Horticulture

Recently, however, reports regarding the financial difficulties experienced by U.S. agricultural cooperatives have been much more common than news of their successes. In particular, the 2002 bankruptcy of Farmland Industries — a federation of 1,700 independent Midwestern cooperatives and the nation’s largest agricultural cooperative — received considerable media attention. In California, news about cooperatives has centered on the bankruptcy of Tri Valley Growers in 2000; the dissolutions of Blue Anchor and the Rice Growers Association of California in 2000; and the conversions of Calavo in 2001 and Diamond Walnut Growers in 2005, to publicly traded, investor-owned corporations. Such news has raised concerns among producers and lenders regarding the viability of the cooperative form of agricultural business. In the agricultural sector, producers use cooperatives to market and process their crops and livestock, purchase supplies and services, negotiate terms of trade with processors of their raw product, and provide credit for their operations. An international management consulting firm, McKinsey & Company,plastic gutter issued a report in 2002 alleging that agricultural cooperatives “destroy value” because few cooperatives “have changed the way they operate” .

This report received considerable attention from the management and boards of numerous large cooperatives, despite the fact that its analysis was based on only 2 years of data. Some cooperative researchers also noted other technical limitations. Was McKinsey & Company’s claim that agricultural cooperatives destroy value justified? Or do cooperatives benefit California’s agricultural producers? What is the future for agricultural cooperatives in California? Cooperatives have been part of the agricultural sector in the United States for approximately 200 years. They can benefit their members in several different ways. In the Midwest, cooperatives were formed primarily to maximize the welfare of their individual members. These cooperatives handle the entire output of their members regardless of market needs, and are clearly extensions of their members’ farming businesses. Conversely, many of the marketing cooperatives formed in California during the first quarter of the 20th century were designed to create market power by improving product quality and restricting raw product flows. Such market power–oriented cooperatives seek to maximize the profitability of the firm, rather than the welfare of individual members. These different objectives can have vastly different impacts on the operations of cooperatives. A cooperative with a market-power structure could operate in niche markets with a strong brand identity and handle limited volumes of member product to maximize its profitability as a firm. This type of cooperative would then distribute some or all of its earnings to its members. Some of these cooperatives, such as Mountain States Lamb, require members to buy enough delivery rights to match their delivery volumes.

Members must invest in a delivery right for each lamb they deliver annually to Mountain States Lamb for processing and marketing. The delivery rights control the amount of raw product delivered by members; they depend on the processing capacity of the cooperative’s plant. Investment in delivery rights is part of a producer marketing agreement. If a producer is unable to deliver the agreed amount of raw product, purchase of commodities is authorized by the cooperative for undelivered obligations. Such delivery rights are marketable and can appreciate in value if the cooperative is successful. For example, the founding members of Dakota Growers Pasta paid $3.85 in 1991 for a right to deliver a bushel of durum wheat annually to the cooperative. By 1998, the cooperative’s strong earnings enabled retiring members to sell a delivery right for $7.50. In contrast, a Midwestern-style marketing cooperative could maximize benefits to its members by accepting their deliveries up to its break-even point, which would provide as much of a home for their product as possible without incurring losses. While this decreases the members’ potential earnings from the cooperative, it also reduces the risk they face. It is inappropriate to assume that all cooperatives are seeking to maximize their profitability as firms. Nonetheless, various national studies were conducted during the late 1980s that compared the financial performance of agricultural cooperatives and investor-owned firms . The findings from these studies varied widely . These financial performance studies used ratio analysis, including profitability measures. Ratio analysis is a tool used to evaluate a firm’s financial performance by taking data from its financial statements and comparing the ratios over time, and/or with those for other firms or the industry. However, Sexton and Iskow pointed out how analyses of cooperatives based upon financial ratios, although popular, were not based on economic theory. Specifically, they noted that since cooperatives are extensions of their members’ businesses, a cooperative could be less profitable than an investor-owned firm and still be beneficial to a member — as long as the member’s discounted stream of returns from the cooperative was greater than those from marketing the commodity directly or through an investor-owned firm.

For example, membership in an almond marketing cooperative that is averaging a 6% operating margin while one of its investor-owned competitors is averaging a 10% operating margin could still be beneficial to the cooperative’s members. Members could receive a higher price for their almonds from the cooperative than if they sold their crop to the investor-owned firm; the investor-owned firm strives to minimize its costs, including the price it pays for its almonds. John Hicks is credited with advancing the conjecture that changes in relative prices induce technical progress . This conjecture implies that relative factor prices serve a dual function, as signals of resource scarcity and as determinants of the firm’s technology choice. Hayami and Ruttan revitalized Hicks’ conjecture and made important contributions to the explanation of the magnitude and direction of TP in the American and Japanese agricultural sectors using the relative price hypothesis. Over the past thirty years, many authors have attempted to test this hypothesis using aggregate data and obtaining mixed results. In these studies, the consensus approach to the econometric estimation and testing of the hypothesis that technical progress is induced by relative prices has been to regress the ratio of some factors of production over a distributed lag series of their price ratios and other similar series of extension,blueberry container public and private R&D expenditures. Thirtle, Schimmelpfennig and Townsend summarized several significant studies of this kind and produced one of their own. The sample information about output quantity and output price is remarkably absent in many of these studies. This omission seems in contrast to the conjecture advanced by several economists according to whom the choice of techniques is determined, to a large extent, by profitability considerations. In this paper, therefore, we attempt to recast the price-induced technical progress hypothesis into a framework that utilizes all the available theoretical and sample information, including output price and quantity. This approach leads to a novel set of comparative statics conditions of the economic theory of the firm undergoing technical progress that provides an exhaustive scaffolding for testing the PITP conjecture.When dealing with technical progress, it is convenient to distinguish the innovation phase from the adoption phase. The majority of price-taker firms self select into the adoption phase. In general, the choice of available techniques made by those firms is guided mainly by expected profitability considerations. When price-taker firms are aggregated into an industry, such as the US agricultural sector, the R&D and extension expenditures may become determinants of the industry technical progress. Griliches , Arrow , Hirsch and other economists have suggested that expected profitability objectives may be a determinant of adoption rates. The expected profitability conjecture relating expected profits to TP leads to a model where expected output and input prices enter the production function as shifters of the technology frontier. As originally suggested by Paris and re-elaborated more recently by Paris and Caputo and by Caputo and Paris , we incorporate expected relative factor prices explicitly into the production function and assume a cost-minimizing behavior of the individual entrepreneur.

The introduction of expected relative prices into the production function invalidates the traditional comparative statics relations of the competitive firms but leads—by necessity—to a more general model of the cost-minimizing/profit-maximizing entrepreneur. The novel set of comparative statics conditions depends on both primal and dual relations and is expressed in the form of a symmetric and negative semidefinite matrix of estimable terms. It follows that the empirical implementation of the PITP conjecture developed in this paper requires the joint estimation of the derivatives of the cost function with respect to relative input prices, the production function and the first order necessary conditions.Traditionally, aggregate models of TP based upon time series data have been specified using a distributed lag representation of either quantities or prices, or both. This approach seems to have been taken for two main reasons: to capture, somehow, a dynamic aspect that is assumed to be inherent in a process of technical progress, and to represent some process of expectation formation of the entrepreneur about quantities and prices. Often, the two aspects are confounded. With respect to the PITP model presented above, we would like to point out that the expectation process is taken into consideration explicitly and there is no need to formulate a distributed lag representation of expected quantities and prices. We acknowledge that the dynamic aspect of TP requires an explicit theory, akin to the static theory formulated above: a distributed lag specification without theory is only an ad-hockery. In general, it will be wise to postulate that the theoretical relations expressed in equations – are represented by flexible functional forms. Such forms are not self-dual in the way that the Cobb-Douglas and the CES functions are. Hence, the implementation of the above model requires the statement of a cost function that has entirely different parameters from those of the production function. The coherent link between the primal and the dual frameworks is represented by the unknown expected quantities and prices that must be estimated along with the parameters. The discussion of how to estimate the model given by equations – will be the subject of the following sections. We would like to advance here that, in principle, a Bayesian approach along the lines presented by Zellner would produce consistent estimates. But, as we are not comfortable with elaborate and multi-dimensional integration techniques, we will propose a two-phase approach based upon a nonlinear least-squares estimator.The sample input data for the present analysis were made available by Thirtle, Schimmelpfennig and Townsend and are described in their paper. The time series consist of four input quantity and price indices relating to machinery, labor, fertilizer and land, from 1880 to 1990; public and private R&D and extension expenditures are also from 1880 to 1990. Additionally, aggregate output quantity and price indices from 1910 to 1990 were derived from the US Historical Statistics and USDA databases and provided by Spiro Stefanou. All the index series are defined with base 1967 = 100. Because the primal-dual model of PITP developed in this paper uses also the output quantity and price series, the usable sample data range from 1910 to 1990 with 81 observations. In this paper we chose to deal with the single aggregate of output for the US agriculture. All the data were scaled by a factor of 100 so that the average of most series is close to 1.Phase I of the PITP model was estimated using the GAMS programming package and unitary € λ weights for the objective function . This choice was dictated by a lack of knowledge of the true weights. The selection of these weights transforms the given problem into a nonlinear Total Least Squares model, originally described by Gulob and Van Loan , and by a vast literature since then. The model constraints, represented by equations , and , are highly nonlinear and non-convex. Hence, the solution achieved is only locally optimal. The problem was solved several times with different initial values. A serial correlation of order 1 was implemented during the estimation procedure. The use of the GAMS 21.6 programming package requires a careful choice of upper and lower bounds for all parameters. Still, the solution of the problem is a non-trivial enterprise. The phase I PITP model has 1495 constraints and 1721 unknown parameters. In a typical run, the CPU time to achieve a locally optimal solution was about 20-30 minutes on a Supermicro machine .

Similar regressions have been reported by Belongia and by Grennes and Lapp, and each study supported neutrality of money growth after intervals of one year or less. Using annual data, Grennes and Lapp found that, once real demand and supply forces were accounted for, there appeared to be no effect of inflation on real agricultural prices. Quarterly data were used by Belongia to test the money neutrality hypothesis. He found that the difference in growth rates between the GNP deflator for farm products and that for industrial commodities was not affected by unanticipated money growth after two quarters.The agricultural sector is specified as a series of supply and demand equalions with market prices playing the key equilibrating role. The agricultural sector is composed of two blocks of crop equations and three blocks of livestock equations. As shown in Figure 1, these blocks are related to the international and macroeconomy sectors-through a number of linkages. These consist of variables from the non-agricultural components of the model, such as interest and exchange rates,greenhouse snap clamps that affect the agricultural sector. A more general treatment of the linkages between the sectors incorporates feedback effects as well.

These were not included in the simulation results reported in this paper, so the agricultural sector can be thought of as a satellite model. Each grain block includes behavioral equations for acreage planted, yield per planted acre, domestic utilization, and inventories. Production is computed as the product of acreage and yield. Domestic utilization is divided into two components: livestock and residual demand and industry or food demand. Inventories are either publicly controlled loans, and stocks in the farmer-owned reserve or, privately owned. The privately held stocks and inventories under CCC loans are aggregated into a single inventory position. This specification allows different rules governing the movement of the various types of stocks to be incorporated in policy experiments. Since the planting decision is tied to the discrete choice of participation in farm programs, an appropriate specification must incorporate the trade-oft between expected returns of all potential crop choices. Traditional acreage response equations included in past models do not fully incorporate these trade-offs. Acreage planted of each crop is presumed to depend on expected returns from noncompliance and compliance with acreage programs for the crop under consideration, the expected profitabilities form competing crops, and last years’ acreage planted. The final variable is included since acreage planted is modeled as a partial adjustment process. Crop production costs depend on inputs purchased from the non-farm sector.

Costs are a function of the wage rate paid for hired labor; the market interest rate paid for financing working _capital, machinery, and buildings; prices paid for energy and fertilizer; and an index of nonfood prices. This cost measure enters the expected profit calculations for wheat and feed grains and provides a direct link with conditions in the general economy. When farmers do not participate in government programs, profitability depends, among other variables. on anticipated output price. For estimation purposes, the expected output price was taken to be the iarch price for a September futures contract. For simulation purposes, these price expectations .I were assumed to be rational, and the March futures price used in the acreage and yield equations was set equal to the cash price observed in the third quarter of the simulation. Thus, the price “expectations” used in the simulations are those which bring forth a level of production just sufficient to create market conditions consistent with that price, and the need to simulate the relationship between cash and futures prices is avoided. Domestic consumption is divided into food consumption and feed and other uses with separate demand equations for each component. Since most wheat , that is fed goes to broilers, the feed demand for wheat is specified to be a function of own price and corn price, each relative to the price of broilers, and the number of broilers on feed. Domestic feed demand for feed grains is specified to be a function of the inventories of cattle on feed, pigs on feed, broilers on feed and the price of grains relative to the price of meat. As suggested by the theory of consumption, domestic per capita food demand for wheat is a function of the real price of wheat, an index of real food prices, and real per capita income.

Food and industrial use of feed grains is modeled as a function of real feed grain prices, ” trend variable representing technology and real income. Inventory equations are used to·complete the grains blocks and determine the price of each crop. As noted above, inventories are separated into three components. In general a measure of the expected profitability of holding stocks is the main determinant of private stock holding. The different specifications for the various public inventory positions reflect constraints imposed on relase and entry in the publicly controlled stocks and by other causal influences. Quantity demanded by the private sector for stocks by both producers and users is motivated by transactions and precautionary motives. A large part is also due to the seasonality of production and to speculative motives. Specula active demand is influenced by the farm price relative to expected farm price. It is also presumed that the difference between the farm price and the loan rate, and public stocks have an influence. The market stock equation was modeled in price-dependent form. Interest rates enter the stock holding equations in two ways– the real interest rate and the government interest rate subsidy are both included as explanatory variables. In the private stock equations, it is expected that increased interest rates should have a negative effect due to the increased opportunity cost of holding idle inventories. As real interest rates rise, prices of wheat and feed grains fall since the opportunity costs of holding grain inventories has increased. Demand for stocks from the private sector is modeled in price dependent form. Stocks demanded by the government sector include government-owned stocks and the farmer-owned reserve. To a large extent, government stocks are a residual with the government playing a passive role. Farmers place stocks with the government when the farm price is close to or below the loan price by defaulting on non-recourse loans. They redeem loans only as the farm price moves above the loan price. A:5 required by law, the government can only release its own stocks when prices are sut efficiently above the loan price. In the case of the farmer-owned reserve, stocks flow out whenever market price approaches or exceeds the release price. The livestock sector includes blocks of equations for beef, pork and broilers. The structure of each block in the meat sector is similar. The meats are disaggregated to reflect different consumption patterns over time,snap clamps for greenhouse different income elasticities, and different production processes . Per capita meat demand is modeled in price-dependent form as a function of own quantity, the price of substitute meats, income, and the price of 1 nonfood items. Prices and income are measured in constant dollars, and income is in per capita terms. Supply behavior in the cattle sector is disaggregated into equations explaining the closing inventory of cows, placements of cattle on feed, and production of beef. The cattle sector is disaggregated and the dynamics associated with biological production lags and interactions between beef, feed prices and interest costs are incorporated. Our model follows that described by Jarvis; Freebairn and Rausser; and by Arzac a.nd Wilkinson except that, for simplicity, we have only one beef price. The cattle breeder and fed cattle activities are treated as distinct operations with different decision makers. Because of the biological lags involved, a change in the current cow inventory reflects a history of decisions to retain or slaughter cows and sell heifers to feeder operators or retain them for breeding over a period of three years. These decisions are related to current and past beef prices relative to feed costs and current and past real interest rates .Placement of cattle on feed is expressed as a function of lagged cow inventories to reflect the availability of feeder calves and the expected profitability of cattle feeding. Profitability is influenced by the price of beef relative to feed costs.

Feed costs for beef cows depend on the cost of feed grains, measured by the farm price of corn. Production of beef comes from gross number of placements of cattle on feed in previous periods, cull cows, and other nonfed cattle slaughter. Cull cows and other nonfed slaughter are modeled as the change in lagged cow inventories. The price of beef and the feed cost for beef may have two effects. In the short term, they encourage feeding of animals to heavier weights and withholding of heifers to increase the breeding stock. This gives rise to a negatively sloped short-run supply curve. In the longer term, the supply curve will be upward sloping as placements on feed,from the higher breding inventories increase. As with the cattle sector, the representation of the hog sector is highly aggregated. It allows for cyclical responses of pork production to changes in the final product price and costs. On the supply side. equations are given for the closing inventory of breeding sows, pig crop and production of pork. As with beef, the decision to retain breeding sows or send them for slaughter represents a series of decisions to retain or slaughter breeding sows and to feed pigs for slaughter or retain them to add to’ the breeding stock. At each period, these decisions are based on a comparison of the current value of pork to the expected returns from the sale of hogs in the future. The closing inventory of breeding sows is positively related to the price of hogs. negatively related to feed costs, and negatively related to the interest cost of holding inventories. The pig crop is a function of lagged breeding hog inventory and anticipated profitability from producing pork. Production of pork depends on previous pig crops and on liquidation of breeding inventories, which is measured by the previous period’s change in the breeding inventory of hogs.Production of broilers is modeled similarly to the beef and pork sub-components. Equations with the same type of causal influences are specified for poultry production, broiler chicks hatched, and broiler hatchery supply flocks. Real interest rates enter the livestock equations as a measure of the opportunity cost of holding livestock inventories. An increase in real interest rates tends to decrease current breeding inventories. increase current slaughter and production of meat, and push prices down. The longer run effects of an increase in the real interest rate will be an increase in meat prices due to smaller herds. As is apparent from the discussion above, macroeconomic variables are incorporated into the agricultural sector in a number of places. Income and prices of nonfood items affect food demand. interest rates affect the willingness to hold stocks of either crops or livestock. and the exchange rate and rest-of world prices and income affect the exports of feed grains and wheat from the U.S. We turn now to the simulation results to examine the extent to which variations in these macroeconomic variables induced by monetary policy affects variables in the agricultural sector.The ad hoc regressions reported earlier provided some evidence concerning the effect of money growth on the rate of change of food and nonfood prices. However. this approach reveals nothing about the effects on real incomes m the agricultural sector, since agricultural output was not included and there is no evidence concerning consumption, inventory behavior, and exports. Enders and Falk and Huffman and Langley have estimated similar regressions with growth in output as dependent variables, focusing on whether unanticipated money growth has output effects. While this method does add some information to the price change regressions, it is still not amenable to policy analysis. To investigate the effect of monetary policy on agricultural sector prices. quantities. and incomes, as well as to indicate its effects on government outlays for the feed grains and wheat programs. w~ used estimated equations for the above model using data through 1983. The starting point of the sample used for estimation varied with the stability of the equation over time and also depended on whether the dependent variable was quarterly or annual. but no sample data from before the 1960s were used.

Similarly, SO2 or H2S gas modified agricultural wastes bio-chars produced -C=S and -S-S groups, which formed strong complexes with Cd2+ and Hg2+ . Depending on experimental conditions, methods to introduce S-containing functional groups can either increase or decrease specific surface area and pore volume of carbonaceous adsorbents ; however, any reduction in sorption capacity associated with the loss of surface area and porosity is generally ofset by the increased S-containing functional groups. Sulfur-functional groups also interact with other functional group types in synergist adsorption mechanisms. When -COO-, −NH and -C-S were co-introduced to the surface of sugarcane bagasse during modification procedures, these groups interacted to retain metals through ion exchange and complexation reactions . The interactions among these functional groups greatly improved the overall sorption capacity for many environmental pollutants.While O-, N- and S-containing functional groups are the predominant reactive groups controlling adsorption performance, other functional groups may also enhance the adsorption performance of agricultural waste products . Most of the -C=C groups exist in benzene rings and react with pollutants through π-π interactions. Aniline addition modification enhanced the -C=C content of corn stalk and strengthened π-π interactions betweenadsorbent and adsorbates,plant pot with drainage thereby increasing the adsorption capacity for acid red and acid orange dyes .

Fe-containing functional groups are typically introduced onto agricultural waste materials to prepare magnetic adsorbents, especially in the preparation of bio-char. Doping with magnetic materials creates an adsorbent that can be easily separated from solution to remove bio-char-bound pollutants. These Fe oxides were highly efficient for the removal of As3+ and As5+ through specific sorption reactions . Additionally, Fe3O4 reacts with H2O creating a polar structure that can retain pollutants by hydrogen bonding. P-containing functional groups are generated on adsorbents by H3PO4 modification and are capable of retaining pollutants primarily by ion exchange mechanisms. Tang et al. demonstrated the presence of a large number of -P-O functional groups on corn stalks after H3PO4 treatment. The -P-O group was effective in retention of methylene blue through ion exchange. Additionally, the -P-O group efficiently retained U6+ from solution via ion exchange . Adsorption of uranium changed the morphology and the structural characteristics by decreasing the distributed interstices, voids and crystal structure in the surface of the modified rice stem through interaction with -P-O.Adsorption mechanisms are primarily afected by specific surface area, pore volume/connectivity and the amount/type of surface functional groups. Physical adsorption takes place by weak Van der Waals’ attraction forces and H-bonding, whereas chemisorption occurs through stronger chemical bonding between adsorbates and adsorbents. Chemisorption generally plays a more prominent role in pollutant removal from aqueous solution than physisorption for modified agricultural adsorbents . Notably, although no functional groups or chemical bonds take part in the fixation of pollutants during the precipitation process, chemical reaction occurs during the formation of the solid products casused by the adsorbents.

The retention of pollutants through precipitation is still a chemisorption process. Many O-, N- and S-containing functional groups are suitable for the removal of cationic pollutants, whereas O- and N-containing groups are more suitable for adsorption of anionic pollutants. Fe- and S-containing functional groups often coexist with modified adsorbents surface and were used to binding divalent cationic heavy metals via complexation . Moreover, chemical precipitation usually occurred as well for the pollutants retention due to the formation of stable crystal structures. Complexation and ion exchange are the main adsorption mechanisms for O-containing groups , whereas N- and S-containing functional groups interact with pollutants primarily through complexation . Studies involving modifications to increase O- and N-functionality of agricultural wastes are much more common than those addressing enhancement of S-functionality, due to the prominence of O- and N-functional groups and their higher adsorption affinity compared to S-functional groups, especially for anionic pollutants. The main mechanisms for pollutant interactions with modified agricultural wastes are portrayed in Fig. 3. Complexation and ion exchange are often the most important adsorption mechanisms for interactions between functional groups and various pollutants. These chelate-forming or electron-donating functional groups readily react with pollutants to form complexes. Electrostatic attraction is a prominent adsorption process, especially under acidic or alkaline conditions where dissociation/ionization of functional groups initiates interaction with oppositely charged pollutant compounds. For carbonization-treated agricultural wastes, π-π interactions with organic pollutants and alkaline precipitation mechanisms are improved due to the increased C=C content and high alkalinity after modification . Moreover, carbonization generally increases the specific surface area of the modified materials, which favors physical adsorption , H-bonding and van der Waals’ attraction.

Given the multi-functionality of most modified adsorbents, the overall adsorption process will involve a combination of several mechanisms.Cost is an important consideration when selecting an agricultural waste and modification treatment. Currently, few studies have assessed cost estimates of modified adsorbent, thereby limiting an evaluation of material and processing costs. A few studies demonstrated that modified agricultural wastes showed a good price advantage compared with commercial adsorbents. For example, the cost of citric acid modified sugarcane bagasse was 4.76 $ kg−1 , much lower than commercial activated carbon . Further, Kannan and Sundaram determined that the price of carbonised adsorbents prepared from rice husk or straw was ~5 times cheaper than commercial activated carbon. In addition, some modified adsorbent materials exhibited excellent pollutant removal efficiency over at least three reaction/ recovery cycles , allowing for reuse potential that further reduces their lifetime costs. Moreover, many feedstocks for bio-adsorbents originate from agricultural wastes that would otherwise be discarded. Hence, the reuse of these solid waste materials is beneficial for utilization of waste materials as well as reducing waste disposal costs, which is often a more substantial cost than the modification costs. Other studies demonstrated that bio-char preparation could generate energy , thereby of setting production costs partly . Based on the available studies, almost all cost-benefit analyses indicated that agricultural waste modification provides a low-cost option for preparation of bio-adsorbents for environmental remediation. Most studies of bio-adsorbent preparation were limited to laboratory evaluations of synthesis costs, which do not account for several associated costs. Te costs of raw materials, transportation, modification chemicals and energy are the main factors determining the final preparation cost. Many of these costs are site and time specific making it difficult to produce a universal cost estimate . For example, Salam et al. calculated that the total cost of HCl-modified peanut husk was L.E. 5000 t −1 , a factor of two lower than commercial activated carbon at that time. Additionally, bioadsorbents will have variable efficiencies for retention of a given pollutant, wherein a higher cost,pot with drainage holes but higher efficiency product will actually have a lower application cost per unit of pollutant removal. More research is required to assess the costs of modified agricultural waste materials, not only for their production costs, but also for the cost per unit of pollutant removal and including a complete life-cycle analysis that accounts for externalities, such as greenhouse gas impacts.The main purpose of current modification procedures is to alter the physical and chemical characteristics on the surface of agricultural wastes to enhance pollutant adsorption. Future studies will undoubtedly devise new techniques to improve the efficiency and selectivity of the modified adsorbents for targeted applications. In addition, some adsorbent modification processes generate a series of potentially toxic by-products that must be addressed to minimize negative environmental impacts. Thus, optimization studies are required to generate low-cost adsorbents that are tunable for efficient and selective retention of targeted pollutants using green-chemistry principals. This will require systematic studies followed by physicochemical characterization of the modified materials and finally testing of their efficacy for retention of various pollutants under a wide range of environmental water conditions.

Rigorous physicochemical characterization is a critical intermediate step in this overall process. First, characterization provides the details for how various modification steps affect the physicochemical properties of the modified products. Second, understanding the physicochemical properties of the modified products is critical for mechanistically understanding the materials ability to retain various pollutants. Once sufficient characterization data has been systematically compiled, it will serve as a toolbox for fine tuning modification techniques to optimize materials for efficient and selective retention of specific pollutants. Although the modification methods discussed above are effective to improve the adsorption performance of agricultural wastes, there are some drawbacks that need attention. High alkali concentration may cause an excess elimination of covering materials from the cellulose surface and delignify the fibre extremely due to the hydrolysis, which can negatively afect the strength of the fibre. Concentrated acid oxidation has strong corrosiveness and was shown to decrease the surface area of oxidized adsorbent, which may reduce the porosity and efficacy of the adsorbent material for retention of some pollutants. Esterification and etherification creat high cost of the organic solvents used, the catalyst would also need to be recovered after modification. Carbonization not only consumes a lot of electricity, but also reduces the content functional groups of adsorbent at a high temperature. Magnetization can reduce surface area due to the block of magnetive particles in the pore of adsorbent. Surfactant and grafting have strict requirements for preparing environment and are prone to produce formation of undesirable block co-polymers. In all, the effectiveness of the treatment depends not only on the adsorption environment, but also on various preparation conditions. The conditions for the production of low-cost adsorbents after surface modification for higher uptake of pollutants need to be optimized further. Therefore, we still need to refine these modification methods to reduce their shortcomings and make them exhibit greater potential in preparing agricultural waste based adsorbents. Although modified agricultural wastes have been proven effective in retention of various pollutants in water, remediation actions that leave the pollutant-adsorbent compounds in the water environment have not been fully investigated. Over time, pollutants retained by bioadsorbents and accumulated in aquatic sediments may be released back to the water column upon changes in pH, temperature, ionic strength, redox conditions and bio-adsorbent degradation. Thus, bio-adsorbents that can be effectively extracted from the water environment, such as magnetic compounds, will provide a more permanent solution for pollutant retention and extraction from environmental waters. While modified agricultural wastes show great potential for the removal of various pollutants under laboratory conditions, far fewer studies have demonstrated their efficacy in real-world environmental waters, such as industrial/municipal waste waters. The composition of waste waters is much more complicated than that of synthetic waste waters used in many laboratory studies, which undoubtedly will affect the adsorption performance of the bio-adsorbents. Testing common bio-adsorbents across a wide range of environmental waters will provide fundamental knowledge to optimize applications for real-world use. Finally, most previous studies focused on the single adsorbent-adsorbate system, while there is a paucity of studies evaluating simultaneous use of multiple bio-adsorbents for retention/extraction of multiple pollution types. The coexistence of different pollutants is a common scenario in environmental waters and interactions among pollutants often affect the adsorption performance of various adsorbents. Moreover, there is a distinct paucity of research on the removal of rare and emerging pollutants , which are of considerable concern for human and aquatic ecosystem health. Finally, greater effort is required to rigorously investigate adsorption/ retention mechanisms. In addition to traditional sorption isotherm and kinetic studies, the emergence of advanced analytical methods, such as spectroscopic, microscopic, isotopic and molecular techniques, offer great potential for advancing our understanding of adsorption mechanisms. We are currently at the cross-roads of advancing from a more trial-and-error approach to developing a cook-book approach for designing modification techniques to achieve targeted materials for selective removal of pollutants.Children and other community members living within agricultural communities have an elevated risk of exposure to pesticides during pesticide spray seasons . This has been shown even among people who do not work in agriculture but reside near crops . These studies have described greater urinary metabolites of pesticides and lower acetylcholinesterase activity during the spray season compared to pre-season levels. Organophosphates and carbamates are commonly used insecticides in agriculture which are designed to inhibit the activity of AChE, leading to cholinergic overstimulation of the nervous system . Alterations of the cholinergic system can induce physiological alterations in the cardiovascular system . The relationship between pesticides and blood pressure is unclear, with a limited number of studies reporting positive associations between blood pressure and pesticide exposure constructs based either on selfreports or biomarkers , while some evidence of negative associations has also been described .

A natural experiment from a migration lottery in New Zealand finds evidence that migrant earnings stimulate remittance flows and generate better mental health outcomes . If out migration causes the local labor supply to decrease, this can put upward pressure on wages, which can be beneficial to local workers but potentially harmful to farmers who rely on hired labor. Filipski et al. find econometric evidence that migration from Mon state in Myanmar to Thailand caused Mon state wages to rise. However, migrant remittances offset the negative effects of higher wages on Mon production, as the infusion of remittances into the local economy stimulated productive investments and created spillovers by raising the demand for local goods and services. The role of agriculture as a driver of remittances becomes more marginal as migrant networks develop and information about non-farm employment opportunities spreads. In the U.S., for example, immigrants have become increasingly prevalent in all of the other low-skilled sectors of the economy , revealing agriculture’s diminishing role over time. The World Bank predicts a significant reduction in remittances due to lockdown measures from the COVID-19 crisis that prevent migration .

The decrease in remittances poses a huge threat to development,drainage collection pot which could potentially push a significant number of people back into poverty. Restrictions on mobility and work have particularly affected workers who are ineligible to receive benefits from social safety nets due to their informal working arrangements or legal status. In Southeast Asia, aggregate agricultural production is predicted to decline by three percent as a result of reduced labor mobility and access to input and output markets, which could increase the number of people in poverty by as much as three percent . Ultimately the revival of remittances will depend on the mobility of labor after the crisis calms down. Migration by men can affect the empowerment of women and the types of work in which they engage. Kar et al. find that, in Nepal, male out migration induces women to become the primary decision makers on the farm rather than simply providing labor to agricultural production. The receipt of remittances facilitates group membership and financial integration, as evidenced by the possession of bank accounts. However, in the absence of remittances, spouses of international migrants tend to be worse off with regard to several domains of empowerment, including decision making about certain productive activities, agricultural income, and access to information.

In Senegal, when household members migrate but do not send remittances home, households become more food insecure. These findings underscore the importance of programs to reduce remittance costs and improve extension services that enable women to become more productive farmers and entrepreneurs in migrant-source economies. To reduce reliance on immigrant farm labor, farmers and countries could switch out of labor-intensive crops and import them from lower wage countries. Some U.S. farm operations already expanded into Mexico in order to meet the year-round demand of their customers. In fact, about half of the fresh fruit consumed in the United States and a third of fresh vegetables are imported. There is some evidence that farmers are planting more land in less labor-intensive crops like tree nuts, most of which are harvested by machines that shake the nuts off the tree and sweep them off the ground . However, consumer demand for fresh fruits and vegetables, both in the United States and abroad, continues to rise, and food imports are expanding. Consumers’ demand and willingness to pay for locally-grown produce increases as incomes rise, creating limits to countries’ reliance on food imports as a solution to the farm labor problem. At the other end of this trade often are countries with much lower land per laborer, such as China. Since the turn of the century, China has dramatically raised its exports of labor-intensive fruits and vegetables, while increasing its imports of less strategic, and more land intensive ones such as soybeans and corn for animal feed, much of it from the United States and Brazil .

The structural transformation is a quintessential part of economic development everywhere; people move off the farm and pressure on agriculture grows to feed a growing population. What policies are required to address these issues logically depends on what stage of the development process a country is in and what institutions and social norms are in place. But at the core must lie a policy package that raises labor productivity in agriculture while leveraging the poverty-reducing powers of the AFS, mitigating the social-adjustment costs inherent to this transition, and avoiding the introduction of inefficient policies, such as the closure of borders for agricultural goods and labor. Accomplishing these tasks has been challenging in the past and will continue to be a challenge moving forward, with technological shifts, altering attitudes towards globalization, and climatic change further setting the boundaries of what’s possible and desirable. We conclude by pointing out a trio of policy entry points for developing countries, at the early to middle stages of the agricultural transformation, and for high-income countries at the late stages. The starting point for thinking about policy responses in developing countries is to recognize that agricultural labor productivity in many African countries continues to be dismally low, that current and future generations of young people are less willing than their parents to perform low-paying and onerous farm work, and that agricultural exports and emigration may offer fewer employment opportunities than in the past. However, domestic food demands continue to increase and diversify, creating important employment opportunities in the off-farm AFS.

These changes mean that both traditional and new digital technologies can be leveraged to induce a productive exit out of agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa while maintaining a competitive agricultural workforce on and off the farm in the chains elsewhere. Three key policy implications emerge. First, productivity-enhancing investment in agriculture must accelerate in the lower-income countries and proceed at least in tandem with the movement of workers off the farm elsewhere. Populations will continue to grow despite slowing birthrates, and food production will have to expand to keep pace. The movement of workers off the farm to meet the demand for other goods requires producing more food with fewer workers, once underemployed labor has been activated. Historically in today’s high-income countries, agricultural extension and public investments in infrastructure, from irrigation to information, marketing institutions, and roads, played a critical supporting role in facilitating the labor exit out of agriculture. They enabled the remaining farmers to earn a living commensurate with non-farm sectors,round plastic pot as competition for workers with the non-farm sectors and downstream food processors intensified. This agenda holds as much today as then. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the agricultural share of public spending continues to be well below that in East Asia . Myriad input, factor, and output market constraints hold agricultural labor productivity back, and integrated solutions that simultaneously overcome a number of these constraints are needed. Inclusive value chain development , which links farmers with buyers in contracting arrangements, offering knowledge, access to credit and inputs , and higher prices in exchange for a consistent volume of high-quality products , provides a market-based solution to do so, though smallholders’ lack of legal protections can be an obstacle . Given the challenge to develop self-enforcing incentive compliant contracts, iVCD typically does not work well for raising staple crop productivity. Yet, in low income countries, this is where the need and scope for raising labor productivity and poverty reduction is highest. For raising labor productivity in staple crops, more and better public investment in public goods is needed . Second, the scope for iVCD to raise smallholder incomes and benefit the poor and women is greater for non-staples. iVCD also creates jobs off the farm, in the chains and beyond . Success factors of iVCD include careful diagnosis of the competitiveness and sustainability of the product value chain chosen, starting small, involving financial institutions, monitoring producer-buyer relationships, and sustaining capacity building. This is in addition to creating an economic environment that is conducive to investment generally. Developing systems to monitor and enforce food quality standards in the AFS is equally critical. There is clearly a role for agricultural ministries, as well as for the private sector, to ensure that the development and use of labor-saving technologies keeps pace with the movement of workers off-farm. Many questions remain, however, especially on the best entry points for support: through farmer organizations/cooperatives, large anchor firms and/or SMEs, or externally initiated stakeholder platforms. More experiments are needed. In the meantime, appropriate measures will be needed to help SMEs in the transformative food chains see through the decline in liquidity caused by COVID-19 and avoid undue concentration of activity in the long run.

Labor-market regulations and other social protections can also be useful in protecting vulnerable populations from exploitation as they transition into non-farm work . Third, investment in people is critical to raise agricultural labor productivity and to make sure that those leaving can access the new jobs in the AFS, as well as other non-farm sectors, and meet the rising economic aspirations of rural youth. Continued investment in quality rural education, which continues to largely underperform in developing countries, is needed . Increasing educational attainment in rural areas facilitates technology adoption, as well as occupational mobility, and reduces income inequality. This is also important for young women facing social norms that make it difficult to escape from traditional gender roles. Nontraditional skill-building programs and effective agricultural extension systems will be equally needed to build up human capital in regions where traditional education has proven ineffective. The extension system is particularly weak in Sub-Saharan Africa and has been largely neglected for the past couple of decades by governments and donors alike. The 2010s have witnessed a surge in studies on social network or farmer-to-farmer technology extension, which proves more promising especially in combination with public extension than traditional public-sector extension approaches. But several issues remain such as the choice and compensation of appropriate lead farmers . Policy implications are different, but just as immediate, in high income countries. Rich-country farmers will be required to produce more and higher-quality fresh and processed foods for a growing, and increasingly affluent, domestic and global population, and they will be required to do so under increasingly stringent environmental and animal welfare standards. However, they will have to do this with fewer workers. The transition of domestic workers out of farm work largely has run its course in rich countries. The option of importing foreign workers is gradually closing, due to a declining farm labor supply in farm labor exporting countries and a less supportive political environment for immigration, particularly of low-skilled workers, in high-income countries. Three key policy implications emerge for high-income countries in this era of growing farm labor scarcity: First, farmers in high income countries will increasingly need to look beyond immigration policy as an answer to farm labor scarcity —especially in the medium and long run. Guest worker programs can expand as a short-run response to farm labor scarcity. However, as the structural transformation progresses in farm labor-exporting countries and political resistance to importing low-skilled farm workers intensifies, the immigration solution to the farm labor problem becomes less of an option. This does not mean that immigration will not continue to play a central role in farm labor markets throughout the developed world for some time. But farmers will need to take steps to retain an aging, mostly immigrant, workforce while pursuing available options to contract new workers from abroad. International farm labor migration could continue to be a much-needed channel for sharing prosperity across nations and reducing poverty in the world’s poorest countries. For this, however, a counter narrative needs to take hold rapidly. If not, its days may be numbered prematurely, especially now that the COVID-19 pandemic so clearly exposed the agri-food sector’s dependence on immigrant labor and the logistical challenges this may entail, eroding support for reliance on immigrant agricultural labor even further. Second, increasingly sophisticated technological change is going to be a fundamental feature of the food supply chain, from farming to food processing. Productivity-enhancing investments likely will include the use of highly-advanced robotic systems that will dramatically reduce the need for workers .

While the negative impacts of drought are often disproportionately spread to low-income individuals, we have seen that windfall gains to agriculture create short-run spillovers to other industries . This spillover is likely to impact closely related industries in terms of input-output and exchange the most . In the case of agriculture, we understand this to be industries that directly rely on agricultural output such as food manufacturing and wholesale. When we consider the spillover impacts of a crisis event such as drought, there is evidence that the volatility of agricultural input exerts significant spillover effects on the volatility of agricultural output and retail food prices . I treat drought as a crisis event that creates volatility in the agricultural input price of water. Hornbeck and Keskin found that windfall gains to the agricultural industry can create short run spillover to other local industries. While they found no evidence of long-run sustained spillover, as my data does not include ex-post results, this does not pose a threat to the scope of my study. In general,vertical plant tower spillover is likely to be strongest in closely related industries and exert significant impact in times of crisis or in instances of volatile input prices.

I observe the crisis period of the 2012 to 2016 California drought and the volatility it created in agricultural input and outputs to evaluate how drought impacts local incomes and employment. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first study utilizing individual data to analyze possible spillover impacts of the 2012 to 2016 California drought.3 Previous studies focus on statewide impacts of the recent California drought or analyze different aspects of labor market impacts for either this or other historical droughts. Literature suggests that I would identify a significant negative impact on the agricultural industry and closely related industries during this time period.I estimate a difference in difference regression comparing outcomes in San Joaquin and Tulare, the two counties that experienced 90% of farmland fallowing, with outcomes in similar Central Valley counties. I find a significant 9% reduction in employment and an 11% reduction in individual income for those working in agriculture.4 Although I expected to discover contractions in closely related industries, I observe almost no impact on these industries’ employment and incomes. There were also no significant differences in the impact of the drought between males and females when my regression was run with a gender interaction. However, an additional interaction shows a significant and highly negative impact on Hispanic individual employment in agriculture by 12% and further reduction in wages by 13%.

This signals that although the economy was resilient, the drought disproportionately impacted Hispanic agricultural workers. Additionally, the small spillovers that occurred into related industries had impact only on Hispanic workers. This result represents a departure from traditional intuition that observes spillover between closely related industries, particularly during a crisis. Although these results are unusual, further robustness checks and a statistically optimized control group would be necessary to confirm the lack of spillover effects. This instance of limited spillover could reflect the recent popularization of water permit trading amongst farmers and the introduction of new drought-related welfare programs . Data on water trading rates and prices are not currently aggregated or publicly available but would be an area for potential further study. Prior research finds that water management policy coordinated with farmers has the potential to increase environmental and economic gains to all parties . A detailed input-output study would also further improve the validity of my results. These models are commonly used to analyze changes in farmer behavior in reaction to price changes among other purposes and could be fit to the scenario of a drought .Lund et al. synthesize their past research on drought with contributions from other prominent researchers in the field to create a full picture of the impact in “Lessons from California’s 2012-2016 Drought”. I draw from components focusing on employment and revenue losses.

In their preliminary findings, agriculture was the industry primarily impacted through increased pumping costs of $600 million per year and half a million acres of fallowed crop area. When water supplies reached a low in 2012 to 2015, certain negotiated contracts with water projects received zero deliveries. Lund et al. touch on the uncertainty for future strength during drought caused by overdraft of groundwater, first reported by MacEwan et al. This will most likely hit rural areas the hardest as they have the least access to water and lower aquifer elevations available for groundwater pumping. The paper finds that overall resilience was due to strong prices for key specialty crops, ability to rely on groundwater, effective water management, and the beginnings of a robust water trading market. Despite this, they acknowledge that these costs were likely concentrated in areas with a lack of easily accessible groundwater. There is no detailed analysis of county level impacts on these rural and dry counties in the San Joaquin Valley and Tulare River Basin due to the 2012 to 2016 drought. Cooley et al. similarly find that overall impacts were mitigated, but discuss the need for local variability estimates for areas that experienced intense fallowing. Related literature has indeed shown that rural and low-income individuals have less tolerance for natural disasters. A drought of a similarly intense magnitude occurred in Australia from 2001 to 2004. Carroll et al. used life satisfaction survey data to estimate that the occurrence of the drought was equivalent to an annual reduction in income of $18,000 . Using fixed effects to control for unobserved area characteristics, this impact appeared only for individuals living in rural areas. While the Australian economy suffered more heavily due to a lack of drought infrastructure, the divide between rural and urban individuals in this case is clear. I use a similar regression with fixed effects and demographic controls to look at labor market outcomes for the California Drought from 2012 to 2016. As with the Australian drought, this recent California drought has been proven to be hydrologically severe and sustained marked losses within the agricultural sector . Following the focus on rural and low-income individuals I estimate differences between the hydrologically dry rural counties with counties that were able to mitigate most drought losses with groundwater and water project contracts. Based on further studies I determine that San Joaquin and Tulare counties were the most heavily impacted during this time period and faced the heaviest groundwater pumping costs. My study differs in its approach,10 liter drainage collection pot data and focus. I choose to use survey data and look at individual characteristics within the more closely focused county groups. Additionally, I test for differences in outcomes for Hispanic individuals and females. The 2012 to 2016 California drought was found to create emotional distress regarding food insecurity, particularly in Hispanic households . My results and analysis provide further evidence of the harsher penalties imposed on rural and Hispanic agricultural households due to drought conditions.I additionally confirm the question theorized by earlier research in this field that there indeed was variability in county level impact due to the drought.“Does Agriculture Generate Local Economic Spillovers? Short-Run and Long-Run Evidence from the Ogallala Aquifer” by Hornbeck and Keskin is the most closely related and influential paper in the design and understanding of my topic.

This paper analyzes the impact of new technology that allowed farmers to utilize a new groundwater source, the Ogallala Aquifer. This windfall gain to the agricultural sector allows Hornbeck and Keskin to estimate the differences between counties with a high proportion of areas with increased water access and those that largely missed the benefits of this new water source. They estimate a difference in difference regression controlling for various agricultural effects and time effects to estimate the spillover impact of increased water access. They find that areas with high exposure to the Ogallala had increased agricultural gains through land value and revenue. This also caused an exogenous increase in rural farm employment. Similar to my paper, they set manufacturing, wholesale, retail, and services as comparison industries for their economic closeness. While this did not extend to the long-run, Hornbeck and Keskin did find short-run statistically significant expansions in these industries. While this result is different from the lack of spillover seen in my results, I attribute this limit of negative spillover to efficient water management and programs to limit contractions to the agricultural industry itself. Notably, Moretti demonstrated that spillovers occur between closely related industries with greater frequency and intensity than in industries that are distant. Instead of focusing on measures of agricultural workers or rural areas, Moretti looks to the proportion of college-educated workers within a data set cataloging production plant productivity. He finds an increase in plant productivity as a result of the faster growth of the proportion of college-educated workers in an area. This effect is larger for economically close industries, reflecting the spillover of knowledge and physical capital accumulation. Additionally, Kang et al. find that there is a strong impact of spillover during and after the crisis period by estimating commodity futures returns. This reflects a premium on uncertainty and increased supply chain costs for closely related industries that rely on crude commodities. We would expect to see the greatest impact on industries purchasing and relying on outputs of the agricultural sector . My findings that closely related sectors were not impacted is a departure from this intuition and is reflective of the effective water management and drought mitigation techniques that contained heavy losses to parts of the agricultural industry while keeping agricultural produce prices stable. Nazlioglu et al. find that after the occurrence of a crisis in oil markets there is significant market volatility on key agricultural commodities. Using a GARCH model they show that there is a growing linkage between agriculture and energy markets due to their similarities and investor profile. Further work done by Apergis and Rezitis delves further into the links between agricultural input prices and output commodities. They used agricultural commodity prices in Greece from 1985 to 1990 to test for links in equilibrium price patterns. The study finds that there are significant linkages in price variation between agricultural input and output prices, and between agricultural output prices and retail food output prices. They also find evidence of imperfect price transmission among the three categories so that exogenous shocks would create disparate welfare changes among market participants. Since output prices were observed to be more flexible than input and retail prices, this indicates that general price decreases in a crisis would create short term losses for farmers as their prices decrease faster than input prices. This aligns with my findings that agricultural earnings had large short-run decreases due to drought-related shocks. The main purpose of this study is to quantify how economic spillovers between industries impacted individuals living in areas severely affected by the 2012 to 2016 drought. I chose to use U.S. government survey data to have access to one of the largest data sources on my target counties while retaining other significant data measures on the socio-economic profile of the individuals. The American Community Survey collects cross-sectional data on individuals with attached characteristics and publishes annually to the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series . The ACS uses a series of monthly samples on 250,000 addresses to produce an annual estimate of data for the same small areas on 3,000,000 addresses. My data extract is limited to individuals in the California Central Valley in the years 2006 to 2017 for sample size consistency. I use the California Research Bureau classification of the 18 Central Valley counties.To ensure the accuracy of my results I used the IPUMS provided CPI adjustment factor to convert income to 2005 dollars, so estimates are standardized to the beginning of the observed time period. Additionally, only individuals in the age range of 20 to 65 that did not reside in group quarters were kept, to ensure individuals not typically in the labor market did not distort income estimates. Before performing analysis, observations with missing values for labor industry classification or income were removed. After these modifications, the data includes 435,996 individual observations on individuals living in counties categorized as the Central Valley. I used sex, educational attainment, and race control variables to add accuracy to the estimate without over fitting my model.6

We expand on this prior work on infectious disease by testing whether this distinction might also be important for explaining common mental illness – a fundamental aspect of health that has been extensively demonstrated to show significant associations with poverty. The picture from decades of research from high-income countries is clear: worse socioeconomic status consistently predicts worse mental health outcomes, especially common mental disorders like anxiety and depression . The associations do not solely mean that conditions of poverty drives common mental disorders , but may also often feed each other syndemically in a “vicious cycle” . In higher income countries the onset, deterioration or relapse of mental illness in turn tends to increase economic risk and undermine wealth . The uncertainty of living with material poverty in itself is proposed to be stressful in ways that can trigger or heighten mental distress . This is explained in part by both poverty and female gender intersecting with many other related vulnerabilities – like under nutrition, low education, poor access to health services, chronic physical illness, gender-based violence and discrimination,vertical agriculture stigma/discrimination, or other forms of low social capital – that can heighten risks further .

In contrast, emerging research in low- and middle-income countries paints a more complex picture. Specifically, measures of material poverty, such as financial stress, food insecurity, income, and consumption expenditures, have shown surprisingly mixed associations with mental health in LMIC contexts . Of these, food insecurity tends to demonstrate the more robust associations ; income and expenditure less so . A number of reasons have been proposed for these inconsistent findings, including measurement issues and the argument that the everyday contexts and stressors of poverty are fundamentally different between higher and lower income countries in ways that matter for mental health .A commonly applied measure of wealth/poverty in research in LMICs is the Demographic and Health Survey wealth index. This indicator is mainly based on household assets that can be purchased in the cash economy . Using a statistical reduction technique, household items , quality of housing construction , and access to services are scaled into a single one dimensional index. This asset-based indicator has become the key variable used in LMICs to assess economic gradients in education , nutrition , physical health , mortality , and mental health . However, this uni-dimensional index really only captures household poverty through livelihoods associated with the cash economy . Importantly, too, these cash-economic goods or services are more easily accessible in urban areas; thus, they often depict rural settings as largely poor or deprived .

In countries or regions where agriculture plays a dominant role in many household economies, agricultural assets should fundamentally shape experiences of poverty. Most notably, availability of crops and animals for household consumption provides food security. Agricultural assets are also means of production and can contribute to the household income . Importantly, too, agricultural assets need not be held solely by, or provide benefit to, rural households. Peri-urban and even urban households owning even just a few animals or small plots of cultivatable land can produce small but valuable amounts of consumable or sellable food . For these reasons, agricultural wealth could provide a straightforward buffer against nutrition-related disease at the very least . Beyond such effects on nutrition and wealth, agricultural assets might also enhance social capital and status to provide further buffering effects for mental health. For example, in a Tanzanian community in which cattle ownership is prestigious, lack of ownership was found to predict mental distress: being without cattle meant one really could not belong in a society that viewed themselves as defined by their pastoralism and relationship to cows . In a study of livestock and animal assets in DRC, Glass et al. computed a total livestock asset score for rural women, finding that animal ownership had a moderating effect on depression symptoms. They proposed that ownership provided means to produce cash that could pay school fees, purchase land, and get materials to build/repair homes, but it was also potentially buffering via the social indexing of women’s productivity and status .

Similarly, cultivatable land ownership does not just reflect material wealth but also in some contexts lends the owner considerable power, status, and prestige . In spite of the potential for agricultural assets to buffer health risks, few empirical studies have considered these alternative dimensions of wealth in assessing the relationship between poverty and well being in low-income countries . Based on these multiple proposed mechanisms by which agricultural wealth might buffer vulnerabilities, we should also expect that greater household agricultural wealth could have a protective effect in relation to mental well being .Thus, in this study we consider how lack of agricultural assets – as a specific dimension of poverty – is associated with common mental disorder symptoms in Haiti. Our basic proposition is that household agricultural wealth will promote mental wellbeing – or buffer against depression and anxiety symptoms – with an effect evident beyond other commonly measured forms of material wealth, such as cash-economy wealth and food security. We analyze novel data from Haiti, considering how these relate within geographically randomly selected samples from three very different, but all highly vulnerable, communities. These contrast with each other in degree of rurality and direct access to and dependence on agricultural assets – a fully urban neighborhood, a fully rural zone, and a mid-sized town with a rural hinterland. Due largely to a complex history of foreign intervention, Haiti is the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere and one of the most economically unequal in the world, with high national dependence on the agricultural sector . Much of the rural farming is done on small plots by smallholder farmers, but making a living with small-scale farming is increasingly difficult given poor quality and lack of land, complex legal issues around proving land ownership, and vulnerabilities to natural hazards . These peyizan often balance multiple informal occupations; moreover, they can inhabit peri-urban and suburban zones, though most live in rural areas . The study communities reflect three particularly vulnerable sites within Haiti,vertical farming aeroponics all with high levels of food insecurity and significant material poverty . However, they differ substantially in agricultural wealth.

Martissant is a fully urban, densely-populated district of the City of Port-au-Prince where a minority of households surveyed own cultivatable land or animals . Ouanaminthe is a market border town with rural hinterland located across the Massacre River from the Dominican Republic, exhibiting a mix of subsistence and cash economy households ; Cornillon is a fully rural community in the West department with much higher rates of household cultivatable land and animal ownership . Additionally, both Ouanaminthe and Cornillon are municipalities, called Commune in Haiti, and have their own local administrative authority, an elected three-member mayoral council; while Martissant is a municipal district administrated by the City of Port-au-Prince . We surveyed 4055 households . Household sampling was powered so that each site would be able to detect an effect size of 0.15. The survey used a two-stage cluster sampling approach to select households. In the first stage, using the smallest census territorial entity called Dissemination Areas , all three sites under study were divided into clusters determined by the level of access to core services and central markets located in the main town or village. The level of access was measured based on two criteria, having an all season road and the distance from each DA to reach those core services. Four clusters were generated: accessibility very difficult, accessibility difficult, accessible, and very accessible. On the basis of probability proportional to size, a random sample of DAs was selected in each cluster for a total of 157 of 389 DAs in all three sites. Then, 25-26 households within each selected DA were selected in randomly generated sequence, while also allowing for over-selection of female household heads if needed to meet a 45% goal . The questionnaire was administrated in-person to the head of the selected households . Table 1 summarizes variables included in our analyses. We assessed mental well-being with locally adapted and/or validated depression and anxiety inventories. The Zanmi Lasante Depression Symptom Inventory assesses a combination of culturally adapted items from standard depression screeners and local idioms of distress . The ZLDSI was completed among a sample of 105 patients who also underwent diagnostic assessment by Haitian psychologists and social workers. Results were used to clinically validate the tool and identify cut-off scores for depression. The ZLDSI contains 13 symptom items, which respondents’ rate using a Likert scale from not at all to almost every day , based on frequency they occurred within the last 15 days. These were summed to provide total scores ranging from 0 to 39.

The Beck Anxiety Inventory was culturally adapted in a previous study in rural Haiti . Bilingual individuals provided initial translations of items, which were then discussed in focus groups. Participants commented on comprehensibility, acceptability, and relevance of each item, as well as recommending alternate wording. The Kreyòl BAI assesses experience of 20 anxiety symptom over the previous two weeks . Each question is scored from not at all to severe , yielding a possible range from 0 to 60. Our estimations of household wealth used a multidimensional approach . We included a wide range of household assets, household construction materials, access to basic services, and agricultural assets. Questions included vehicles and consumer goods; wall, roof and floor material; electrical access, sources of drinking water, toilet type; and ownership of livestock and land. All wealth related items were dummy coded . Those with more than two categories were recoded as a series of dummy variables. Count variables such number of livestock were ranged into categorical brackets before coding as dummy series . To derive wealth dimensions that are comparable with nationally representative surveys, we matched asset variables from the current survey to the Haiti Demographic and Health Survey and applied multiple correspondence analysis to the Haiti DHS household-by-variable matrix . These analyses identified two reliable dimensions of wealth/poverty, which accounted for 77.13% of the total dataset inertia. The first one, with 63.9% of the explained total, is strongly associated with variables such as having at least a TV, a radio, electricity, a cooker, internet services, or a bank account. We refer to this as our “cash economy wealth” measure. The second dimension is highly and clearly related to agricultural and subsistence assets, such as owning poultry or a boat , and we refer to this as our “agricultural wealth” measure. A third dimension solely related to latrine ownership and was discarded. Cronbach’s alpha showed good internal consistency for the two wealth dimensions: cash economy and agricultural . The first dimension was also highly correlated with the standard DHS wealth factor score produced using Principal Components Analysis , but the second dimension was not . This observed difference suggests that the agricultural dimension of wealth provides a distinctive means to characterize households in relation to each other. Then, using the DHS data, we estimated linear regressions predicting each of the two wealth dimensions from all asset variables in the DHS data that were also available in the current survey. This was facilitated by initial survey design aimed at maximizing overlap with DHS wealth index items, alongside additional wealth questions. Finally, we used those regression coefficients from the DHS data to estimate the two wealth dimensions for the current dataset based on each household’s assets. We also included food insecurity, water insecurity, income, financial stress, and household socio-economic status as key covariates likely highly correlated with household assets. A global analysis of over 145 countries shows household food insecurity is consistently associated with poor mental health in a dose-response pattern . While there is less direct evidence, household water scarcity also shows an association with anxiety and depression symptoms, with women most affected . To take this into account in our modeling, we applied the Household Food Insecurity Access Scale to assess household food insecurity . The HFIAS asks how often during the past two weeks was there: no food to eat of any kind in your house because of lack of resources to get food, any household member went to sleep at night hungry because there was not enough food, and if any household member spent a whole day and night without eating anything at all because there was not enough food.

During this time, there were two corresponding kinds of migration: migration by laborers and would-be landowners to existing currant-growing regions, and migration by colonists to undeveloped land and non-currant growing regions. With these two types of migration taken together, it is evident that, in the currant growing region of the Peloponnese, there was a general shift in the population from upland and mountain villages to lowland, coastal plains. Not only was the currant zone of Greece expanding to encompass more land, but more people from other parts of Greece were moving into the currant zone to settle inside. Alexis Franghiadis writes that population growth in the currant-growing parts of the Peloponnese indicates “the continuous resettlement of families from the arid and overpopulated highlands of the Peloponnese to the previously desert and marshy northern, western, and southern coastal plains.”Lowland settlement in previously uncultivated parts of the Peloponnese was achieved through a form of regional chain migration. In the first half of the nineteenth century,square plastic pot transhumant pastoralists built temporary dwellings, called exospitia, in the coastal plains of the Peloponnese.

These were not considered separate settlements at this time because they were small and temporary. Then, the intensification of currant cultivation in the nineteenth century caused these temporary settlements to spread and expand. In census records, some of them began to be designated as the “winter capital” of their respective municipalities, with the older, upland settlements designated as the “summer capital.” Toward the end of the century, as currant cultivation continued to spread due to increased global demand, these temporary settlements grew into permanent settlements in their own right. Pastures disappeared from the coasts as they were replaced by vineyards, and transhumant pastoralism declined in the region as it was replaced by permanent lowland settlement.The lowland plains of the coastal Peloponnese were colonized through this process. This transformative process had a greater effect in parts of the peninsula where currant cultivation was not already strong. This can be seen by comparing municipalities along the northern coast of the Peloponnese. In some of these places, especially in the hinterlands of the currant-exporting port cities, currant cultivation was already strong in the eighteenth century. In others, currant cultivation was not prevalent until the second half of the nineteenth century. Aigialeia, in the North Peloponnese, was well-populated at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and lowland settlement was already present.

Its capital, Aigio , was part of the traditional currant-growing core and was thought to produce the highest quality currants. Looking at population movement from 1879 to 1896, the trend is one of general demographic growth in the hills as well as in the coastal plain. The capital, Aigio, is the largest settlement during this period and also grows the most. Yet new settlements emerge on hills and plains alike, and they all seem to have been growing . Moving east along the northern coast of the Peloponnese, however, an examination of the same census records shows how lowland colonization advanced. An analysis of census records for the municipality of Krathis, near the middle of the Northern coast of the Peloponnese, illustrates how this worked. In the early nineteenth century, the only settlements listed in censuses for the municipality of Krathis were all located at higher elevations. A Venetian census from 1700, a French census from 1829, and a Greek census from 1836 all omitted any mention of lowland settlements in this municipality. These censuses recorded only five permanent settlements in this municipality, and all of them were located above 700 meters above sea level . Then, in the middle of the century, censuses began to list lowland settlements. A Greek census from 1845 mentioned nine settlements in this municipality: the five upland villages as well as four new settlements in the currant-growing region of the coastal plains. These new settlements, however, were not categorized as autonomous villages—they were listed as annexes of the original villages.

They were bracketed together with the older settlements, and their populations were counted together, indicating that the new lowland settlements were considered colonies of these original villages. By the end of the nineteenth century, the brackets disappeared and the new settlements each got their own line in the census, designating these as autonomous settlements.A similar pattern is visible in the deme of Voura, which neighbors Krathis to the West . The 1700 Venetian census lists four main neighborhoods located “at some distance from one another” that comprised Villa Diacoftò and its belongings . These were Chierniza, Vrostena, Piscopi, and Castro .20 In the 1879 Greek census, there were only two settlements with population counts listed in the deme of Voura. These were Diakopto and Stavria. Despite only providing two population counts, the 1879 census also showed that these settlements were themselves subdivided. Kirinitsa, Vrosthena, Kalyviti, Katholikon, and Pera Machalas were bracketed together in the census, together constituting the settlement of Diakopto. Each of these subdivisions were upland or mountainous, located between 477 MSL and 1,525 MSL. The second settlement listed in the 1879 Greek census, Stavria, was also an upland settlement, located at 512 MSL, but it was bracketed in the census with a coastal, lowland settlement named Tripiá. Ten years later, in the 1889 census, there is evidence that the process of lowland colonization had advanced. First, the five upland Diakopto settlements have divided into separate villages, each listed in the census with its own line and its own population count. Second, there were three new lowland settlements. Diakoptitika has emerged in the coastal plain, and it was labeled in the census as the “winter capital” of the deme; Kirinitsa was the “summer capital.” The fact that the census lists a “summer capital” and a “winter capital” supports Stamatoyannopoulou’s argument about seasonal migration during this period. Finally, in the 1896 census, we see that the lowland settlements grew, and a new one, Trapeza, also emerged. These examples from the Northern Peloponnese show the experience in the traditional currant growing core. Later in this chapter, a case study of Messenia in the Southwest Peloponnese shows the experience of a place where currant cultivation only began late in the nineteenth century. Tracking settlements in these municipalities, we see settlements concentrated in upland and mountain settings,25 liter pot then lowland settlements emerged as colonies for seasonal migration, and then they became permanent settlements. But was this because of the advance of currant cultivation?

While this is hard to prove definitively, there is good reason to believe it was. First, we know from production figures that currant output was growing in this part of Greece—it makes sense that this was accomplished through the search for more agricultural land. And second, population growth was greater in the currant-growing zone than in the other parts of the Peloponnese.From 1856 to 1889, the population grew by at least half in the currant-growing provinces of Korinthia, Achaia, Ilia, and Messenia . Population grew by a smaller percentage in the parts of the peninsula outside of the currant growing zone. It is also interesting to note that that population actually shrank in the eparchy of Kalavryta. This is compelling because Kalavryta is a mountainous region just adjacent to the currant-growing region in several places, as it abuts Korinthia, Aigialeia, Patras, and Ilia. This seems to indicate that people were moving from the mountains of Kalavryta to settle in the currant zone. In sum, in this part of Greece, there is evidence of demographic movement from uplands to lowlands, and population growth was greater in regions that were most suitable to currant viticulture. The narrative of lowland colonization in the Peloponnese due to the extension of currant vineyards needs to be qualified to avoid simplistic generalizations about upland and mountainous parts of the peninsula. It might be assumed that mountain villages in the Peloponnese and elsewhere in Greece became stagnant backwaters. If demographic growth was greater in the plains than in the mountains, does it necessarily follow that inland mountain communities disappeared or declined? It bears emphasizing that this was a regional phenomenon, mainly applicable to the northern and western coasts of the Peninsula. Different patterns were evident in other parts of the Peloponnese and elsewhere in Greece. This is not to suggest that, before this time, everyone in Greece lived in the mountains, then they all moved down. There was much more regional diversity than that, and upland villages remained populated and economically important. Doubtless, some inland mountain settlements did decline or disappear as their residents resettled in low-lying plains to grow currants. Nevertheless, Greek mountain villages on the whole did not become stagnant, “closed,” backwards, or isolated because of the demographic growth in the currant-growing zone of the coastal Peloponnese. On the contrary, mountains assumed important new roles in the changing economy. Some mountain villages became intensive agricultural producers in their own right, growing cash crops such as figs and olives, sometimes through the use of extensive terracing. Other mountain villages thrived because they provided useful resources to support the currant industry, such as timber. The currant industry required materials made from wood, such as wooden stakes used to support the vines and crates and barrels to transport currants.The expansion of the currant industry entailed a greater demand for these commodities as well, and they were likely made from locally-grown timber.

Steamdriven saw mills opened in that city in the second half of the nineteenth century to cut wood to be made into currant crates.In 1858, there were also 100 barrel factories in that city.The construction of railroads in Greece in the second half of the nineteenth century also created more demand for timber. Moreover, these railroads, as elsewhere in the Mediterranean, facilitated further timber extraction when they were completed. Mountain villages also served as important centers for industrial production. Mountains had long been useful in this role because of their water resources which were useful for activities such as tanning and textile production. Water flowing down sharp drops in elevation was used to power water wheels in mills. In the currant economy, mountain industry gained greater significance because of the timber extraction mentioned above. In addition to being sent to Patras to be processed at steam-powered saw mills, lumber was also locally processed at the place of extraction through the use of water-powered saw mills. These mills were established in forested mountain areas where there was access to moving water to power the saws. Logs were rolled down shoots to the mill, cut into planks, and carried by mules to be sold in cities.It is wrong to assume that all mountain villages generally declined during this period. Ulf Brunnbauer makes a useful distinction between “open” and “closed” mountain communities. If closed communities were isolated and economically backwards, open communities were integrated into larger social, cultural, and economic systems. They often specialized in crafts, relying on the surrounding plains for agricultural subsistence.Closed mountain communities may have declined during the golden age of currants, but open mountain communities remained viable. Like the plains, they were transformed in ways that supported commercial agriculture. Another form of land improvement that may have altered the landscape of the Peloponnese during this time was deforestation. Contemporary accounts by European travelers provide anecdotal evidence for deforestation in the Peloponnese. In 1855, Edmond About observed that Greece had such an abundance of trees that it “ought to export timber.” However, Greece imported timber instead. About blamed the lack of roads and the fact that peasants and shepherds burned down entire forests to clear land for grazing and for growing currants.The practice of “fire farming,” or burning forests to clear land for agriculture, was not unique to Greece, however—it was prevalent throughout Europe and the Mediterranean in the nineteenth century, as were state efforts to quash it.Occupational burning is also often necessary for shepherds, as it clears plants that animals cannot graze, and it promotes the growth of plants that they can. Moreover, Mediterranean vegetation is highly adapted to fire, and some Mediterranean plants require fire in order to germinate.In addition to clearing forests to make new land, it is also possible that deforestation was tied to the expansion of the currant economy in other ways.

As a result of harsher conditions in the lowlands and new crops from the Americas, from the middle of the sixteenth century to the middle of the nineteenth century, permanent settlement in the Mediterranean region became more concentrated in the hills and mountains. Populations that could not keep up with the drainage work in low-lying fields were forced to abandon settlements there and relocate to hillsides and mountains, which became more densely populated, and were transformed into the new epicenter of economic life. Without lowland stretches to plant grains, and with the removal of “oriental” crops from the Mediterranean , the region returned to its indigenous crops—olives and vines.The movement of cereals out of the Mediterranean meant that permanent settlement in the region’s low-lying plains was abandoned, and these plains were repurposed for seasonal migration and animal husbandry.Commercial agriculture left the shores of the Mediterranean from the middle of the sixteenth century to the middle of the nineteenth century. During this period, rural populations retreated from lowland settlements into the hills, and the agricultural landscape shifted from monocultural grain production in low-lying plains to polyculture,chicken fodder system primarily in the hills in mountains.

Around the middle of the nineteenth century, this upland movement was reversed. Two transformations caused a shift in land use and settlement patterns around the middle of the nineteenth century. First, as discussed above, the Little Ice Age came to an end around the middle of the nineteenth century. This made land reclamation in low-lying plains much easier.Second, market integration caused commercial agriculture to return to the shores of the Mediterranean. After 1750, there was a period of expansion of the world-economy. This was due in part to a demographic boom throughout Europe and the Mediterranean basin, which created increased demand for wheat and cotton. Higher demand for both of these crops made cultivation in the low-lying plains where these crops could be grown in large stretches a more attractive prospect. While the Little Ice Age climate was still in effect, lowland plains remained marshy, and lowland colonization was still more difficult and more deadly than it had been during the Medieval Warm Period. The demand for wheat and cotton, however, provided the incentive to overcome additional obstacles and undertake lowland colonization.

To reclaim wetlands under these conditions, it was often necessary to form large plantations worked by coerced labor. In the Ottoman realm, this took the form of çiftliks, which began to abound in lowland fields. Moreover, in the 1850s, quinine became more widely available in Mediterranean Europe, making malaria a less harmful disease.Colonization of low-lying plains continued to intensify throughout the nineteenth century, propelled by deeper market integration and greater global demand during the mid-Victorian boom and aided by the palliative effects of quinine. Nevertheless, most of the lowlands remained neglected through the middle of the nineteenth century.As a result of these two processes—market integration and the end of the Little Ice Age—by the middle of the nineteenth century, the low-lying plains of the Mediterranean were once again opened for settlement and tillage, beginning a process of downhill migration.As Tabak argues: “the relocation of oriental cash crops and commercial bread crops, the widening stretch of dispersal of manufacturing, and the growing weight of terrestrial trade led, in unison, to the long-term retreat of commercial agriculture in the region.”As a result of the disappearance of these major commercial crops, the Mediterranean basin became more self sufficient.From the eleventh century to the mid-sixteenth century, lowland plains had been claimed and tilled. Then, from the mid-sixteenth century to the mid-eighteenth century, the lowlands were abandoned.

In the mid-eighteenth century, the plains began to be settled again, with lowland reclamation picking up pace in the middle of the nineteenth century. Grains did not reappear in Mediterranean plains until the mid-eighteenth century and not in a considerable amount until the mid-nineteenth century.When cotton returned to the Mediterranean, it was not grown as a plantation crop, but as a niche crop—“another addition to the petty producers’ reserve, cultivated in smaller fields and mostly for local and regional markets.” In contrast, sugar disappeared completely from the Mediterranean, except for Egypt, where it continued to be grown but on a much smaller scale.In the period under review in this dissertation, the norm of risk-averse subsistence agriculture was challenged, and—in places, for a time—it was replaced by profit-driven capitalist agriculture. With the onset of the Little Ice Age and the relocation of plantation crops from the Mediterranean basin to the Americas, normative Mediterranean agricultural practice became like the “traditional” model described by the older historiographical tradition. In the second half of the nineteenth century, climate change, market integration, and technological innovations caused such changes in land use that this model began to break down. In the period under review in this dissertation, the so-called traditional model co-existed with and was being supplanted by a very different model of land use. In sum, the starting point of this dissertation envisions Greece at the beginning of the nineteenth century as an area composed of shifting, inter-dependent micro-ecologies in which populations strove to meet the needs of their own subsistence through diverse strategies in which exchange played a crucial role. This is the baseline which was altered in the late nineteenth century by the rise of specialized, intensive, commercial agriculture. As a result of growing foreign demand in the second half of the nineteenth century, Mediterranean agriculture became more specialized and more intensive.

The external forces acting on the ecological and agricultural systems of the Mediterranean began to change and, as a result, the character of agriculture in Greece and Mediterranean Europe began to change as well. There was a shift from the old Mediterranean norm of diversified subsistence agriculture, fragmented landscapes, and transhumant pastoralism to the new norm of commercial agriculture. This dissertation rests on the argument that, in the nineteenth century, the nature of Greek agriculture changed from a system oriented toward subsistence into a system oriented toward commerce. In the most basic sense, commercial agriculture was not new in Greece in the nineteenth century—far from it. The exchange of agricultural products existed as a feature of ancient and medieval Mediterranean economies, and, as mentioned above, exchange was built into the old agricultural system. The cultivation of cash crops intended for sale was just one among several strategies for meeting needs.Furthermore, beyond the cultivation of cash crops, any surplus not stored for later use could be sold or exchanged. Agricultural products had been exported from Greece and consumed abroad for centuries. One of the major forces that moved Greek agricultural production across long distances was a phenomenon known as tramping or cabotage, whereby small boats with small cargoes hugged the Mediterranean coastline, stopping in ports along the way to buy and sell. Through this process,fodder systems for cattle goods were relayed around the Mediterranean basin.The exchange of agricultural production in Greece has a very long history, as does the long-distance trade of Greek agricultural production. The term “commercial agriculture,” then, is not meant to refer to either of these phenomena, nor is the term meant to refer simply to the presence of specialized, intensive production of cash crops or other agricultural products for exchange or export. Large farms that specialized in the production of agricultural products to be sold or exchanged existed at least since the Ottoman period. The change that occurred in the second half of the nineteenth century was not, therefore, the appearance of a new phenomenon, but a dramatic growth in the scale of an existing phenomenon. From 1860 to 1893, Greek agriculture became more commercial, more specialized, and more intensive. First, agricultural practice in Greece became more commercial, meaning there was a greater participation in markets by agricultural producers. Small-scale producers became more involved in markets, and they moved from production for family subsistence to growing crops for exchange.

There was also a greater level of participation with markets that were farther away, particularly in Western Europe. Market integration with Western Europe was made possible by advances in transportation, particularly the invention of faster steam ships.Second, Greek agricultural production became more specialized, meaning there was an increasing move away from diversified agriculture and toward monoculture. At the small scale, cultivators moved away from diversification practices such as land fragmentation and poly cropping. Instead, to take advantage of economies of scale, certain elite cultivators consolidated large, contiguous land holdings growing the same crop. At the macro scale, different regions of Greece became associated with different monocultures. Finally, Greek agricultural production became more intensive, meaning that more land and labor were devoted to agricultural production. In sum, instead of diversification, there was a trend toward specialization and intensification; instead of family-level subsistence, there was commercialization. Landscapes became more homogenous and monocultural. There was also a trend away from transhumance toward settled agriculture. In the larger Greek world, several crops were important. Largely to satisfy foreign demand, different parts of Greece grew to specialize in the intensive production of different agricultural commodities including olives and olive oil, silk, and cotton. As a percentage of export revenue, currants were the most important crop in the Kingdom of Greece in the second half of the nineteenth century.As such, Greek historians have been interested in this period of currant monoculture, and there have been many studies of the currant question in the nineteenth century.In their studies on Patras, the “capital” of the currant trade in the nineteenth century, Bakounakis and Frangakis-Syrett have demonstrated that currants strengthened Greece’s trading connection to Western Europe and facilitated foreign access to Greek markets.From Pizanias, we get the history of the prices of currants—in Greece, France, and the UK—and a broader commercial history of the European demand for currants and its effect on Greek output. Petmezas writes about the role of currants and of agriculture in the larger Greek economy, and Nikos Bakounakis has studied the financial history of currant cultivation in Achaea.Other studies have addressed the effects of intensive currant production on peasant society and on land tenure practices. Franghiadis has shown how rural populations felt the pull of foreign demand for currants, and they undertook land improvement projects to extend currant cultivation. Bakounakis has elucidated how currant cultivators often went deeply into debt to finance the planting of their land with currant vineyards, borrowing from currant merchants at usurious rates.76In the nineteenth century, Europeans began changing their environments in more ambitious and more impactful ways than ever before, especially through the manipulation of water resources. Around the middle of the nineteenth century, Europeans began digging bigger canals and building bigger dams than ever before. They changed rivers, lakes, and wetlands, and they dredged navigation canals that connected seas and oceans—in short, they permanently changed the hydrosphere. During this time, a number of factors came together that led people to undertake these ambitious projects to “tame” the hydrosphere. First, there were new needs during this time that motivated these projects. Some of these new needs were the result of population growth—the population of Europe more than doubled over the course of the nineteenth century.This unprecedented demographic expansion created a need for more food and clean water than ever before, placing new demands on land all over the continent. New needs also sprung from economic growth. This created a need for faster and cheaper transportation—to sustain this economic growth, it became necessary to remove barriers to the movement of people and goods. Draining lakes and reclaiming wetlands provided new agricultural land, which was needed to feed a growing European population and to support growing agricultural economies. At the same time, rectifying inland rivers facilitated the movement of raw materials like coal and iron as well as finished products, supporting growing industrial economies. Taken together, these two process aided in connecting regions by increasing the speed and decreasing the cost of transportation. Efforts to tame the hydrosphere were not new, but in the second half of the nineteenth century, there was a sudden increase in the scale and the intensity of water management projects. Engineers in Europe and North America straightened rivers, dredged canals, drained wetlands, and constructed dams and reservoirs like never before. In addition to the new needs created by demographic and economic growth, three changes also made this change in scale possible. The first was new technology and new sources of energy.

Given this, financial institutions have come under governmental pressure to comply with banking regulations. In 2012 Chávez publically threatened banks in non-compliance with nationalization. In 2015, the Superintendent of theBanking Sector of Venezuela fined BancoCaribe bank 280 million bolívars for failing to fulfill agricultural lending requirements in parts of 2014 . The percentage of lending to the agriculture sector by private banks has risen since 2001 and has resulted in large increases in absolute amounts of credit delivered to the sector. Bank lending to agriculture had risen 114% from January 2014 to January 2015 . High annual inflation, however, greatly reduces the amount of real increase of credit levels and in some years eclipses it entirely. In 2014, agriculture financing increased 26% over 2013 funds but was essentially erased in real terms by a 53.4% inflation rate . Banks also must provide said loans to the sector at a preferential interest rate. As of July 2008 a government decree30 mandated that agriculture loans be lent out at a 13% interest rate. By way of comparison, bank loans to other sectors can carry an almost doubled interest rate of 24% . Although 13% is significantly higher than agriculture credits provided by some government institutions to small producers, where rates can be low as 3% and are often forgiven in case of non-repayment,dutch buckets low rates provide an important source of operating funds to commercial agriculture.

Lending to agriculture from commercial banks effectively functions as a subsidy to the operation of commercial agriculture ventures, which capture a majority of these loans as opposed to smaller, less credit-worthy producers who rely on the state for financing. Agrarian reform beneficiaries do not receive transferable title to land in order to avoid sales and reconcentration of land and therefore have no collateral to offer private sector banks. As this policy operates at the expense of commercial banks, it is unlikely that it would survive the passing of ruling control to an opposition government with a position of re-liberalizing segments of the economy. Policies that mandate private bank lending to agriculture create possibilities for high profits that are relatively unrelated to productive activities for well positioned growers, and incentivizes commercial farmers without actual need for credit to seek loans . While the stated goal of commercial bank lending requirements to agriculture is to stimulate production, loans often go largely into servicing old debt . High inflation effectively erases debt for producers allowing profit to be made by continuously taking out loans at each growing cycle. One commercial producer stated that by constantly taking out loans he made as much as a 10% profit from the funds as by the time repayment occurred the bolívar denominated debt has disappeared in real terms . Funds from loans can also be re-loaned out by recipients themselves into non-controlled channels where interest rates are higher. Thus, a cycle of taking private loans year to year—an activity unavailable to the peasant sector—maintains the commercial grower sector even within a context of low, controlled prices.

The Venezuelan government’s currency controls are also an avenue through which the commercial sector benefits from state policy. Venezuela has a three-tier exchange rate where dollars can only be purchased through the central bank for importation of goods and industrial inputs or for foreign travel. The cheapest rate for dollars, CONCOEX—6.3 BsF per dollar—is reserved for imports of food and medicine, underlining the importance for the government of securing food supplies.31 Access to official dollars essentially functions as a largely hidden subsidy to middle-class and other well-positioned actors in Venezuela with the wherewithal to travel abroad and own businesses requiring foreign goods and inputs. Foreign currency purchases at all official exchange rates are well below the black marketrate for dollars, which at writing was at 1,100 BsF per dollar. Dollars obtained through the central bank can be traded on the black market back into bolívars for many times their official value which can then be used for consumption or servicing debt. In one striking example, in 2013 international flights from Venezuela were booked months in advance yet were reported to be leaving half empty from the airport . Dollar advances obtained for travel combined with credit card scams where phantom purchases were placed cards with travel dollar allotments that were then paid out in cash, provided dollars that could be converted back into bolívars at black market rates. The gap in the official and black market rates meant that purchasing international plane tickets was in many cases a transaction made only to secure travel funds for black market exchange.

In off the record interviews, medium-sized importers of consumption goods admitted to me that both travel and phantom import orders had been used to access dollars. While the government has increased control over the exchange system to try to limit forms of currency arbitrage, and although growers interviewed were understandably reluctant to admit to engaging this illegal behavior, given the integration of grower associations and agroindustrial processors with access to food commodity imports, it is likely that many commercial farmers could avail themselves of parts of this system. Commercial agriculture also benefits from general agricultural subsidies for some agro-inputs and fuel that target producers at all levels of agriculture. Venezuela has a relatively well-developed national petrochemical industry that developed alongside its petroleum sector. Pequiven, the state petro-chemical company, manufactures urea and other fertilizers and supplies the national market with product below international prices for fertilizers. According to FEDEAGRO, Venezuelan urea is 5-6 times cheaper than foreign sources, in 2012 costing 19 BsF per 50 kilogram sack, versus 100 BsF price for non-subsidized urea . To bring more of the agro-chemical sector under state control the Venezuelan government nationalized of the largely Spanish-owned agro-chemical company Agroisleña in 2011. Agroisleña was transformed into AgroPatria, a stateowned enterprise that supplies pesticides and herbicides and other agrochemicals at below market prices to both commercial and peasant producers. Agroisleña controlled around 70% of agro-chemical and seed distribution in Venezuela and its nationalization was oriented towards ensuring a low-cost supply of inputs to the agriculture sector in order to boost production . There were also a number of other state-owned AgroTiendas that sold inputs at subsidized prices. Producers registering with AgroVenezuela were to receive streamlined access to state-managed agro-inputs at ‘just’ prices. Ostensibly, this lowered production costs for commercial producers whose industrial production systems were heavily reliant on large quantities of chemical inputs. However, producer associations asserted that supply and quality problems of AgroPatria complicated crop production. Growers reported that followed nationalization inputs were often unavailable at the needed time in the growing cycle, or that there wasn’t sufficient quantity of available inputs from AgroPatria ,grow bucket incidentally a claim repeated in interviews by peasant producers as well. In 2015 FEDEAGRO reported that AgroPatria had only supplied 50% of white maize seeds, 22% of yellow maize seeds and only 18% of agro-chemicals requested by producers for the season . Critics cited reduced production after Agroisleña’s nationalization and increased diversion of inputs from AgroPatria to the black market where inputs commanded higher prices, often three to four times above the market price . This contributed to lack of sufficient input availability in AgroPatria for both commercial growers and smallholders. FEDEAGRO complained that the MPPAT’s policy was to allot equal proportions of state-controlled inputs to the commercial and state sectors, even though FEDEAGRO claimed that the private sector was responsible for 85% of national agriculture production and, thus, required more inputs .

FEDEAGRO argued that over-allotment to the state sector of inputs fed diversion into the black market and increased scarcity at subsidized prices . Although agricultural inputs were reportedly not reliably available in new, state stores, they could often be found from private distributors or on the black market. Yet the high prices for inputs charged at these outlets largely defeated the stated purpose of AgroPatria of low-price input distribution. Commercial growers could more easily utilize private agro-chemical distributors than smallholders due to greater capitalization and access to private credit. This allowed commercial growers to both benefit from lower input prices at state AgroTiendas for a portion of input costs, and maintain flexibility in face of disruptions to state-managed distribution chains. However, private input providers couldn’t compete with AgroPatria’s below market prices, and were, thus, often ill-positioned to fill shortfalls when they emerged. In addition, growers claimed that some agrochemicals were of inferior quality post-nationalization . Agroisleña had bought active chemical ingredients of inputs and mixed them in-country, while due to production difficulties, AgroPatria often imported some pre-mixed, and lower quality, chemicals . After nationalization, commercial growers had to pay upfront for input orders by making cash deposits with AgroPatria, while with Agroisleña grower associations would purchase on credit and service their debt after selling crops, reducing the amount of pre-harvest capital needed at the beginning of crop cycles. Grower associations were also able to leverage bulk input purchases for its members to access discounted rates on inputs bought from AgroIsleña, which they could warehouse and distribute to members as needed. The need to go to AgroPatria, cash in hand, combined with the difficulty of obtaining sufficient inputs of sufficient quality in the correct time frame, disrupted commercial accumulation processes even as some degree of cheaper inputs helped to reduce production costs. The chief complaint of commercial growers in regards to state agricultural policy was the regime of price controls on many agricultural and food products. With the rise of oil prices and increased rent circulation in Venezuela, persistent high inflation pushed prices of consumer goods higher. To combat high inflation of food prices and perceived ‘unjust’ prices offered by merchants the Venezuelan government began to set maximum prices in 2004 on a number of basic food items that made up the ‘food basket’ of the Venezuelan public. This included sugar, rice, grains, corn flour, chicken, sardines, pork, steak, cooking oils, milk and others . Prices are regulated by the National Superintendent for the Defense of Social Economic Rights which sets maximum prices for producers, wholesalers and consumers, effectively regulating the farmgate and market price. Low controlled prices are a common complaint among both commercial and some peasant growers, especially in the coffee sector where there are many small producers. Growers contend that prices are often below production prices, which is exacerbated by input and labor costs rising faster than adjustments to crop prices. Coffee producers claimed that production costs in 2014 for a quintal of coffee was between 5,400 and 6,500 BsF in Portuguesa, over double the controlled price at the time of 2.657 BsF . Coffee prices were raised in September 2014 to 4,500 BsF to close the gap yet remained below the stated production prices. 32 The price of rice was last raised in October 2014 from 8.6 to 23.6 BsF per kilo , a figure significantly lower than the 38.74 BsF per kilo requested by the Venezuelan Association of Rice Processers . Growers also contend that SUNDDE’s price adjustments are often irregular in timing. Price uncertainty causes many headaches for growers who argue that not only are prices too low for many crops, delays in price adjustment, especially in the face of inflation, mean that farmers may have to plant crops without knowing what the controlled price will be at harvest time. While price uncertainty is, of course, present in open markets and dealt with in part through contracts and hedging, controlled prices could be theoretically set before plantings by the government. Regulated prices contribute to the diversion of food from controlled into informal markets where they command higher prices. According to rice processors and producers only 30% of rice consumed in country is sold at the regulated price while the rest is sold on the black market. Food manufacturers also avoid price controls by processing controlled crops into other, non-controlled forms, such as processing rice or milk into flavored rice or cheese . As a partial response to this strategy of price evasion through processing, SUNDDE set a policy that flavored rice could only be sold at 25% above the controlled price for rice , limiting manufacturers’ ability to avoid price controls. Export restrictions mean that growers cannot easily move crops into export commodity chains in search of higher prices, which, as was the policy’s intention, keeps production in country.

Anything we can find out now can be used by regulators to make more informed decisions.” Letourneau takes nothing for granted as the research gets under way. The project will use a large number of sample plants on varied research sites, and the experiments will be replicated over three years. Hazards of GM corn, including allergenicity and contamination of adjacent fields, were identified during extensive testing that was required because it is a food. Because similar tests are not required on nonfood plants, it’s harder to know what the hazards might be, and what the probability is that they’ll occur, said Letourneau. “It might be that transgene movement to wild relatives would be no problem at all,” she said. “If we don’t detect any problems or hazards, we’ll feel we’ve tried to provide the data needed for risk assessment.” The three-year project is funded by a $335,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.Some cover crops can both benefit your crop rotation or winter fallow and help limit gopher populations. Research has shown that gophers much prefer clover cover crops over small grains such as barley,hydroponic nft channel oats and Sudan grass. And although most clovers attract gophers there is a sour clover that appears to discourage them.

This can be used as a winter cover combined with a small grain to move populations out of the fields to areas where they can be trapped. I’ve also observed that gopher populations move to farm road edges and other border areas when a winter cover crop of bell beans or fava beans are planted. Be aware, though, that many studies have shown gophers to be extremely adaptable in their feeding habits, so no cover crop will guarantee a gopher-free field. When considering rotations on diverse farms, include gophers in the equation. If you follow a crop that attracts gophers, such as potatoes, with another that they feed on, like onions, you will exacerbate gopher problems by providing a continual food source. However, if you follow potatoes with a sour clover or small grain, populations are less likely to rise. Farmers and gardeners have tried all manner of barriers to discourage gophers. These include wire mesh, gravel, trenches filled with glass and rocks, corrugated roofing, even trenches with buried buckets that act as pitfall traps—anything that presents an obstacle for persistent gophers. These all have some effect on slowing invasions. The most promising approaches are those that create both an above- and below-ground barrier.

One of the most successful is fencing made of steel corrugated roofing. Not only is it impenetrable, but gophers cannot climb the exposed portion. Because gophers can scale a welded wire fence, above-ground wire barriers must have the wire bent outward at the top or a wooden or metal rim installed. I’m currently experimenting with a material called “Root Guard,” a thirty-six inch wide plastic sheeting seventy mils thick used by landscapers to keep bamboo roots from spreading. At $3–$4/foot, Root Guard is too expensive to use in large-scale operations, but may be cost effective for areas of an acre or less. Large farms may benefit by blocking major gopher access routes with any available solid material, but I don’t believe there is a viable material that will completely head off an infestation.Although not appropriate for all operations, flood irrigation can be extremely effective not only at killing gophers under the water but also at driving the survivors to field edges where they can be trapped. Flooding burrows with a hose can sometimes be effective in a small operation, providing that it is done at a fresh burrow. Gas cartridges with sulfur and sodium nitrate as active ingredients are still allowed by organic certifiers and can be effective if used on new burrows . They cost $1–$2 per cartridge and have an approximately fifty percent success rate. After inserting a gas cartridge in a burrow, be sure to cover the opening to prevent the gas from escaping.

One company sells a blower that is supposed to move the gas beyond blocks in the tunnel system. I feel this may dilute the strength of the gas, although no scientific evidence yet exists to validate this idea. The “Rodenator Pro” is a device that injects a mixture of propane gas and oxygen into a gopher burrow and then ignites it with a spark, destroying the tunnel system. I recommend occasional use of the Rodenator in vineyards and orchards to remove permanent tunnels that run along perennial crop rows. It’s not appropriate for annual vegetable operations as it can damage crops and is unwieldy in row crop settings. Some growers use trapping as a main strategy and the Rodenator for areas where gophers and ground squirrels have settled. A truck or tractor is needed to move the propane and oxygen tanks around the site to be treated. Barn owls are the most effective gopher predators—their diets can consist of up to ninety percent gophers, and a barn owl family attracted by a nest box can eat up to a thousand gophers per year. There are many designs for barn owl nest boxes . The main criteria is that the box’s opening be approximately five inches in diameter; any larger and the barn owl’s main predator, the great horned owl, can get at the young birds Gopher snakes do in fact eat gophers, but only one every six weeks to two months. Bobcats and coyotes also eat gophers, although I’ve found that coyotes prefer gophers caught in traps, which often disappear after they dine. Domestic cats can be a significant help in controlling gophers. Cats hunt more when well fed and cared for, as the sporting aspect seems to be the attraction. After poison baits, which are no longer allowed under organic certification rules, trapping is the most effective way to control gophers.

The best sites for setting traps are where there has been recent activity, marked by fresh mounds of moist, dark soil in the morning or by holes that have been recently plugged. Three trap designs currently dominate the market. The most common in California is the Macabee trap, invented by Zephyr Macabee in 1900 to protect his Santa Clara Valley almond orchards. The Macabee is a “pincher” type trap that impales two wires in the body of the gopher when it bumps into a trigger. The usual set for these traps is to locate and dig down to the main, larger burrow and insert two traps facing away from each other, connected by a wire. After the set is completely buried the wire is left on the surface and flagged to help find the traps. There are different opinions about letting light and air into the tunnel where the trap is located. Some say light and air will encourage the gopher to pack the trap area with soil and not set the trap off,nft growing system and some say it is the light that draws the gopher to the trap. I’ve found that both methods work and that adding some vegetative bait helps as well. I’ve seen some modifications where the Macabee trap is inserted into a section of two-inch ABS drain pipe about eight inches long, either left open or closed at one end . This addition seems to help catch the gopher even if it is pushing soil ahead of it. Another older, standard trap design that is still popular is the box trap. This small wooden box is open on the bottom and at one end, and houses a trigger and metal “choker” loop or cable that grabs the gopher as it enters. A more modern version called the “Black Hole” is made of plastic tubing and a cable choker. These traps work by fooling the gopher into thinking it is still in the tunnel. The gopher is lured to the end of the trap where a small opening allows light and air in and the gopher gets caught trying to close the opening. Box traps are also placed in the main tunnel in pairs, although I’ve seen a single trap work when placed in the mound’s entrance tunnel. Although both Macabee and box-type traps are effective, I’ve had the most success using the Cinch trap from Oregon. This is also an older trap that for many years was used only by professionals and can be slightly hazardous and difficult to set due to its double trigger and strong spring. It was originally designed for moles but is extremely effective on gophers. Like the box or Macabee traps, Cinch traps can be used in pairs, but can be set more quickly and can be even more effective than the other trap types when placed singly in the burrow entrance. The method I use is to open the burrow at the freshest mound and insert the round, extended jaws of the trap into the burrow entrance. I use a stake that is sized to open the burrow as wide as the trap’s jaws and then use the same stake to mark the trapping site.

The gopher is caught when it comes to the surface to close the opening in the mound. Interestingly, the unvacuumed trap crop treatment did not show a significant difference in damage when compared to the vacuumed trap crop in June, even though it accumulated more WTPB in rows 1–8. Also interesting is the fact that the highest damage was seen in the untreated control, which did not accumulate high numbers of WTPB. This could indicate that WTPB not associated with or feeding on nearby trap crops do more per capita damage to strawberries. “It’s possible that trap crops may partially satiate WTPB and thus minimize the amount they feed on developing berries, so that WTPB abundance alone does not correspond well with strawberry damage estimates,” says Swezey. “This is a hypothesis we plan to pursue in future research.” In July, vacuuming the alfalfa trap crop reduced WTPB numbers by 79% compared to the unvacuumed trap crop . Except in row 1, the vacuumed trap crop treatment also had the same accumulated number of WTPB as either the whole-field vacuuming treatment or the untreated control. Vacuuming the trap crop reduced total damage to the strawberries in July by 49% when compared to the unvacuumed trap crop , although no significant differences could be detected between the vacuumed trap crop and either the whole field vacuuming or untreated control treatments. These results show that in July, WTPB in an unvacuumed trap crop will generate significantly higher damage to adjacent strawberry crops than other treatments. “We do not want the trap crop to become a source of pests,” says Swezey. “That’s why it’s critical to manage it throughout the growing season.” The research team is still evaluating data collected in August 2003 to see whether the differences in treatment continued through the late season. The big-eyed bug , Geocoris spp., was the most abundant beneficial insect collected from the trap crop and strawberry fields. This native insect feeds on WTPB eggs and nymphs. Results from the 2002 study show that in June, the vacuumed trap crop treatment had significantly more BEB in the trap crop and all strawberry rows than did the other three treatments. This result indicates that the trap crop vegetation increased the numbers of the most abundant generalist WTPB predator in the strawberry rows at the farthest distance sampled. This effect was somewhat less prevalent in July, and by August BEB populations had declined in all the treatments, possibly as a result of the BEB entering diapause.Results from 2003 are still being analyzed.Results from this study show that a field edge alfalfa trap crop can successfully attract and concentrate WTPB numbers, and that tractor-mounted vacuum devices can remove significant numbers of WTPB from the trap crop. The trap crop vacuuming treatment offers the same or reduced WTPB damage to fruit in adjacent strawberry rows when compared with the grower’s whole field vacuuming program. “The study also showed us that, at least for WTPB, alfalfa is a terrific trap crop,” says Swezey. “We wanted to develop a type of vegetation management system specific to this pest, and I think we’ve shown that alfalfa is effective.” Swezey also cautions that trap crops must be used carefully. “It’s one of those ‘Don’t try this at home’ situations,” he says. “If you’re going to use trap crops, you have to be ready to manage them as diligently as the crop itself—that includes irrigation, fertilizer, and weeding—and then you have to manage the pest once it’s in the trap crop.” Perhaps the most important result for the Pacific Gold growers was that vacuuming the field-edge trap crop reduced the operation time of their tractor-mounted vacuum by 75% as compared to vacuuming the entire strawberry field, while giving the same or better level of WTPB control. This approach to limiting WTPB damage translates to savings in operator time, tractor wear, and fuel costs.