Farmers' ability to leave agriculture is an important and debated topic in China and other countries. Many scholars believe China's unique land tenure policies prevent farmers from leaving agriculture. This paper examines the hypothesis that China's land tenure system deters exit from agriculture using household level data from Northeast China.

Controlling Russian knapweed with an integrated system of herbicide followed by seeding perennial grass is profitable in yielding an 8.7% average rate of return, and repaying the establishment costs in approximately six years. Moreover, the system is sustainable by exploiting plant competition and eliminating herbicide usage in later years.

The total expected cost of sequestering carbon in agricultural soils is estimated under a possible EQIP program offering a per-acre subsidy to adopt conservation tillage and a carbon credit program where producers can sell their carbon credit in an external market. Both programs are compared to the minimum cost solution.

The Conditional Land Transfer Agreement Act, P.A. 425, 1984 (MCLA 124.21-124.29) is a public policy tool designed to promote community economic development and minimize the use of annexation in Michigan. Academic research to evaluate the impact of P.A. 425 on communities executing such contracts had not been conducted. Therefore, the question of whether the Act had accomplished its intended objectives remained unanswered. Data were collected from 26 units of governments that executed P.A. 425 agreements since 1984.

In a fallow-cultivation model with biomass regeneration, we find the population-poverty-degradation linkage via the discount rate: slight increases in the discount rate result in increased cropping frequency and much lower soil fertility. Aggregating gives transitions equation declining in fertility and increasing in the fallow:cultivation ratio.