Kiyotaka Masuda

Comparison of Environmental Performance Between Conventional and Organic Roughage Production: Grass and Silage Maize

Roughage production is one of the major factors contributing to environmental pollution. Therefore, whether the production of organic roughage reduces environmental loads compared with conventional production is an important issue in environmentally friendly organic milk production. Using the life cycle assessment method, we assessed the environmental performance of conventional and organic roughage production in Japan. The results of this article show that, in order to enhance environmental performance for organic roughage production in Japan, purchased organic fertilizers should be reduced because the nitrogen contained in them is responsible for environmental loads emitted by nitrogen loss.

POTENTIAL CLIMATE EFFECT ON JAPANESE RICE PRODUCTIVITY

Adaptation to climate change has become an important policy question in recent years. Agriculture is an economic activity that is most sensitive to climate change. We evaluate the dynamic effects of productivity change and individual efforts to adapt to climate change. Adaptation actions in agriculture are evaluated to determine how the climate affects production efficiency. In this paper, we use the bi-directional distance function method to measure Japanese rice production loss due to climate. We find that (1) accumulated precipitation has the greatest effect on rice production efficiency and (2) the climate effect on rice production efficiency decreases over time. Our results empirically support the benefit of the adaptation approach.