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From page 271... ...
For some farmers, production decisions are further shaped by incentives inherent in federal and state policies, including trade policies, federal Farm Bill programs, national energy policy, and regulations that address animal welfare or environmental impacts of
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From page 272... ...
Decisions by individual farmers to pursue (or not to pursue) different farming practices and systems depend also on what sort of land or other resource endowments they have available; their existing farming approaches, knowledge, and skills; and their goals and motivations, including personal ethics, religious beliefs, or world view.
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From page 273... ...
Some sellers seek out markets that provide the best prices for their production, some ascertain what type of crop will be the most valuable for the given year, some pursue marketing strategies that reduce their marketing risks, and some produce crops supported by the Farm Bill. The pricing, ownership structure, and direction of markets for farm inputs and products influence farmer production decisions.
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From page 274... ...
Decisions to use farming practices that might promote various aspects of sustainability are likely to be conditioned by the unique market opportunities and constraints presented by the increasingly large system. Growth in scale and vertical integration could contribute to greater efficiencies, economies of scale, and lower transaction costs throughout the agrifood system, which could potentially benefit consumers, but the degree of concentration and consolidation among agribusinesses might create monopolistic or monopsonistic conditions and correspondingly anti-competitive behavior (Sexton, 2000; Barkema and Novack, 2001; Fulton and Giannakas, 2001)
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From page 275... ...
Those contractual terms can force farmers to use production practices to meet quality or cosmetic requirements that might not be suited to local ecological conditions. Hence, they might create disincentives for the use of some farming practices that could enhance sustainability (Busch and Bingen, 2005; Bingen and Busch, 2007)
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From page 276... ...
Although some skeptics criticize those efforts and question the overall sustainability of such mega-corporations, the initiatives have an important impact in the food system because they drive changes toward increasing sustainability in the supply chain by affecting purchasing decisions, food processing and transport systems, and agricultural production practices at the farm level (Doane, 2005; Aragón-Correa and Rubio-López, 2007)
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From page 277... ...
FIGURE - Growth in U.S. retail sales of certified organic food products.
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From page 278... ...
As mentioned earlier, organic production costs more than conventional production, and farmers are likely to have lower economic returns in the first few years of transition as a result of lower yields and inability to access organic premiums until the transition is completed. Although organic food markets are frequently supply constrained, few organic food handlers have worked to assist farmers to make the transition toward organic production (Dimitri and Oberholtzer, 2008)
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From page 279... ...
. Farmers attribute the sudden increase in demand to families concerned about food safety of distantly produced or imported foods, their need for a greater sense of "community," and their desire to talk to a person growing their food (Hinrichs, 2000; Lamine, 2005; Smithers et al., 2008)
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From page 280... ...
The establishment of farmers' markets at several Kaiser Permanente Hospitals in California has sparked discussions about the need for a company-wide food policy to bring fresh food to patients, visitors, and surrounding communities. These few examples show how health care facilities and hospitals around the United States are creating new opportunities for food procurement and provision that can potentially improve environmental sustainability (by decreasing the distance of food delivery)
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From page 281... ...
, established by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration partly to enhance safety from microbial contamination (sometimes by mandating the production practices to be followed)
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From page 282... ...
. Sustainable Agriculture Standards, Certification, and Eco-label Programs A market trend that favors improving agricultural sustainability has emerged, as discussed in the earlier section on emerging markets.
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Consequently, some organizations (including Scientific Certification Systems and ANSI, Keystone Center, and USDA) have initiated efforts to develop national sustainable agriculture standards, which are intended to be similar to the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)
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From page 284... ...
States and companies beyond Marine Stewardship Wild and caught Mainly Mostly Companies, NGOs Council seafood/fish environmental temperate waters Protected Harvest Potatoes, Mainly North Companies, NGOs (Healthy Grown) winegrapes, and environmental America developing others Rainforest Alliance Coffee, bananas, and Broad Global Companies, NGOs Standards for others Sustainable Agriculture
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From page 285... ...
. However, ecosystem services can be indirect, underappreciated, and, in general, undervalued.
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From page 286... ...
The PES approach can be contrasted with the so-called "green payments," where the general taxpayer subsidizes farmers for desired outcomes or for adoption of desired agricultural practices. The green payments are usually discussed as replacing or augmenting Farm Bill commodity subsidy payments, which are discussed later in this chapter.
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From page 287... ...
. At the time of writing this report, few producers in the United States had received any form of direct compensation or marketing opportunities for biodiversity ecosystem services from their conservation practices on farms.
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The USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service and other organizations are developing tools and protocols for valuing biodiversity functions and other ecosystem services in agricultural contexts. Such evaluations could encourage development of PES programs.
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, which pays incentives to farmers to install conservation practices including riparian buffers on sensitive lands. Although the offsets were only a part of the CWS plan to reduce water temperatures, they illustrate the use of agricultural offsets to meet permit regulatory requirements.
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Therefore, the program as designed will not likely motivate changes in farming practices. Carbon sequestration is another valuable ecosystem service that has gained attention in the agriculture sector, as new carbon marketing trading schemes can potentially provide farmers with financial opportunities.
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From page 291... ...
. Role of Valuation of Ecosystem Services In part because of the increasing interest in providing "markets" for ecosystem services, interest in providing monetary values of ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration, water quality, soil carbon, and wildlife habitat is growing.
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. Major provisions of the Farm Bill are the commodity support programs, the crop insurance and disaster programs, conservation programs, and nutritional assistance programs.
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From page 293... ...
The commodity support programs in Farm Bills have been criticized for encouraging farming practices that move away from sustainability. Unless effectively inhibited by environmental regulation or other requirements, the commodity programs encourage farmers to convert lands -- sometimes marginal lands -- to agricultural uses and to use intensive production practices to produce commodity crops.
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From page 294... ...
. Models of crop insurance effects on production decisions suggest that resulting land use effects (such as shifting extensive land from hay and pasture to corn production)
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From page 295... ...
. Conservation Programs One response to the criticisms of the commodity programs has been the enactment of voluntary conservation programs within the Farm Bill (Claassen and Ribaudo, 2006)
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From page 296... ...
might encourage incremental efforts to reduce pollution from existing farming systems at the expense of encouraging the use of different farming systems that might generate fewer pollution risks and thus improve long-term environmental sustainability. The 2009 Farm Bill includes an Environmental Quality Incentives Program Organic Initiative.
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. Although conservation programs have always been intertwined with commodity programs and although the amount of spending on conservation programs is steadily increasing with each Farm Bill, commodity programs have always been dominant (Dobbs, 2008; Doering, 2008)
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From page 298... ...
farmers' planting and production decisions are heavily influenced by trade and trade policies. Indeed, with the productivity of U.S.
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From page 299... ...
. However, because many disputes involve disagreements about acceptable risks for food safety or appropriate ethics for fair and humane production practices, no clear line of demarcation ascertains when such trade protection is a legitimate tool to accomplish a country's desired sustainability outcomes or desire for self-sufficiency in times of food shortages versus when it is a means of protecting domestic producers from international trade competition.
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From page 300... ...
The impact of those policies on American agricultural practices has been profound. As discussed in Chapter 2, the corn ethanol and soybean biodiesel industries emerged rapidly and contributed to shifts in the acreages planted to those crops.
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From page 301... ...
. This section uses a few of those regulations to illustrate their potential influence on farmers' adoption of various farming practices and systems and their effect on improving sustainability in U.S.
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Studies suggest that the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act regulations, along with state regulations, encouraged a shift in production of hogs from the Southeast to the Midwest during the late 1990s to the mid 2000s. The regional shifts were in response to regulations that require reducing waste and odor from large manure lagoons and reducing land applications of manure (Key et al., 2009)
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From page 303... ...
Food Safety Guidelines and Standards Since the 1990s, researchers, agencies, and agriculture industries have worked toward developing food safety guidelines to minimize the risk of food contamination. Those guidelines are frequently embedded in marketing agreements.
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. A 2007 survey of 600 California row crop operations found that 21 percent of the leafy green growers have actively removed one or more conservation practices because of food safety concerns.
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From page 305... ...
As illustrated in this section through a few examples, water rights regulations could affect agricultural production's movement along the sustainability trajectory. Surface Water Most surface water law in the western regions of the United States began as "prior appropriation" water law doctrine -- sometimes referred to as "first in time, first in right." With this doctrine, the first individual(s)
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From page 306... ...
The code restructured water rights, prohibited irrigation of new agricultural lands in Active Management Areas, created a comprehensive system of conservation targets updated every decade, developed a program that requires developers to demonstrate a 100-year assured water supply for new growth, and required ground water users to meter wells and report on annual water withdrawal and use (Cooley et al., 2009)
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From page 307... ...
KNOWLEDGE INSTITUTIONS AS CONTEXTUAL FACTORS Research and experimentation, whether by scientists or farmers, contribute to the development of specific agricultural tools and approaches that help farmers address various sustainability objectives. Previous chapters provided numerous examples of farming practices designed to improve sustainability, most of which have been shaped by public and private sector scientific research and development activities.
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From page 308... ...
. The large public investment in agricultural research and extension has long been justified based on the social benefits -- in terms of improved factor productivity and a sustained supply of inexpensive and high-quality food -- associated with technical gains in farming practices and growing labor efficiency in the farm sector.
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From page 309... ...
agriculture, one of the most commonly suggested policy levers is the use of publicly funded research programs to bolster innovation and overcome obstacles to innovative agricultural practices and farming systems. The distribution of public agricultural research and development (R&D)
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From page 310... ...
Overall, AFRI allocated 57 percent of grant funds to plant and animal productivity research; 17.6 percent to food safety; 17.2 percent to renewable energy, natural resources, and the environment; 2.8 percent to agricultural systems; and 5 percent to agricultural economics and rural communities. Much of AFRI's research focuses on process-level science and component interactions in applied agricultural systems, so it is positioned between the basic research of NSF programs and the applied research done through farmer collaboration.
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From page 311... ...
Broadening Review of Public Competitive Grant Programs The issue of balancing competitive and non-peer-reviewed (formula funding) mechanisms for allocating federal research dollars to agriculture has been discussed in some research and policy literature (Huffman and Evenson, 2006; Schimmelpfennig and Heisey, 2009)
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(2003) confirmed that competitive grants are more likely to support basic research among SAES institutions, but also tend to award federal grants to a smaller number of high-status state research universities than formula funding.
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However, some of the private sector research certainly contributes to other sustainability goals. For example, irrigation technologies developed mostly by the private sector contributes to improving water use efficiency and reducing runoff from overirrigation or precision agriculture technologies contribute to improving efficiencies of water, nutrient, or pesticide use.
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From page 314... ...
A growing number of integrated disciplinary and interdisciplinary research projects have been devoted to improving the understanding of the environmental impacts of typical farming practices and assessing the effectiveness of conservation practices designed to minimize these impacts. The proportion of research spending on productivity and traditional commodity-focused research relative to total USDA research spending declined
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From page 315... ...
agricultural research system, and their dates of publication beginning with the most recent, are as follows: • 2009: ransforming Agricultural Education for a Changing World T • 2008: griculture, Forestry, and Fishing Research at NIOSH A • 2003: rontiers in Agricultural Research: Food, Health, Environment and Communities F • 2002: ublicly Funded Agricultural Research and the Changing Structure of U.S. P Agriculture • 2000: RI: A Vital Competitive Grants Program in Food, Fiber and Natural Resources N Research • 1999: owing the Seeds of Change: Informing Public Policy in the Economic Research S Service of USDA • 1996: olleges of Agriculture at the Land Grant Universities: Public Service and Public C Policy • 1995: olleges of Agriculture at the Land Grant Universities: A Profile C • 1994: nvesting in the NRI: An Update of the Competitive Grants Program of the USDA I • 1989: nvesting in Research: A Proposal to Strengthen the Agricultural, Food and I Environmental System from 1986 to 1997, whereas the relative proportion of spending on research on water, air, soil, forests, wildlife, sustainable resources management, disease control, and community impacts increased (NRC, 2002)
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From page 316... ...
In addition, other federal agencies are invest ing in agrienvironmental research -- for example, the EPA water quality research program, Pesticide Environmental Stewardship Program, and Sustainable Agriculture Partnerships Grants (regional)
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From page 317... ...
Participatory approaches to research are discussed in more detail below. State and Civil Society Support for Sustainable Agriculture Every state supports its own agricultural experiment station and associated extension service.
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From page 318... ...
Coordinating all on-farm and farmer-involved agriculture research for improving sustainability within the states with the existing network of agencies and programs would be important to avoid redundancy and ensure efficiency. University Sustainable Agriculture Programs Many land-grant universities and other colleges and university departments have established programs to support agricultural research that focus on more than one goal of sustainability.
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Faculty University of California 1987 775,000 574,000 6 10 Sustainable Agriculture Research and Extension Program (SAREP) 120,000a North Carolina State University and North 1994 0 21 37 Carolina A&T State University Center for Environmental Farming Systems (CEFS)
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From page 320... ...
. Some universities are shifting their extension resources toward sustainable agriculture and the green economy and away from traditional production agriculture to increase their competitiveness for funding.
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From page 321... ...
organizations devoted to sustainable agriculture. Most are civil society organizations, including farmer-organized groups, regional and national civil society centers, and associations.
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Collectively these educational and service organizations provide a sizeable infrastructure and momentum to drive sustainable agriculture and to guide public policy. They have websites, and most provide electronic access to their research reports and to other sustainable agriculture literature and information.
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From page 323... ...
and social movements. The diverse arrangement of civil society actors -- including farmer organizations, farm commodity groups, food industry and environmental interest groups, global corporations, public health advocates, immigration and labor activists, civil rights groups, and others -- also influence consumer, public, and farmer attitudes and perceptions of the sustainability of current food production practices, as well as the behaviors of key actors throughout the agrifood system.
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From page 324... ...
Producer associations and commodity groups are recognizing that they have to address environmental, community, and social and animal welfare issues that were not widely recognized concerns in the past. In general, these groups help to spread information, education, and technical support regarding practices that can achieve multiple sustainability goals, and some groups also promote policy and institutional changes to support improvement in agricultural sustainability.
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From page 325... ...
DRIVERS AND CONSTRAINTS BOX - T he Good Food Movement Recently, a coalition of diverse social movements has grown in size and significance around the so called Good Food Movement (see Figure 6-8, Flora 2009)
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From page 326... ...
Some well-known organizations that have had influential roles at the national level in recent years include the American Farmland Trust, ATTRA -- National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service, Organic Farming Research Foundation, Organic Center, Henry Wallace Center, and Heifer International (Morgan, 2010)
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From page 327... ...
. Thus, farming practices and system redesigns for improving sustainability often need to be tailored for micro climates and soil conditions; few practices and system redesigns will be appropriate for all situations.
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From page 328... ...
Farm and Farmer Characteristics and the Use of Sustainable Agricultural Practices The characteristics of farms and farmers most likely to adopt new farming practices have been researched extensively (Rogers, 2003)
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From page 329... ...
. However, the association between farm scale and use of farming practices for improving sustainability depended on the nature of the practice; larger farms were somewhat more likely to use reduced agrichemical input strategies, while smaller and more diverse farms were more likely to adopt integrated, holistic practices.
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From page 330... ...
. The increasing concentration of livestock on single production units requires the use of large manure storage facilities, which can become potential point sources for ground water pollution or accidental release of manure into surface waters.
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From page 331... ...
that can both enable and constrain their ability to use farming practices and systems to improve sustainability (Bell, 2004)
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From page 332... ...
. Practical noneconomic considerations, such as a desire to limit time and energy spent farming, have been linked to the adoption of farming practices that can improve sustainability (Lobley and Potter, 1998; Leeuwis, 2004; Nowak and Cabot, 2004)
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From page 333... ...
. SUMMARY The decisions of farmers to use particular farming practices and their ability to move forward along the sustainability trajectory are influenced by many external forces, such as markets, public policies, available science, technology, knowledge and skills, and the farmers' own values, resources, and land tenure arrangements.
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From page 334... ...
• Access to local niche and direct-sales markets has allowed many small and medium sized farm to find economically viable options to conventional commodity outlets and to use farming practices that could improve sustainability. Despite rapid growth, direct sales to consumers are less than 1 percent of total U.S.
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From page 335... ...
The changes could influence the adoption of farming practices for improving sustainability, but any effects have yet to be documented. • To date, many environmental regulations have exempted agricultural operations, but recent changes to the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Food Quality and Protec tion Act, the Endangered Species Act, and food safety guidelines have had important impacts on farmers' use of agrichemicals, conservation practices, and management of livestock wastes.
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From page 336... ...
• Much of the technical and managerial innovation in improving agricultural sustain ability has occurred through farmer innovation and experimentation. Recognition of the wealth of farmer knowledge about farming practices and systems for improving sustainability has led to increased public support for farmer-to-farmer mentoring pro grams and farmer learning networks.
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From page 337... ...
1994. Institutional issues and strategies for sustainable agriculture: view from within the land-grant university.
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From page 338... ...
2009. Paying for ecosystem services on agricultural lands: an example from the Northern Everglades.
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From page 339... ...
In U.S. Agri cultural Policy and the 2007 Farm Bill, K
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2008. A National Ecosystem Services Research Partnership.
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From page 341... ...
Journal of Sustainable Agriculture 33(2)
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2002. Agriculture and ecosystem services.
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American Journal of Agricultural Economics 80(5)
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2002. Advanced agricultural biotechnologies and sustainable agriculture.
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Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press. NSAC (National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition)
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1994. Adoption of sustainable agricultural practices: diffusion, farm structure and profitability.
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Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.
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2009. Educational and training opportunities in sustainable agriculture.
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American Journal of Agricultural Economics 81:305–320.
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