Topic: agriculture

Reforming Agricultural Subsidies: "No Regrets" Policies for Livelihoods and the Environment

This paper analyzes the environmental and poverty effects of agricultural subsidies. It proposes policy reforms to help developing countries capitalize on subsidy reductions and turn their agriculture sectors into vehicles for sustainable development.

Outlines economic and “fairness” reasons why supporting the sale of the cost-share portion of agricultural nutrient and sediment reductions is not the most appropriate policy for the USDA and other government agencies to adopt.

Summary of briefing by Jonathan Lash, President of the World Resources Institute, for journalists on environmental trends for 2006.

Compares a number of policy options to reduce nutrient loss in the Mississippi River Basin from agricultural sources, provide new income sources for farmers, and help address hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico.

Pesticides and the Immune System: The Public Health Risks

Brings together an extensive body of experimental and epidemiological research from around the world documenting the effects of widely used pesticides on the immune system and the attendant health risks.

Bittersweet harvests for global supermarkets: Challenges in Latin America's agricultural export boom

Chronicles the benefits and shortcomings of trade and structural adjustment policies promoted throughout Latin America and the Caribbean by the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and other multinational agencies during the 1980s.

A comprehensive, empirically based analysis of U.S. agricultural sustainability. Uses agronomic and environmental data collected from 45 physical U.S. regions. A tool to assess the environmental and economic impacts of a broad range of policy options.

Global Biodiversity Strategy: Guidelines for action to save, study and use Earth's biotic wealth sustainably and equitably

Offers the most systematic and comprehensive plan ever devised to protect the world’s total stock of genes, species, and ecosystems.

Across the United States, air pollution is contributing to the decline and ultimate death of forest trees and to widespread losses in crop yields.