The Cottonwood River Watershed is located in southwestern Minnesota, draining 1,310 square miles of land within the Minnesota River Basin. The watershed is comprised of parts of Brown, Cottonwood, Lyon, Murray, and Redwood Counties. This essay gives a brief account of the initial European settlement of the area and the establishment of the current political boundaries.

This study aims at explaining property right changes in selected areas of Afar region in Ethiopia. Based on primary and secondary data, explanations are given on the existing types of land use arrangements and how the traditional communal rights of pastoralists have been changing. Both communal rights and individualized rights exist the latter being introduced with the establishment of commercial farms.

Using panel data of 450 farm households for the period of 1996-2001 in Zhejiang, China, we measured land distributional effect and income effect of the land rental market. It is found that the rental market had contributed for a less equal land distribution among the households, and for the concentration of land to households with higher efficiency.

The impact of fanya juu bunds on productivity in a high rainfall area in the Ethiopian highlands is analyzed based on data from a cross section household survey with multiple plot observations per household. The results from parametric and non-parametric analysis indicated that productivity from conserved plots was lower than from non-conserved plots. The Oaxaca-Blinder productivity decomposition results showed that there was little difference in plot characteristics between conserved and non-conserved plots, however the returns to those characteristics were higher for non-conserved plots.

State Voluntary Cleanup Programs (VCPs) were established starting in the 1990s to encourage the environmental remediation and redevelopment of contaminated properties. These programs typically offer liability relief, subsidies and other regulatory incentives in exchange for site cleanup. This paper asks three questions: First, what type of properties are attracted to voluntary cleanup programs? Second, what is the interaction between these state programs and other incentives for remediation and economic development, such as Enterprise Zone and Brownfield Zone designations?

The Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol provides the opportunity for smallholders to receive financial rewards for adopting tree-based systems that are sustainable. In this paper a meta-model is developed to simulate interactions between trees, crops and soils under a range of management regimes for a smallholding in Sumatra.

Shrift towards private ownership in forestry recourses in transition countries of Central and Eastern Europe promotes forest values and their development in diversified ways. In this paper, we provide a general equilibrium model assisting in estimation of forest management practices in the regional level by comparing different ownership structures and public policy measures. The model is applied for the county of Banská Bystrica in Slovakia.

Relative estimates of the proportion of agricultural land values generated by farm program payments and farm returns in the southern region are examined, using state-level data for the period 1940 to 2004. Results indicate the contribution of farm program payments to agricultural land values in the southern region has increased during the last three farm bill periods to 65 percent, compared to 22 percent in the other regions.

The development of land rental markets can enhance agricultural productivity and equity by facilitating transfers of land to more productive farmers and facilitating the participation in the non-farm economy of less productive farmers. In recent years there has been a rapid increase in the incidence of land rental activities in China. Large differences exist, however, both between regions and within regions in the share of households participating in land renting activities.

The continued cultivation of landraces by household farms in centers of domestication and diversity is considered to be an in situ means of conservation of crop genetic resources. However, because in situ conservation has continued into the present does not ensure that this de facto strategy for conserving crop genetic resources will continue into the future. Whether or not traditional varieties continue to be cultivated rests primarily on factors influencing the crop decisions of these household farms.

Land use change in developing countries is of great interest to policymakers and researchers from many backgrounds. Concerns about consequences of deforestation for global climate change and biodiversity have received the most publicity, but loss of wetlands, declining land productivity, and watershed management are also problems facing developing countries. In developing countries, analysis is especially constrained by lack of data.

The arable crop sector in Spain is highly dependent of the Community subsidies and account for 33% of total transfers received by the Community. Then, it is expected that the introduction of the Single Farm Payment (SFP) will drive important changes in the arable crop production in Spain. The quantitative assessment of the SFP impacts on the arable crop sector in Spain is the overall objective of this paper.