Introduction: A large proportion of the population in rural East Africa live beyond walking distance to a clinic. Their access to healthcare is further compromised by poverty, limited health infrastructure, lack of health information, severely limited qualified health personnel, and lack of familiarity with the practices, assumptions, and culture of modern health care. This has […]
Archive | Economics
Limited Impact of Biomass Crop Assistance Program (BCAP) Under Current Funding Levels
Established in the 2008 Farm Bill and re-authorized in the 2014 Farm Bill, the Biomass Crop Assistance Program (BCAP) aims to promote biomass production for bioenergy and bio-products by providing growers and bio-refineries with subsidies for biomass production. The total budget for the BCAP is limited to $125 million over 2014-2018 by the 2014 Farm […]
Coffee farmers face dangerously low profits, experts warn at 6th Consultative Forum on Coffee Sector Finance
By Federico Ceballos Sierra on August 18, 2017 in Agriculture, Commodities, Consumer, Economics, International
Coffee prices have always been a source of uncertainty for all the agents of the value chain, especially small coffee farmers that have seen their livelihoods worsened every time prices drop. The most recent Consultative Forum on Coffee Finance took the subject of price volatility and increasing production costs as its main focus, seeing how […]
Transforming a competitive market into an imperfect market by cooperative power
By German Mandrini on June 13, 2017 in Agriculture, Commodities, Consumer, Economics, Food and Nutrition
Introduction The US milk market is characterized by five links. Farmers, who produce the milk and sell it through cooperatives to huge dairy processors, who transform it into the different products, like packed fluid milk, cheese or yogurt. Then retailers sell those products to consumers. In this market we can find a combination of government policies […]
Reducing costs of meeting a cellulosic biofuel mandate with perennial energy crops: potential roles of energy crop insurance and establishment cost subsidies
By Ruiqing Miao and Madhu Khanna on May 8, 2017 in Agriculture, Commodities, Consumer, Economics, Energy
Cellulosic biofuel production in the United States has been growing since 2014 with establishment of a few commercial scale bio-refineries and increasing total production. According to the 2016 Renewable Fuel Standard Data of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), total production of cellulosic biofuels in the United States reached 192 million gallons in 2016.[1] EPA’s proposed 2017 […]
Why will the coming years see more interest for interstate food supply linkages?
By Sandy Dall’erba and Zhangliang Chen on December 8, 2016 in Agriculture, Consumer, Economics, International
Why should a cattle rancher in Texas care about a severe drought hitting the Corn Belt states? Although genuine sympathy could be part of the answer, the main reason might be less charitable: cattle farmers in Texas are major buyers of corn from the Midwest. A drought in the Corn Belt would increase the corn […]
The Volkswagen Scandal: A Case of Vanishing Utility
The 2015 Volkswagen emissions measurement scandal has so far caused the resignation of VW’s CEO, a long list of lawsuits and the creation of an $18 billion damages fund, placing it in the dubious company of FIFA, Takata airbags, and Turing Pharmaceuticals as one of the most-maligned corporations of 2015. When news broke last fall […]
To Harvest Stover or Not: Is it Worth it?
By Nicholas Paulson and Madhu Khanna on March 3, 2016 in Agriculture, Economics, Energy, Environment
Corn stover is a readily available source of biomass for the production of biofuels. Three U.S. refineries – Poet, Abengoa and Dupont – are converting it at commercial scale to biofuel. These biofuel facilities partner and contract with farmers to procure the stover feedstock used in processing. Farmers face a choice of whether or not […]
The Potential Implications of the False Belief that SNAP Participants are more likely to be Obese than Eligible Non-Participants
Hunger and its accordant consequences were serious problems in the United States 50 years ago. In response, the U.S. government established the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, then known as the Food Stamp Program). Fifty years later, more than one in seven Americans received benefits at a cost of over $75 billion. (See Bartfeld et […]
Questioning the Final RFS Rule, Part 2: the Meaning of the Word “Supply”
This article continues the discussion of EPA’s final rule for the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS). The previous article in this series provided background on the RFS and a general review of the final rule. This article looks specifically at EPA’s interpretation of the word “supply” in the waiver provision “inadequate domestic supply” and what Congress […]