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We present a global agricultural greenhouse gas model that assesses emissions from land-use change. In addition to evaluating shifts in and out of crop production, we develop a pasture model to assess extensification and intensification of global livestock production based on herd size and stocking rate. We apply the model to a scenario that introduces a tax on me-thane emissions from cattle in the United States. The resulting expansion of pasture in the rest of the world leads to substantially higher emissions than without the tax.

The paper investigates the current situation with fragmentation of family farms in Moldova and its effects on family well-being and farm productivity. A key hypothesis is that consolidation of agricultural land in Moldova has beneficial effects in terms of productivity and is desirable in the long run. We examine the case for market-driven land consolidation using data from several recent surveys in Moldova. We show that, in the individual sector, larger farms consume less of their output and attain higher levels of commercialization.

Conventional livestock farming provides consumers with cheap and reliable sources of milk and meat. Yet the inevitable by-product, i.e. livestock faecal matter, represents a potential source of pathogenic microorganisms. This paper applies the Faecal Indicator Organisms Costing Assessment Tool (FIOCAT), which was designed as part of the RELU project ‘sustainable and holistic food chains for recycling livestock waste to land’, to examine the costs associated with mitigation methods that may inhibit pathogenic transfers to water.