KDF Search Results

This model was developed at Idaho National Laboratory and focuses on crop production. This model is an agricultural cultivation and production model, but can be used to estimate biomass crop yields.

The need for new criteria and indicators for the assessment of biodiversity conservation as part of sustainable forest management of tropical forests has been identified as a priority by many international organisations. Those biodiversity criteria and indicators which formed part of a much broader initial assessment by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) (Prabhu et al. 1996) were found to be deficient. This Working Paper contains specific proposals for biodiversity criteria and indicators.

This working paper contains proposals for specific genetic criteria and indicators (C&I) which are expected to be part of a more general set of biological C&I. These proposals are intended for use in guiding tropical forest management but the indicators and verifiers we describe are not in the form of simple prescriptions where a single measurement can be recommended for a single causal effect.

Increasing demand for crop-based biofuels, in addition to other human drivers of land use, induces direct and indirect land use changes (LUC). Our system dynamics tool is intended to complement existing LUC modeling approaches and to improve the understanding of global LUC drivers and dynamics by allowing examination of global LUC under diverse scenarios and varying model assumptions. We report on a small subset of such analyses.

Background: This study evaluates the global economic effects of the current US RFS2, and the potential contribution from advanced biofuels. Results & discussion: Our simulation results suggest that these mandates lead to an increase of 0.21% in the global gross domestic product in 2022, including an increase of 0.8% in the USA and 0.02% in the rest of the world, relative to our baseline no-RFS scenario. The incremental contributions to gross domestic product from advanced biofuels in 2022 are estimated at 0.41 and 0.04% in the USA and the rest of the world, respectively.

Biofuels are presented in rich countries as a solution to two crises: the climate crisis and the oil crisis. But they may not be a solution to either, and instead are contributing to a third: the current food crisis.

Crop intensification is often thought to increase greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, but studies in which crop management is optimized to exploit crop yield potential are rare. We conducted a field study in eastern Nebraska, USA to quantify GHG emissions, changes in soil organic carbon (SOC) and the net global warming potential (GWP) in four irrigated systems: continuous maize with recommended best management practices (CC-rec) or intensive management (CC-int) and maize–soybean rotation with recommended (CS-rec) or intensive management (CS-int).

USDA Agricultural Projections for 2011-20, released in February 2011, provide longrun projections for the farm sector for the next 10 years. These annual projections cover agricultural commodities, agricultural trade, and aggregate indicators of the sector, such as farm income and food prices.

Important assumptions for the projections include:

PEATSim (Partial Equilibrium Agricultural Trade Simulation) is a dynamic, partial equilibrium, mathematical-based model that enables users to reach analytical solutions to problems, given a set of parameters, data, and initial
conditions. This theoretical tool developed by ERS incorporates a wide range of domestic and border policies that enables it to estimate the market and trade effects of policy changes on agricultural markets. PEATSim captures

Agricultural markets often feature significant transport costs and spatially distributed production and processing which causes spatial imperfect competition. Spatial economics considers the firms’ decisions regarding location and spatial price strategy separately, usually on the demand side, and under restrictive assumptions. Therefore, alternative approaches are needed to explain, e.g., the location of new ethanol plants in the U.S. at peripheral as well as at central locations and the observation of different spatial price strategies in the market.

This database contains current and historical official USDA data on production, supply and distribution of agricultural commodities for the United States and key producing and consuming countries.