between 16 and 62 percent of the variability, with a positive slope in all cases.This influence was greatest under 100% WHC when ammonium was present and compost was absent.

Such a condition may be reasonably expected on occasion, since most fertilizers supply ammonium, and since this may occur close in time to irrigation or rainfall.In this treatment, an increase in FeP of 1 mg kg-1 corresponded to an increase in cumulative emission of 11.9 ng N2O-N g21 soil during the course of the incubation.Like FeP, the connection between FeA and N2O emission was also significant under several different conditions.Unlike FeP, however, which was positively related to N2O emission, FeA was always negatively related to N2O emission.There was no treatment in which both iron indices were significantly related to N2O emission.Considering that FeP and FeA bear almost no relationship to each other , this difference in behavior suggests that these two indices indeed reflect two forms of iron that differ in reactivity.Also notable in Table 3 is the effect of compost in fertilized treatments: the observed negative association between N2O emission and FeA occurred only in the presence of compost, while the stimulating effect of FeP was observed only without compost.The contrasting relationships of FeA and FeP with N2O emission could be due to differences in the reaction of either form of iron with nitrogen compounds in the soil matrix.For example, hydroxylamine is produced from biological oxidation of ammonia, and is known to generate N2O upon chemical reaction with iron.Reaction with FeP versus FeA, or locally high concentrations of either hydroxylamine or iron, could lead to more or less N2O compared to other reaction products.The ability of aerobic microorganisms to acquire iron can likewise depend on its chemical nature, consequently influencing the amount of reactive compounds produced or consumed through reactions that use iron-dependent enzymes.As soil water content increases, reducing conditions may develop, especially when the depletion of oxygen is accelerated by easily metabolized organic matter.The chemical nature of existing iron may determine the ease with which it is reduced to iron in anaerobic microsites.This will in turn control its participation in other reactions that produce N2O, such as chemodenitrification, which includes the abiotic reduction of nitrite to N2O by iron.Chemodenitrification can also produce other gases, and the relative amount of N2O released may be affected by the form of iron present.

No evidence was found that GI, respiratory, or muscular problems of the head of the household affected the probability that the worker’s family would receive welfare payments are defined as the sum of the worker’s daily piece rate earnings and wages. Since five individuals in the larger sample reported implausible earnings, a sample of 362 individuals was used in the tobit regression reported in in table 4. Thirty~one of these individuals had zero earnings. This figure is lower than the percentage on unemployment compensation or welfare . The explanatory variables include demographic characteristics ; how long the worker had lived in Tulare County ; and the three health variables. None of the three health measures had a statistically significant effect. Indeed, only the age variables had statistically significant effects. Earnings rise with age until one reaches 35.6, then they fall with age. The effects, however, are small. A 45 year old worker only earns $1.31 less per day than one who is a decade younger and a 55 year old worker earns $5.58 less a 35 year old worker. Thus, in our sample, agricultural earnings do not vary much with respect to personal characteristics. Other studies of agricultural workers find substantial effects of union status and personal characteristics on earnings. The difference across studies is probably due to the relative homogeneity of our sample, which was restricted to field wcrkers in crop agriculture. Many census-based surveys also include dairy, livestock, and non~field worker employees. The narrowed focus of this survey explains the lack of impact of gender, education, or other factors on earnings. Further, in the surveyed county, unions have relatively little market power. A measure of job sanitation could be included in the earnings equation to capture a compensating earnings differential for more sanitary employment. Including a dummy variable for sanitary conditions has virtually no effect on the other coefficients.

The coefficient on the sanitation dummy is 0.0844 with an asymptotic t-statistic of 0.68. Thus, there is no evidence of a compensating differential. Five major policy-oriented conclusions can be drawn from this study. First,outdoor vertical plant stands in spite of California law mandating field toilets, over a quarter of all Tulare County workers, and half of workers younger than 20, did not have access to toilets. Second, as was expected, unsanitary work conditions, as reflected by the lack of field toilets, led to SUb-stantially higher rates of gastrointestinal disorders. However, the lack of sanitary conditions on the job is not a proxy for other dangerous conditions that cause respiratory or muscular problems. Third, living conditions also greatly affect health. Although the lack of a home toilet did not have a comparable effect. the lack of a home refrigerator more than tripled the probability of gastrointestinal problems. Fourth. only respiratory problems. of these three health variables, lead to higher unemployment compensation rates. None of the three health variables was statistically significantly related to either receiving welfare or lower daily earnings. Fifth, Mexican-born agricultural workers and their families were relatively unlikely to use the welfare system. However, these workers were relatively more likely than others to receive unemployment compensation. These results indicate that the probability of gastrointestinal disorders can be substantially reduced by improving living conditions and job site sanitation. While these disorders apparently are not severe enough to reduce earnings or increase demands upon the welfare system, they lower workers’ standard of living. Similarly, the standards at public camps should be examined more closely. Although such camps are subject to routine health inspections, whereas private camps are not, only public camps are associated with health problems in this sample. Indeed, inhabitants of public camps had over 4.25 times as high a probability of gastrointestinal disorders, 1.8 times as high a probability of respiratory problems, and 1.6 times as high a probability of muscualar problems as those who lived elsewhere. The net welfare effect of improving work place sanitation depends on the value workers’ place on such amenities, the costs to employers of providing sanitation, the negative effects of disease on labor productivity, and the societal cost of treatment of disease symptoms. Dunn has shown that the value workers put on field toilets is greater than the cost of providing them and.These results indicate that the productivity losses from the three diseases studied are relatively minor, as wages are little affected .

Thus, although Dunn’s study shows that workers value field toilets six times as much as the cost of providing them, this study failed to find additional benefits due to the improvement in societal output. Given the nature of the data set, we are unable tc obtain precise measures of the social cost of providing medical care . The cost to workers at local public clinics ranged from $12 up per visit. These costs exclude medicine, physician time, and the externality cost on local facilities . Consideration of these factors can only strengthen the case for providing more sanitation on the job. This study shows additional social benefits of reduced respiratory illness due to lesser demands on the unemployment compensation system, an issue largely ignored to date. Since many adverse living conditions contribute to all three types of disease, the public policy debate should also consider the costs and benefits of ameliorating living conditions, particularly for seasonal workers.Of the estimated 3 million farm workers in the United States, approximately 1 million are employed in California, where a well-documented labor crisis has been driven by diminishing numbers of male migrant workers.In 2017, Napa County vineyards, which employ 10,000 farm workers, experienced an estimated 12% shortage of vineyard laborers . This labor shortage could have been considerably worse if not for an influx of female workers into the Napa County labor pool. Between 2013 and 2016, the proportion of female seasonal laborers in Napa vineyards increased from 10% to 25%, mirrored by a smaller increase in permanent laborers . There are indications that similar gender shifts are occurring in other California regions. The economic motivation is, therefore, stronger than ever for agricultural companies to reduce barriers to the employment and retention of female workers. One such barrier is workplace sexual harassment .Studies in the United States estimate that from 40% to 75% of all working women have experienced SH and that rates have not decreased since the 1980s . Furthermore, SH rates are higher in male-dominated and lower-income jobs , categories that include agricultural labor . California is no exception; in one study, 80% of female farm laborers reported experiencing SH and, in a recent survey of farm workers in northern California, 44% of women reported SH . Defined as “unwanted sex-related behavior at work that is appraised by the recipient as offensive . . . or threatening her well-being” , SH of women is one of the most prominent and detrimental barriers to women’s career development and satisfaction . Sexual harassment covers a range of behaviors usually placed on a continuum of severity. One common typology assigns behaviors into three categories: gender harassment, unwanted sexual attention and sexual coercion . All of these behaviors have negative consequences for both the victims and the organizations in which they work . Victims report debilitating effects on their physical and mental well-being . In addition, they are less productive, less satisfied with and committed to their jobs and have higher absenteeism and turnover rates . SH may also act as a stress or for entire work teams, with negative impacts on intrateam interactions, cohesion and performance . All these consequences incur economic costs. To tackle SH, a company needs to understand the antecedents. For example, it is important for a company to know which workers are at highest risk and in what work scenarios SH is most likely to occur.

Organizational studies in other industries have identified multiple antecedent variables of SH over the last 30 years . It was our objective to test these in an agricultural context , with the aims of improving our understanding of which antecedent conditions are present in agricultural work environments, specifically viticulture, and to assess how they are related to reported incidence of SH and work outcomes, that is, job satisfaction and job retention. In doing so, our goal was to provide practical guidance for the local industry and, by extension, other agricultural industries, as well as to learn which approaches may be effective for addressing SH, a significant barrier to women excelling in the workforce. Our study focused on the organizational level of the work team because agricultural workers spend most of their time working in small groups . We quantified three categories of antecedent variables based on organizational models : personal and situational characteristics of female workers, job gender context and organizational climate . Our primary criterion for selecting each antecedent measure was the likelihood a company could influence that variable if it were linked to SH. These antecedents were compared with a measure of SH, which was then compared to work outcomes as a demonstration of how SH can negatively impact productivity . The personal and situational characteristics we measured were age, employment status, vertical plan rack duration of employment in the company, crew size and the presence of relatives on a crew. Previous studies have found that women with temporary employment contracts are more vulnerable to SH than those with permanent fixed contracts , and that younger women are consistently identified as at greater risk than older women .Job gender context refers to the “balance of genders in the work environment” . We adopted a common measure: the ratio of male to female members in a crew. Women have consistently been shown to be more vulnerable to SH in male-dominated teams and organizations than they are in gender balanced or female-dominated contexts . Organizational climate is the extent to which an organization tolerates SH and the effectiveness of any remedies put in place to combat it. A permissive social climate for SH behaviors, as well as failures to properly address complaints by recipients, facilitate SH . Awareness training programs are widespread across industries to educate employees on what constitutes SH and appropriate workplace behaviors . In California, these training programs are mandatory for supervisors in companies with at least 50 employees, but they are not mandatory for crew members. We took an indirect measure of organizational climate, measuring how many crew members had completed SH awareness training, to assess the impact of training on reported incidence of SH. We also measured hostile sexist attitudes associated with perpetration of, and tolerance for, SH . Hostile sexist attitudes were measured using questionnaire items from the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory that reflect aggressive attitudes to women and opinions that women are inferior . We measured incidence and severity of SH using the Sexual Experiences Questionnaire , which quantifies the three types of SH mentioned previously: gender harassment , unwanted sexual attention and sexual coercion . We measured two work outcomes using questionnaires for turnover intentions , which is an established predictor of actual turnover , and job satisfaction, which is negatively linked to turnover . We collected data from male and female Hispanic vineyard workers from 21 distinct crews across nine companies operating in Napa County. The nine companies consisted of seven contract labor companies and two estate vineyard companies who employed their crews directly. Each participating company, except one estate vineyard, had more than 50 employees. Eighty five participants reported they were permanent employees, and 198 participants reported they were temporary seasonal employees. At the time of the survey , all workers were engaged in standard crop-production tasks , but not harvest. Questionnaires were presented to workers in groups during their work breaks. Study questions were displayed on a flip chart while a bilingual researcher read them aloud in Spanish. Crew members answered using electronic response pads , which allowed participants to respond anonymously. Each question also had a “do not wish to respond” option so that participants could opt out of responding to specific items. All questions except the SEQ were presented to all participants, both male and female, within their work crews. After they finished the questionnaires, the male employees returned to work, out of sight and hearing range, and the female workers were taken aside in small groups to conduct the SEQ. All female workers agreed to participate in the SEQ, but some participants chose not to answer all items.

Originally, it was planned to extend this reform from Anhui to the rest of China within several years after the start of the experiment. The State Council hoped to spread Anhui’s rural tax reform in one third of all provinces in 2002. However, recent problems with the system have appeared in Anhui. Although fees and taxes have been reduced, the fall in local revenues have limited the ability of the local government to implement a number of basic mandated expenditures, including the support of schools, health systems, and basic infrastructure maintenance. Recent government pronouncements have actually put the Anhui experiment on hold. It is likely that successful implementation of such a policy will require substantial reforms in other areas and a basic change in the way that government fiscal resources are shifted to poor areas to support basic services.In one of its most fundamental concessions , China agreed to phase out its export subsidies in the first year of WTO accession. Such subsidies have played considerable roles in assisting with the export of maize, cotton, and other agricultural products into international markets and in this way indirectly supporting domestic prices. In fact, after phasing out export subsidies, several of China’s sectors will likely be subject to much intensive competition from imports. Besides the elimination of export subsidies—which are “Red Box” investments, WTO also puts strict controls on the types and amounts of certain investments. In particular, domestic support to agriculture is divided into “Green Box” and “Amber Box” ones. As is the case with other WTO members, China faces no limitations in the amount that the nation can invest into those activities classified as Green Box, but face carefully circumscribed rules regarding the amount that can be invested into those activities listed as Amber Box policy. Hence, WTO will most likely force China to shift the composition of their investment portfolio. In planning their Amber Box investments, China accession protocol allows a de minimis level of investment that is equal to 8.5 percent of agricultural gross value product.

After intense negations this level was set somewhat below that enjoyed by other developing countries but above that allowed to developed countries . Moreover, the list of items that are used to in the computation of China’s AMS is wider than that used by other countries. For example, certain investment subsidies are not counted in the computation of AMS in developing countries. Developing countries also frequently can classify input subsidies for poor farmers as Green Box investments. Hence, on paper, China’s hands appear to be quite firmly tied in the scope of the investments that they are able to make after their WTO accession. However,vertical tower planter when one begins to add up the amount of fiscal funds that China has historically invested in these areas, it may be that the de minimis limits will not be binding.The biggest impact could be sometime in the future after China grew and its budget constraint was somewhat relaxed. At that time, however, China’s agreement should be thought of as fairly limiting as it closes future options to support its rural areas in ways that its neighbors in East Asia have done . In a post-WTO environment, China’s leaders will give more thought to how it can best use its de minimis budget. Most recently, a study by Huang and Rozelle shows that although most labor intensive agricultural commodities, such as livestock and horticulture, had negative NPRs in late 2001, the time just prior to China’s WTO accession, many land intensive products, including maize, wheat, oil seed crops and sugar, had NPRs ranging from 5 to 40 percent. Moreover, the crops with the positive NPRs are almost all under TQR management, a finding that has important implications how China may want to use its scarce AMS funds. Instead of continuing to support or subsidize these products, China may want to promote these crop productions through productivity enhanced investment measures, such as more agricultural research or transportation and communication investments. Since many of such investments have long gestation periods, the sooner leaders make the investments, the smaller the shock will be after China’s TQR management regime is removed. Although there are no limits on Green Box investments, fiscal constraints will make it so leaders must carefully allocate its investment into non-distorting procuctivity-enhancing activities.

Recent increases in the government’s support to enhance agricultural productivity growth indicate that China already has begun to respond to the challenges posed to China under the WTO regime and believes that investment-enhancing investments will play an important role in making China’s farmers competitive. For example, total agricultural research expenditures in real terms grew annually at more than 10 percent. Growth of these expenditures has grown during the late 1990s . Moreover, China currently considers agricultural biotechnology as one of the primary measures to improve its national food security, raise agricultural productivity, and create its competitive position in international agricultural markets. Public agricultural research investment in plant biotechnology has increased at a rate even faster than the rest of the research sectors . However, despite the growth in spending on agricultural research, investment intensity was only 0.44 percent in 1999, one of the lowest levels in the world . Much more needs to be done. Complementary investments are also needed. For example, financing agricultural technology extension is even more problematic . During China’s reform period, the expansion of the output of agricultural production due to the increased incentives from decollectivization ranks as one of the nation’s great achievements, though a significant portion of that gain arose from the mobilization of inputs. China’s future agricultural production increases, however, may not be able to rely on inputs as much as in the past. Other correlates of development, such as rising wage rates, environmental awareness, resource limitations, and recent China’s WTO accession, mean that there will be pressure on farmers to reduce input use and their production costs. As the nation’s farmers near input plateaus, further growth in output must begin to rely more on technological change and systems must be in place to generate the technology and extend it to farmers.Over the past several decades, tremendous improvements have been made in areas such as transportation, irrigation, and flood control. These projects should be continued in the future. Recent decisions to improve marketing infrastructure, including attempts to set up market and price reporting information and the standardization of agricultural product, are moving the emphasis of officials in the right direction. In other words, it is exactly these types of investments that the government is supposed to and is capable of making.

These are all Green Box policies, meaning there is no limit to the support China can give its domestic agriculture through such productivity-enhancing investments. Such investments may have a number of indirect effects, also. A better environment for China’s producers mean that investors, both domestic and from abroad may be will to transfer in better technology. The government should also invest in the activities that will help promote the import of technology and investment. In some case, productivity-enhancing technology can be more easily obtained by importing new technologies and inputs. In the WTO environment, opportunities exist to reduce the barriers that have been keeping China’s farmers from having access to the lowest cost technology in the world. Restrictions on the imports of seed, pesticides and herbicides and barriers keeping out foreign direct investment in the agricultural input sector should be expected to be gradually removed.Agricultural structure adjustment was considered as the central policy goal of the government in 2000 and further emphasized in 2001. This adjustment includes structure changes among agricultural commodities, quality improvement of China’s major commodities, and the promotion of regional specialization. These new policy efforts, in part taken as part of China’s effort to prepare for WTO membership, is called the “Strategic Adjustment of Agricultural Structure” . Key policies and measures to support these adjustments include many of the actions discussed above. The nation’s leaders believe that if they re-initiate grain marketing reforms,lettuce vertical farming redirect part of the government’s resource allocation from grain and cotton stables toward commodities in which they have a comparative advantage, such as horticulture crops, and the promotion of regional specialization. To do so, the focus of leaders is also new. They plan on relying more on technology improvement, investments in infrastructure, and setting up an environment in which local agricultural enterprises and integrated agricultural production and marketing can occur. Although out of control of those who are directly in charge of agriculture, there are a number of policies that can complement the structural transformation of agriculture and which will serve to make China more competitive in its post-WTO environment. For example, ultimately, agricultural producer must dramatically increase the scale of their operation. But, this will not occur until massive amounts of labor shift into the off-farm sector, in general, and into urban areas, in particular. Hence, policies that promote labor movement will also be good for agricultural income and production. While a complete discussion is beyond the scope of this paper, national leaders need to promote employment policies that will help lead to more urbanization , promote rural township development , and labor market development and irrigation. In addition, efforts to increase agricultural production and productivity should be in tandem with improvements in farmer’s ability to store food.The importance of agriculture in Mozambique stems both from a high percentage of the population engaged in agricultural activities, and from its economic contribution to the gross national product.

Agricultural productivity, however, remains very low, even by African standards. Zavale, Mabaya, and Christy report that maize yields are estimated at 1.4 tons/ha, far below the potential yields of 5 – 6.5 tons/ha. They also found that with the current technology, scope exists for fostering cost efficiency by 70 percent without any loss of the output.Besides cost inefficiency, a number of equally important factors are associated with low agricultural productivity in Mozambique. First, the use of improved agricultural technologies is very limited and unequal. Most of the production is rainfed, with extremely low use of external inputs, particularly among the poorest households, who also depend more on agricultural income. Additionally, of the 2 percent of farmers that used tractor mechanization in 2005, 49 percent were located in Maputo province, a region of relatively lower agricultural potential, but of better infrastructure, including roads. Second, associated with a lower use of improved agricultural technologies are credit and insurance market failures. Asset ownership, particularly liquid assets , and access to non-farm income activities have been shown to play an important role in overcoming credit constraints [10,11,12]. Furthermore, agricultural productivity rises significantly with increases in household income in parallel with the diminishing reliance on agriculture of wealthier households. Third, in Mozambique the beginning of the rainy season coincides with the highest rates of malaria incidence. Delays in some agricultural operations due to malaria or any other reasons usually translate into lower production per unit area. Farmer’s health status has been systematically ignored in adoption or impact assessment studies, much less malaria. Notwithstanding its importance, HIV/AIDS pandemic is given far more attention, one of the arguments being its potential effect on labor availability.Fourth, farmer’s nutritional status also plays a crucial role in enhancing agricultural productivity levels. Post-harvest losses significantly reduce household access to food during the dry season. When faced with prospects of high food storage losses, farmers are compelled to forego opportunities for inter-temporal price arbitrage through storage and are observed to sell their produce right after the harvesting season at prices lower than observed prices for purchases in the subsequent lean season. This has been dubbed “sell low, buy high” puzzle. As a result, many farmers are unable to purchase food during the dry season, debilitating their nutritional statuses, which deteriorate their ability to undertake some agricultural operations. To make matters worse, agricultural productivity and land availability appear to be shrinking for many Sub-Saharan African countries , including the apparently land-abundant countries like Mozambique. Jayne et al. found that the average per capita cultivated area has been declining over the last 40 years in SSA.

According to the California League of Conservation Voters , “Because agriculture has gone unregulated for so long as a source of air pollution while other sectors have been subject to air quality rules, there exist many viable opportunities to reduce air pollution from agricultural sources.” Thus, ending the exemption not only helps avert national sanctions, but will help the state clean the air . This mirrors Florez’s stated intent in offering the bill in the first place. According to Pollard , “Florez said he introduced [SB 700] because agriculture is a major contributor to air pollution that is related to epidemic levels of asthma in children and other health problems in the Central Valley.” In an attempt to put a “face” on the victims, Florez had residents from across the valley testify on behalf of SB 700. As reported by Grossi in the Fresno Bee , “Caleb Schneider, 16, of Hanford, said he has asthma, and he wants to see every effort made to clean the air. ‘When you can’t breathe’, he said, ‘nothing else matters.’” This narrative depicts the agriculture industry as a villain deserving of public policy burdens. The numbers and comparisons define the level of the burden. Since the contribution of the agriculture industry is “significant,” their responsibility in the cleanup should be proportionate. The proposed solution will make agricultural sources a part of the regulatory process just like every other industry in the California. For supporters of SB 700, this creates a sense of equity in the treatment of all sources of pollution. While this harkens back to the complex cause narrative, there is no doubt that supporters have emphasized the role of agricultural sources in the air pollution, allowing others to fade into the background. There is a strategically constructed link between the agricultural sources and the exemption . This adds to the somewhat negative construction of the agriculture industry. There is also some concern about the arbitrary and capricious nature of the regulatory structure of SB 700.

Many in agriculture do not see themselves as being like other industries. According to Roger Isom,vertical hydroponic garden vice president of the California Cotton Ginners and Growers Association, “It’s not like ag is an industrial source that’s going day after day. It’s seasonal. The question is how can we do our share and not be put out of business” . An editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle makes the case for differential treatment, “The farmers have a decent case for special consideration. A range of 200 crops call for different farming methods, making rule-making tricky. In a struggling economy, new costs should be minimized. As always, water, land prices and import figure, too” . The last component of this narrative is the potential consequences of imposing an unfair and overly broad regulatory approach on agriculture. Opponents of SB 700 argue the agricultural community will not be able to “absorb the additional operation costs resulting from new regulatory fees imposed by LADs, given the international competition in the marketplace for most agricultural operations” . While increased costs and decreasing competitive advantage will plague the industry, there will also be impacts felt at the level of individual small farms. According to state Senator Chuck Poochigian , “They are not corporate magnates. They are ordinary people trying to make a living. They are losing their farms. They are making no money at all in some cases. . . . [The bill] punishingly exceeds federal regulations” . This narrative uses very different language than the previous one . Here the agriculture industry is more often referred to as farmers, growers, ranchers, and dairymen. This “puts a face” on the seemingly faceless, corporate agriculture industry. It is these individuals that face the unfair and overreaching regulations of SB 700.

There is also a different interpretation of the multi-causal narrative. Instead of emphasizing the contributions of agriculture, all of the other sources are placed front and center. This is especially true of passenger vehicles and sprawling development. It is simply inequitable to single-out agriculture for regulation when this will result in increased costs with little or no improvement in air quality. It is only by using a modest approach to address California’s air exemption that this pain can be avoided. Hence, it is the regulatory approach of SB 700 that is the problem in this narrative, not air pollution in the valley. The narratives, as captured by the NPF, have a strong link to the theories of policy design discussed by Schneider and Ingram.Both the portrayal of characters and proposed policy solutions fit with the social construction of target populations and their hypothesized links to elements of policy design. This allows the use of these narratives to hypothesize about what kind of policy tools, agents, and implementation structures will be contained in SB 700. Both the “complex-cause” and “agriculture as significant contributor” provide a characterization or social construction of agriculture as villain in the narrative of causing pollution harmful to the health of citizens. While the “complex cause” narrative has many more villains, “agriculture as significant contributor” has only one and tells a damning tale of intentional causation. Thus, one should expect to see policy design elements used on negatively constructed target populations. The “agriculture as victim” narrative portrays agricultural interests in a much different light. This narrative shows agriculture as the victim of punitive and overly broad attempts to regulate their activities. It provides a more positive construction of this target population. So, given this portrayal, we should expect to see policy designs reflective of a positively constructed target population. All of these narratives coexist with one another in the larger debate surrounding air quality policy and SB 700. Agriculture and its interests are characterized as both villain and victim in the policy discourse.

Different policy solutions are linked to these different characterizations. These varying constructions as agriculture result in seemingly contradictory elements of policy design that both benefit and burden the agriculture industry. The choice of policy tools reflects the social constructions policymakers have used to construct target populations. These policy tools direct the treatment of both targets and agents . Schneider and Ingram argue that different types of policy tools contain different behavioral assumptions about the group being targeted by the policy. Thus, just as the narratives suggest, we should expect to see a mix of policy tools in SB 700 that seek to force the agriculture industry to comply; and those that seek to aid them in achieving compliance. The structure of the regulatory framework itself is based on the premise that the agricultural industry is a significant contributor and will not voluntarily comply. All agricultural sources are required to meet the most stringent technology standards , as well as the best available control measures for mitigation purposes. The required standards reflect what Schneider and Ingram term an authority tool. The expectation is that industry will obey the requirements. A locally administered permit system is another part of the regulatory structure. Agricultural sources emitting 50% or more of major source emission levels for PM-10 and ozone are required to pay a fee to operate or construct facilities. According to Schneider and Ingram , “User fees, rates, and charges also are used as incentives, but these do not carry as much positive valence as inducements.Charges can also be distinguished from sanctions in that they do not intend to convey social disapproval of an activity.” Thus, the regulatory structure itself reflects a somewhat negative to ambivalent tone concerning the agriculture industry. There are a host of other policy tools that will aid agricultural sources in their attempts to comply with the new regulatory framework. These tools echo themes from the agriculture as victim narrative. The first of these is the information clearinghouse on mitigation strategies. This fits the description of a capacity-building tool . These kinds of tools are supposed to “enlighten, remove impediments, and empower action by the target group or agency itself” . The agriculture industry is portrayed as a group that simply needs to learn about the best mitigation strategies available. This suggests a more positive social construction of the agriculture industry. It is not a question of willful neglect, but one of needed education.Specifically, financial institutions that provide service to agricultural interests will be granted access to additional monies in order to make it easier to provide loans to fund air pollution control measures. This inducement implies “respect for the target population and portray[s] a positive valence of the behavior that is desired” . Agriculture will receive financial resources to aid compliance with the new rules developed under SB 700’s regulatory framework. This suggests a positive tool for a positively constructed target group. The nature of the relationship between agent and target reflects themes of the agriculture as victim narrative. The clearest illustration of this relationship lies in the rule-making process for SB 700 . The policy tools utilized here are learning tools. This approach coincides with the “consensus-building” or “support-building” implementation structure . This design is “intended to provide a forum for participation and discussion that will enable lower-level agents or target populations to determine what should be done. Statutes usually allocate discretion to lower-level agents or even target populations” . This implementation structure sets the stage for the negotiation of both PM-10 and ozone rules developed by the SJVAPCD.

Although a large literature describes how recessions affect non-agricultural labor markets, few studies examine the effects of recessions in the seasonal agricultural labor market.1 We examine how the last three recessions affected hourly earnings, the probability of receiving a bonus,vertical home farming and weekly hours in agricultural labor market. We compare those results to those in three non-agricultural labor markets that rely on immigrants. We empirically test five hypotheses. First, we expect seasonal agricultural workers’ earnings to rise during major recessions. Because the income elasticities of demand for seasonal agricultural products such as fruits and vegetables are relatively inelastic, recessions cause a small, possibly negligible leftward shift of the labor demand curve in seasonal agriculture. In contrast, a recession’s may cause a significant leftward shift of the labor supply curve. Roughly half of hired, seasonal agricultural workers are undocumented.2 The Great Recession significantly reduced the number of new, undocumented immigrants entering the United States , causing a substantial leftward shift of the agricultural labor supply curve.3 Given a substantial leftward shift of the supply curve and only a minimal shift of the demand curve, agricultural workers’ earnings rise. Second, while we hypothesize that hourly earnings and the probability of receiving a bonus rose during the Great Recession, 2008–2009, we expect these earnings measures to rise by less or possibly fall in the earlier, relatively minor 1990–1991 and 2001 recessions. The Great Recession caused much larger decreases in new immigrant labor supply than in these earlier recessions . Third, we expect recessions to affect undocumented workers differently than documented workers because their labor markets are partially segmented. Evidence that these markets are partially segmented comes from earlier studies that show that, compared to documented workers, undocumented workers are more likely to be employed by farm labor contractors as opposed to farmers, and because their pay differs . Fourth, we expect weekly hours of employed agricultural workers to increase to compensate for the reduced flow of new immigrants during major recessions. Fifth, we expect recessions to have larger earnings effects in agricultural labor markets than in construction, hotel, and restaurant labor markets. These non-agricultural labor markets are more likely to have sticky wages due to union and other contracts and minimum wage laws. The first section discusses how recessions affect the supply curve of agricultural labor. The next section describes our two data sets. The third section presents our empirical results. The final section discusses our results and draws conclusions.In contrast, during a major recession, fewer undocumented immigrants enter the United States from Mexico and other countries. Passel, Cohn and Gonzalez-Barrera reported a large drop in the number of undocumented immigrants during the Great Recession relative to the recovery years afterward and to preceding years, which include milder recessions. They estimated that the number of undocumented immigrants rose monotonically from only 3.5 million in 1990 until it peaked at 12.2 million in 2007. However, the number of immigrants fell to 11.3 million by 2009 during the Great Recession. In contrast, they found that the supply of immigrant labor rose during relatively mild 2001 recession.These results are consistent with U.S. border patrol reports from the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Immigration Statistics.

Many of these assumptions and priorities also influence sustainable agriculture programs. Such an examination is critical if we are to avoid reproducing the problems engendered by conventional decision-making processes in the re- search, education, policy, and business institutions which determine agriculture. KennethDahlberg 9 notes that assumptions and biases which may occlude the development of sustain- able agriculture concepts include: separating ourselves from nature and viewing it as something which must be dominated; measuring progress in increasing applications of science and technology; emphasizing technology and formal social institutions over natural systems and less formal aspects of society; and failing to see how human societies fit into and are dependent upon larger natural systems. We would add to Dahlberg’s list the tendency to overlook the needs of human beings who are separated from us, whether it be by distance, by socioeconomic status, or by time. These types of assumptions govern how we understand the world and have been institutionalized in educational and research pro- grams. MacRae et al. note that many characteristics of the research process responsible for conventional agriculture’s great productivity create obstacles to developing sustainable agriculture. Among these are over reliance on reductionism and quantification, scientists’ belief in objective “truth,” and the divorce of research from its potential social consequences . Along with Patricia Allen those authors also cite obstacles posed by a peer review system and publishing process which tend to reward individual “isolated” achievement while discouraging long-range interdisciplinary work and innovative ideas. This is aggravated by research funding from private sources, which encourages research on technology development rather than social analysis. The same assumptions and biases which govern research and education are also embedded in much of U.S. agricultural policy. They are expressed primarily as short-term economic considerations such as maximizing production, minimizing production costs and consumer prices, vertical aeroponic tower garden and maximizing the market share of certain agricultural commodities. These priorities have largely been those of the agricultural sector, and not necessarily those that are best for society at large.

To address these types of whole-system issues we believe that sustainable agriculture concepts must go beyond placing top priority on environment and production practices and give greater emphasis to social issues. Current definitions are often based on two assumptions that we believe to be problematic: 1) that the farm is the primary locus for achieving agricultural sustainability and 2) that short-term micro-economic profitability is paramount.Major institutions promulgating “sustainable” agriculture often focus on the farm level rather than on the whole system. This is clear from the priorities of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Low Input Sustainable Agriculture program. LISA focused on “low input technologies [which] provide opportunities to reduce the farmer’s dependence on certain kinds of purchased inputs in ways that increase profits, reduce environmental hazards, and ensure a more sustainable agriculture for generations to come.”As these priorities demonstrate, agriculture is often thought of almost purely in terms of farms and farmers, a perspective traceable to the period in which most Americans were involved in farm production but which no longer reflects agriculture’s true scope. Even though the on-farm transformation of resources into food and fiber is a core process of the food and agriculture system, it is but one of many components. The system includes not only generating agricultural products, but also distributing those products and the infrastructure which affects production and distribution at regional, national, and global levels. Interactions among the larger environmental, social, and economic systems in which agriculture is situated directly influence agricultural production and distribution. The following briefly describes how these larger systems affect agriculture yet remain unaccounted for in many sustainable agriculture programs.Agricultural practices ranging from the development of irrigation projects to the use of agrichemicals have often had negative environmental impacts such as wildlife kills, pesticide residues in drinking water, soil erosion, groundwater depletion, and salinization. Substituting environmentally sound inputs for those which are damaging is an important step in addressing these problems. But ecological sustainability re- quires intensive management and substantial knowledge of ecological processes which go far beyond substitution and cannot be achieved merely by substituting inputs.

Such substitutions need to account for their complex and long-term ecological consequences. Otherwise they may engender secondary and perhaps more serious problems in the same way that conventional solutions frequently have been shown to do. Viewing agricultural systems as true ecosystems can serve as a model for bringing the whole-systems perspective to bear on social and economic issues as well. Instead, however, sustainability programs often take conventional approaches to solving these problems by changing the production practices which are directly at fault without addressing the total ecosystem context of either the problems or the alternative production practices which show promise as solutions. An example is the current emphasis on input substitution. Most projects funded by the USDA Low- Input Sustainable Agriculture program in its first two years, for instance, explore how inputs which cause environmental damage or incur expensive costs for the farmer can be replaced with more environmentally or economically benign inputs . In most cases single components of farming systems are being analyzed and little attempt is made to place these analyses in the context of whole agroecosystems.Agriculture both affects and is affected by the larger society. Farmer production decisions, for example, determine the diversity and quality of foods available to consumers, and farm size and technologies have been associated with the economic and social vigor of rural communities.At the same time, society deter- mines what is possible at the farm level. Farmers lose valuable farmland when encroaching urbanization creates zoning problems, inflates land values, and generates urban pollution which lowers crop productivity. Production decisions are heavily influenced by consumer decisions. A recent example is farmers’ voluntary discontinuation of Alar on apples. Although farmers continued to endorse the safety of Alar, they realized that this position was untenable in the face of consumer concerns. The international scope of agriculture also plays an important role. Social and economic conditions in other countries and global food supplies can greatly affect the viability of farming in local regions, as evidenced when the world grain shortages of the 1970s led to enormous expansion in U.S. grain production. When foreign demand for U.S. grain subsequently declined, many American farmers’ incomes fell, often to the point where debts incurred to expand production could not be paid, and major social and economic dislocations in the grain belt occurred.

Efforts in sustainable agriculture are not unlike those of their conventional counterparts in that they tend to serve certain clientele selectively and generally do not evaluate the social consequences of the technologies that sustainable agriculture encourages. For example, organic farming strategies are often sup- ported because they are environmentally sound, and in terms of the prices organic foods command, are profitable for farmers. An unintended and unaddressed social consequence of this is that people with low incomes often cannot afford organic products and thus are denied access to food containing fewer pesticide residues.The agricultural industry is a significant portion of the nation’s economy: in 1984 about 20 percent of U.S. jobs were in some aspect of food and fiber production, distribution, or service and these workers and their industries contributed 18 percent of the gross national product. The importance and volatility of food prices have made most governments reluctant to let market forces alone set these prices. Thus, a host of institutional measures have been implemented to address agricultural prices in order to manage their effects on consumer welfare, public coffers, farmer income, foreign exchange, food security, nutrition, and food distribution. Such policies include commodity programs, water and reclamation programs, import/export policies, and research and extension programs. Larger economic factors indirectly affect the agricultural system, factors such as interest rates, trade policy and negotiations, the exchange value of the U.S. dollar, and environmental regulations. In the context of these economic policies, agriculture is subject to non-agricultural constraints and conditions, a fact acknowledged broadly in the literature of both conventional and sustainable agriculture. Yet most research and extension programs in both conventional and sustainable agriculture do not recognize or address thesmacrofactors. Sustainable agriculture efforts generally concentrate on environmentally sound farm-level technologies which are economically profitable for farmers to adopt. Less commonly do such efforts address how the technologies they generate will affect or be affected by larger economic concerns in the long run.A second assumption behind many sustainable agriculture definitions, that short-term profitability is of ultimate importance, is also common. This is a central tenet of LISA, forming the first of its ten Guiding Principles: “If a method of farming is not profitable, it cannot be sustainable.”This is problematic, particularly since there is little acknowledgement that profitability is determined by policies, fiscal procedures, vertical gardening in greenhouse and business structures that can obstruct sustainability. We recognize that short-term profit- ability is important in commercial agricultural systems; clearly, if growers are to adopt sustainable agricultural practices, these must be profitable in the short run as well as the long run. The problem lies in pursuit of short-run profitability at the expense of environmental and social goals. In conventional agriculture, the drive to maximize short-term profit has meant that many pressing problems have been ignored or exacerbated. Natural resources have often been treated as expendable commodities , and agriculture has functioned more for financial gain than for human need.

The social costs of production have generally been neglected: chronic hunger, inequitable economic returns and unsafe working conditions for farm labor, possible negative health effects related to nutrition and agrichemical use, and the decline of socioeconomic conditions in rural communities associated with large-scale industrial agriculture. Subsuming social goals to economic goals may easily be reproduced in sustainability programs unless sustainability concepts address the fact that profitability and social goals are often not compatible in current economic systems.A useful concept of agricultural sustainability needs not only to acknowledge social issues as priorities equivalent to those of production, environment, and economics, but to recognize the need for balance among those disparate but highly interactive elements which comprise agriculture. Toward this, we offer the following perspective: A sustainable food and agriculture system is one which is environmentally sound, economically viable, socially responsible, non-exploitative, and which serves as the foundation for future generations. It must be approached through an interdisciplinary focus which addresses the many interrelated parts of the entire food and agriculture system, at local, regional, national, and international levels. Essential to this perspective is recognition of the whole-systems nature of agriculture; the idea that sustainability must be extended not only through time, but throughout the globe as well, valuing the welfare of not only future generations, but of all people now living and of all species of the biosphere.This sustainability concept moves beyond emphasis of farm-level practices and microeconomic profitability to that of the entire agricultural system and its total clientele. Richard Lowrance, Paul Hendrix, and Eugene Odum16 describe a model which approximates a whole-systems approach. They see four different loci or subsystems of sustainability: 1) farm fields where agronomic factors are paramount; 2) the farm unit wherein micro-economic concerns are primary; 3) the regional physical environment where ecological factors are central; and 4) national and international economies where macroeconomic issues are most important. Their model demonstrates that focusing on only one level of the agricultural system neglects others that are equally essential. A whole-systems perspective fosters an understanding of complex interactions and their diverse ramifications through- out agriculture and the systems with which it articulates. This understanding is at the root of sustainability. Vernon Ruttan17 describes an ever-widening comprehension of “whole system” as he delineates three waves of social concerns which have arisen about natural resource availability, environmental change, and human well-being. In the late 1940s and early 1950s the first wave focused on whether resources such as land, water, and energy were sufficient to sustain economic growth. The second wave, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, focused on the effect of growth-generated pollution on the environment . The most recent concerns, manifest since the mid-1980s, also center on adverse environmental effects, but the key distinction is the transnational issues such as global warming, ozone depletion, and acid rain. As agriculture and its impacts become increasingly globalized, the need for a whole-systems perspective,particularly in terms of decision-making, become increasingly critical. Dahlberg 9 observes that although the impacts of modern industrial society are global, the data and analytical tools we use to assess those impacts are limited by national, disciplinary, or sectoral boundaries.