John Antle

• PhD in Economics, University of Chicago
• Professor Emeritus at Oregon State University

This paper provides an ex ante evaluation of the economic potential of the emergent industrial hemp industry in Oregon, a state with conditions favorable to hemp cultivation. The analysis exploits available data to simulate the performance of hemp for fiber and oil in existing cropping systems. The study finds that profitability and adoption of hem...

Groundwater resources frequently trend toward unsustainable levels because, absent effective institutions, individual water users generally act independently without considering the impacts on other users. Hydro‐economic models (HEMs) of human‐natural systems can play a positive role toward successful groundwater management by yielding valuable kno...

This Pilot Study aims to use a stakeholder-driven, multi-disciplinary methodology to assess the impacts of climate change and adaptation on environmental, social, and economic outcomes in three case studies: sugarcane production in Belize, tomato-peppers production in Trinidad and Tobago , and cassava production in Guyana. The study analyzes data a...

The emerging hemp industry is an example of an important class of agricultural products where the market extent is limited, in hemp's case by laws and regulations, causing technology adoption to interact through prices with market‐level equilibrium. In this paper, we show that the equilibrium adoption rate and producer welfare impact of new technol...

The Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP) developed protocol-based methods for Regional Integrated Assessment (RIA) of agricultural systems. These methods have been applied by teams of scientists working with regional and national stakeholders across Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. This paper describes the data sets...

Introduction There is an urgent need to transform unsustainable “linear” grain production systems in the United States (U.S.) and other countries like China, Brazil, Argentina, Canada, Russia, Australia and Europe, into more circular and sustainable systems to address the simultaneous challenges of resource depletion, environmental degradation, and...

Tradeoff Analysis (TOA) is an approach to positive analysis that combines foresight analysis and simulation modeling tools from the relevant disciplines, including economics, in a participatory process designed to formulate and evaluate forward-looking, strategic decisions under high levels of uncertainty in complex systems. We motivate TOA with a...

Agriculture in South Africa sustains about 70% of the region’s population for food, income and employment, playing an important role for food security and the local economy. The focus of the study was the commercial maize farms of the Free State Province given their importance in the National economy. The Regional Integrated Assessment (phase I) wa...

The global food system must become more sustainable. Digital agriculture — digital and geospatial technologies to monitor, assess and manage soil, climatic and genetic resources — illustrates how to meet this challenge so as to balance the economic, environmental and social dimensions of sustainable food production.

We begin this chapter with the conventional view of economic growth as the driver of economic and social development, and the central role that agriculture plays in the growth process. Increasing human dominance of global ecosystems and subsequent environmental social challenges motivate the concept of sustainable development. We discuss sustainabl...

Agriculture is a diverse array of production systems that are composed of interconnected physical, biological, and human components, across farm to global scales. Agricultural systems are described in terms of their diversity, that is, different types of systems and their heterogeneity, that is, the variation in the physical, biological, and human...

The challenges of sustainable development in industrial countries are quite distinct from those of the developing regions. In these countries, the majority of food is produced on large commercial farms. Farm household incomes are relatively high and often equal or exceed incomes in the non-agricultural sectors for comparable skills and experience....

Low-income and transitional countries span a large part of the arable land area of the world. In this chapter, we examine the diverse and heterogeneous systems around the world, focusing primarily on the three regions where the vast majority of poor farmers are located: sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and East Asia. We discuss the main characterist...

In this chapter, we describe the design and implementation of more sustainable development pathways based on two components. Participatory processes choose indicators and set goals; and science-based tools evaluate system performance along the envisioned pathways. Implementation processes design technologies and policies that incentivize changes in...

This book provides a non-technical, accessible primer on sustainable agricultural development and its relationship to sustainable development based on three analytical pillars. The first is to understand agriculture as complex physical-biological-human systems. Second is the economic perspective of understanding tradeoffs and synergies among the ec...

This paper investigates climate change adaptation through agricultural land uses under three regional representative agricultural pathways, using data from the Pacific Northwest of the United States of America. The three pathways are bottom-up projections of local biophysical and socioeconomic conditions, and they are consistent to downscaled regio...

In this address I discuss the potential for the revolution in data infrastructure, data science and computation to support and accelerate the transformation towards a more productive, healthy and sustainable agricultural systems. A theme that emerges from both the agricultural systems science and economic‐behavioral sciences is that improved acquis...

In 2015, the United Nations challenged the scientific community to evaluate development pathways consistent with the goal of limiting global average temperature increase to 1.5 °C. This study reports analysis that was carried out as part of a project responding to that challenge. Using recently developed methods for regional integrated assessment o...

This study presents results of the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP) Coordinated Global and Regional Assessments (CGRA) of +1.5° and +2.0°C global warming above pre-industrial conditions. This first CGRA application provides multi-discipline, multi-scale, and multi-model perspectives to elucidate major challenges fo...

The Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP) has developed novel methods for Coordinated Global and Regional Assessments (CGRA) of agriculture and food security in a changing world. The present study aims to perform a proof of concept of the CGRA to demonstrate advantages and challenges of the proposed framework. This effo...

Climate change and enhanced climate variability will have differing impacts on agricultural producers worldwide. The increasing utilization of precision farming and mobile technologies, together with improvements in data management software, offer expanding opportunities for an integrated data platform that links farm-level management decisions and...

The predicted effects of climate change call for a multi-dimensional method to assess the performance of various agricultural systems across economic, environmental and social dimensions. Climate smart agriculture (CSA) recognizes that the three goals of climate adaptation, mitigation and resilience must be integrated into the framework of a sustai...

Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals in African agriculture require a better understanding why high levels of poverty and resource degradation persist in African agriculture despite decades of policy interventions and development projects. In this article, we hypothesize that policies need to account for the key features of the semi-subsiste...

This paper presents the design and use of Representative Agricultural Pathways (RAPs) in regional integrated assessment of climate impacts. In the first part of the paper, we describe the role of pathways and scenarios in regional integrated assessment as well as the three RAPs developed for a study of dryland wheat-based systems in the U.S. Pacifi...

We examine the impacts of climate on net returns from crop and livestock production and the resulting impact on land-use change across the contiguous USA. We first estimate an econometric model to project effects of weather fluctuations on crop and livestock net returns and then use a semi-reduced form land-use share model to study agricultural lan...

Supplementary material.

The purpose of this Special Issue of Agricultural Systems is to lay the foundation for the next generation of agricultural systems data, models and knowledge products. In the Introduction to this Special Issue, we described a vision for accelerating the rate of agricultural innovation and meeting the growing global need for food and fiber. In this...

In this paper we propose to extend methods for agricultural impact assessment to study the adaptations that agricultural producers are likely to consider in response to climate change – i.e., the use of different combinations of crop or livestock species and associated changes in management. Analysis of these kinds of adaptations, referred to here...

Agricultural modeling has long suffered from fragmentation in model implementation. Many models are developed, there is much redundancy, models are often poorly coupled, model component re-use is rare, and it is frequently difficult to apply models to generate real solutions for the agricultural sector. To improve this situation, we argue that an o...

Research on next generation agricultural systems models shows that the most important current limitation is data, both for on-farm decision support and for research investment and policy decision making. One of the greatest data challenges is to obtain reliable data on farm management decision making, both for current conditions and under scenarios...

This paper presents ideas for a new generation of agricultural system models that could meet the needs of a growing community of end-users exemplified by a set of Use Cases. We envision new data, models and knowledge products that could accelerate the innovation process that is needed to achieve the goal of achieving sustainable local, regional and...

A vibrant, resilient and productive agricultural sector is fundamental to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Bringing about such a transformation requires optimizing a range of agronomic, environmental and socioeconomic outcomes from agricultural systems – from crop yields, to biodiversity, to human nutrition. However, these outcomes are...

We review the current state of agricultural systems science, focusing in particular on the capabilities and limitations of agricultural systems models. We discuss the state of models relative to five different Use Cases spanning field, farm, landscape, regional, and global spatial scales and engaging questions in past, current, and future time peri...

Agricultural system models have become important tools to provide predictive and assessment capability to a growing array of decision-makers in the private and public sectors. Despite ongoing research and model improvements, many of the agricultural models today are direct descendants of research investments initially made 30?40 years ago, and many...

Climate-smart agriculture recognizes that climate impacts and vulnerability of smallholder farming systems must be addressed as part of broader pathways towards sustainable agriculture. Evaluating potential impacts of adaptation technologies can inform transformation of agricultural systems, supporting food security and resilience under climate cha...

Agricultural systems science generates knowledge that allows researchers to consider complex problems or take informed agricultural decisions. The rich history of this science exemplifies the diversity of systems and scales over which they operate and have been studied. Modeling, an essential tool in agricultural systems science, has been accomplis...

AgMIP Workshop on Coordinated Global and Regional Integrated Assessments of Climate Change and Food Security; Aspen, Colorado, 13–18 September 2015

The Indo-Gangetic Basin (IGB) is characterised by cereal-based farming systems where livestock is an integral part of farm economy. Majority of the population derives their livelihood from agriculture sector which is dominated by small land holdings (<2ha). Cereal crops (mainly rice and wheat) are crucial to ensuring the food security in the region...

PurposeA food security indicator for technology impact assessment is needed that can be constructed with available data, is comparable over time and space, and represents the multiple dimensions of food security. Methodology/approachIn this chapter, we review some commonly used food security indicators, analyze the extent to which these indicators...

This chapter considers the issues concerning uncertainty associated with modelling and its use within agricultural impact assessments.

Private-public data partnerships have the potential to advance agricultural knowledge infrastructures while benefiting farmers, agribusinesses and the environment. These partnerships could collect information that improves on-farm management, food quality, and science-based environmental management. New communication technologies could lower the co...

This chapter assesses the characteristics of current and future agricultural systems, land use, agricultural output, output price, cost of production, and farm and household size in response to climate change. This analysis also compared both current and projected future climate (2030), with and without adaptation, and for different socioeconomic s...

This article presents conceptual and empirical foundations for new parsimonious simulation models that are being used to assess future food and environmental security of farm populations. The conceptual framework integrates key features of the biophysical and economic processes on which the farming systems are based. The approach represents a metho...

The debate on climate change is now one step forward from its occurrence and adverse impacts to the plausible adaptation now and in the future. Existing data for wheat crop from rice-wheat cropping zone of Punjab were used to analyze the impacts of climate change on crop productivity and climate induced adaptation practices thereafter. In this pape...

The global change research community has recognized that new pathway and scenario concepts are needed to implement impact and vulnerability assessment that is logically consistent across local, regional and global scales. For impact and vulnerability assessment, new socio-economic pathway and scenario concepts are being developed. Representative Ag...

The Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP) is a major international effort linking the climate, crop, and economic modeling communities with cutting-edge information technology to produce improved crop and economic models and the next generation of climate impact projections for the agricultural sector. The goals of AgMI...

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is predicted to experience considerable negative impacts of climate change. The IPCC Fourth Assessment emphasizes that adaptation strategies are essential. Addressing adaptation in the context of small-scale, semi-subsistence agriculture raises special challenges. High data demands including site-specific bio-physical and e...

The debate on whether climate change will impact on peoples' livelihoods and, hence, the need to act is essentially over and has instead shifted to the development of strategies needed by different regions and countries to adapt to climate change effects. However, there is still scanty information necessary to ably address climate change related is...

Soil organic carbon sequestration rates over 20 years based on the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) methodology were combined with local economic data to determine the potential for soil C sequestration in wheat-based production systems on the Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP). The C sequestration potential of rice–wheat systems of India o...

In this study we use a spatially-explicit integrated assessment model (TOA-ME) to evaluate the economic (income, poverty) and environmental (soil nutrient depletion) impacts of climate change and socio-economic scenarios in a case study of the semi-subsistence agricultural production systems of Machakos (Kenya). This model provides a unique capabil...

In this paper we describe the sustainability of a production system in terms of trade-offs between present and future outcomes such as crop productivity. Based on the observed site-specificity of the relationship between soil characteristics and productivity, we hypothesise that to accurately assess the sustainability of an agricultural production...

Previous research has demonstrated that soil carbon sequestration through adoption of conservation tillage can be economically profitable depending on the value of a carbon offset in a greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions market. However adoption of conservation tillage also influences two other potentially important factors, changes in soil N2O emission...

There is a growing demand for assessment of economic, environmental and social impacts of new food-related technologies, including the impacts of new methods for aquaculture management. This paper presents a new “minimum-data Tradeoff Analysis” (TOA-MD) model that can be applied to assess economic, environmental and social impacts in a wide array o...

Partial-moment functions are proposed as a flexible way to characterize and estimate asymmetric effects of inputs on output distributions. Methods for econometric estimation of partial-moment functions, and tests for input symmetry and location-scale distributions, are presented. A Monte Carlo study demonstrates properties of proposed tests. A stud...

Soil organic carbon (C) sequestration rates based on the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) methodology were combined with local economic data to simulate the economic potential for C sequestration in response to conservation tillage in the six agro-ecological zones within the Southern Region of the Australian grains industry. The ne...

This study explores a modelling approach to investigate the interactions between terracing, water availability, and land use decisions and farmers' incomes in a study area in the Peruvian Andes. We tested the hypothesis that these interactions affect the simulated spatial distribution of impacts because of technology changes as well as aggregate im...

Antle and Valdivia (2006, Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics 50, 1-15) proposed a minimum-data (MD) approach to simulate ecosystem service supply curves that can be implemented using readily available secondary data and validated the approach in a case study of soil carbon sequestration in a monoculture wheat system. However,...

Agriculture is a critically important managed ecosystem, and ecosystem services (ES) are the most important non-market goods provided by agriculture. ES are the benefits accrued from services naturally provided by the environment from which human beings and other organisms benefit. They are “the conditions and processes through which natural ecosys...

Adaptation of agricultural and food systems to climate change involves private and public investment decisions in the face of climate and policy uncertainties. The authors present a framework for analysis of adaptation as an investment, based on elements of the economics, finance, and ecological economics literatures. They use this framework to ass...

This article develops the conceptual and empirical foundations for a parsimonious approach to assessment of economic, environmental and social impacts of agricultural technologies. Parsimony is achieved by shifting the focus from the farm-level data and models used in most assessments, to the outcome distributions that characterize a population of...

This article develops the conceptual and empirical foundations for a parsimonious, generic modeling approach to multi-dimensional (i.e., economic, environmental and social) impact assessments of agricultural technologies and environmental change. Joint distributions between technology adoption and outcome variables are characterized, and used to an...

This chapter explores the potential impacts of payments for ecosystem services on poverty and sustainability of farm households, using the example of agricultural soil carbon sequestration. Economic analysis shows that there is a variety of technical and economic factors affecting adoption of practices that increase soil carbon and their impacts on...

This chapter reports on a study of the potential for payments for ecosystem services to encourage the adoption of more sustainable agricultural practices in the Pallisa district in southeastern Uganda. Due to low productivity and population pressure, the subsistence agriculture that dominates the upland areas is increasingly encroaching on wetland...

Economics researchers often assume that random variables are drawn from distributions that are members of scale or location-scale families of distributions. This article generalizes earlier results in the literature on the bias in least squares estimates of multiplicative error models, and uses those results to construct a test of the scale and loc...

Mixed crop-livestock systems have a crucial role to play in meeting the agricultural production challenges of smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. Sweet potato is seen as a potential remedial crop for these farmers because of its high productivity and low input requirements, while its usefulness for both food and feed (dual-purpose) make it a...

This paper explores the potential impacts of payments for agricultural soil carbon sequestration on poverty of farm households and on the sustainability of agricultural systems, using economic theory combined with evidence from three case studies in Kenya, Peru, and Senegal. The case studies indicate that the likely impact of carbon contracts will...

Tibet can be considered as the water tower of Asia and the protection of its water resources crucial. We show that a minimum data approach to model the supply of ecosystem services can potentially be applied to water conservation in Tibet. The approach integrates the spatial heterogeneity of the biophysical environment and the economic behaviour of...

Agriculture is arguably the most important sector of the economy that is highly dependent on climate. A large body of scientific data and models have been developed to predict the impacts of the contemporary and future climate. Since the first IPCC Assessment Report was published in 1990, substantial efforts have been directed toward understand - i...

D. Gale Johnson, an intellectual leader in agricultural economics in the mid- to late 20th century, was an early critic of the parity price concept. His case against agricultural subsidies helped bring agricultural trade policy into the international policy arena. Johnson was a long-time observer of the Soviet Union and Chinese agricultural reforms...

There is an increasing demand for information about the economic impact of agricultural carbon (C) sequestration in the developing world, but as yet no studies have assessed the potential for farmers in the highland tropics to participate in C contracts. In this paper we show how an econometric-process simulation model, designed to simulate the val...

Several studies have suggested that geostatistical techniques could be employed to reduce overall transactions costs associated with contracting for soil C credits by increasing the efficacy of sampling protocols used to measure C-credits. In this paper, we show how information about the range of spatial autocorrelation can be used in a measurement...

This paper presents results from an analysis of the economic potential for soil carbon sequestration in the Nioro region of Senegal’s Peanut Basin. This analysis was based on the linkage of site-specific biophysical models and economic simulation models using the Tradeoff Analysis System to simulate farmers’ participation in contracts to sequester...