Mark E. Smith

Sales Loss Determination in Food Contamination Incidents: An Application to Milk Bans in Hawaii

This article presents a procedure for estimating sales loss following a food contamination incident with application to the case of heptachlor contamination of fresh fluid milk in Oahu, Hawaii, in 1982. A major finding is that media coverage following the incident had a significant impact on milk purchases and that negative coverage had a larger effect than positive coverage. This conclusion implies that public statements by producers or government to assure the public of safe food supplies may be ineffective in restoring consumer confidence following the discovery of a food safety problem.

Environmental indices and the politics of the Conservation Reserve Program

Abstract Environmental indicators can be used to target public programs to provide a variety of benefits. Social scientists, physical scientists, and politicians have roles in developing indicators that reflect the demands of diverse interest groups. We review the US Department of Agriculture’s Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), the largest agricultural conservation program the United States, to determine how a set of environmental indicators were developed and used, and assess results of their application. The use of such indicators has helped the CRP increase and broaden the program’s environmental benefits beyond erosion reduction, which was the primary focus of early program efforts, to meet other demands. This case study provides an example about how integration and assessment for the purpose of managing public resources requires more than natural science disciplines. Social science can help explain how public values influence what information is collected and how it is interpreted. Examples are given to show how the indices used for the CRP integrated science, politics and social values. In the end, the environmental benefits index (EBI) used to target US

Issues in the Economics of Pesticide Use in Agriculture: A Review of the Empirical Evidence

20 billion of CRP funds reflects compromises made between science and policy considerations. It is our intention that studying this index will yield ideas and understanding from the natural science community that develops ecosystem indices about how to better plug in to programs in the future.

Agricultural Chemical Residues as a Source of Risk

In this article, we review three perspectives used to place an economic value on pesticide use in agriculture and present associated empirical results. One approach is based on calculations of the marginal productivity; a second strategy considers the expected loss to pests relative to some current or maximum yield; and a third approach, related to the second, calculates the economic effect of banning pesticides, which is effectively the value that producers and consumers place on the chemicals used. We also review the economic effects of government policies to reduce or restrict pesticide use, including regulation and pesticide taxes as well as use of alternative technologies believed to reduce pesticide use, such as integrated pest management and genetically engineered plants.

Economics of Water Quality Protection from Nonpoint Sources: Theory and Practice

Exposures to individual agricultural chemical residues are a relatively small source of risk across selected environmental and human health end points; nutrients in water, of which agricultural uses are only one source, may be an exception. This may explain recent policy decisions to tighten regulation of nutrients in water resources. However, uncertainty about nutrient damages hinders design of an efficient policy to deal with nutrients.