This study used a standardized teacher observation rubric and procedures to evaluate the performance of 63 new teachers with various preparation backgrounds. Observers rated teachers from seven different school districts on 29 separate criteria of teaching effectiveness. New teachers were assessed on their lesson planning, assessment practices, classroom management, and implementing instruction during interviews and observations. Results show significant differences in the performance of new teachers depending on the model of the teacher education program they attended. Traditional undergraduate program graduates were rated higher than teachers who received their preparation from post-baccalaureate or master's degree certification programs (particularly in the area of classroom management and at the middle school level). Follow-up interviews were conducted with a stratified random sample of 15 of 63 participants. New teachers reported difficulty setting up classroom management procedures at the beginning of the semester especially small group instruction and would have preferred more classroom experiences during their teacher education program. Teachers strongly affirmed the importance of teacher education for their ability own to teach.

It has long been asserted that taxation distorts the production decisions of timber land owners. More recently, claims have been that this does not occur because the tax is fully shifted into sawlog prices. This paper constructs a model of landowner choice between a property tax programme and a modified yield tax programme under the assumption of tax capitalization. Under tax shifting, the landowner will be indifferent between tax regimes. With tax capitalization owners of younger stands will elect to classify their stands for the modified yield tax programme. An empirical model of binary choice is evaluated using cross sectional forty level data from Cowlitz County, Washington immediately after implementation of the Reforestation Act of 1931. The empirical results suggest that landowners are responsive to differences in the taxing pattern in a manner conforming to the theoretical predictions consistent with tax capitalization. Additional results suggest that implementation of the alternate tax regime may have had little effect on tax defaults. The tax capitalization result is extended to derive expressions for pigouvian taxes designed to influence stand management, consistent with the increasing timber prices encountered in the postwar world.

<p> Debates over food security strategies in the Philippines have pitted the neoliberal paradigm of trade liberalization, export cropping, and chemical and biotech agricultural methods against the food sovereignty paradigm of protectionism, staple cropping, and sustainable agriculture methods. </p><p> The Philippine government has long pushed for yield increases of staples. However, there has been dissonance between governmental desires for rice self-sufficiency and pursuit of a more export-oriented agricultural economy. The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Asian Development Bank, and the World Trade Organization have pressured the government of the Philippines to adopt various tenets of neoliberalism (trade liberalization, privatization, deregulation, and budgetary austerity), which have hindered the achievement of Philippine goals for self-sufficiency in its staple foods and stunted the potential benefits of land reform. </p><p> Through ethnographic research of the social and ecological conditions in three rural villages in the province of Bukidnon, this examination of agrarian change explores how various actors&mdash;small farmers, collectives, large planters, and agribusiness corporations&mdash;have been scaling their projects in the agricultural economy. </p><p> The use of chemical inputs has damaged soils and saddled farmers with debts. In many cases, control of land has been lost to elites through sales or pawning arrangements. Relatively egalitarian corn- and rice-farming areas have given way to a stratified landscape of sugarcane and banana plantations, as former smallholders have been forced to work as wage laborers. Multinational agribusinesses have steered the area away from staple production and threatened human and environmental health with pesticide exposure and erosion. </p><p> Some farmers though have organized against these prevailing trends. Production and social reproduction have been rescaled through collective marketing, reciprocal labor arrangements, and more equitably gendered divisions of labor. Agroecological methods, such as composting, organic fertilization, seed saving, and indigenous pest control have scaled the reproduction of environmental conditions more locally and increased farmer incomes because their inputs are created on the farm. Protecting local control of the means of production&mdash;seeds, fertilizers, and especially land&mdash;has become an important method for preserving a smallholder class, maintaining more self-determination, and working toward greater food sovereignty.</p>

<p> This study utilized geographic information systems (GIS) software to identify and map vacant parcels of land where the establishment of urban market gardens and small-scale farms would most likely be viable, and then estimated potential crop yields and gross sales based on available land resources. Of the 100,618 parcels (62,098 acres) within the study area, 14 percent (4,603 parcels, 8,612 acres) were water-metered, vacant, and met the study's minimum suitability requirements. Based on average yields for fourteen regionally appropriate crops and local produce prices for organic goods in 2012, gross yields and sales were calculated. The findings suggest that urban growers in the Reno-Sparks-Washoe County study area could generate between $88,000 and $272,000 per acre, a range based on conventional and biointensive crop management methods, respectively. If 10 percent (861 acres) of all suitable vacant lands were cultivated, an estimated $76 million to $234 million could be generated through sales of an estimated yield of 29 to 86 million pounds of produce. </p><p> These figures were based on the assumptions that land would be at least 60 percent cultivated; that season extension infrastructure such as row covers, polyethylene-film covered hoop-house structures, or traditional greenhouses would be utilized to ensure three full growing seasons if necessary; and that 60 percent of all produce would be sold directly to consumers at organic retail prices. Costs of labor, establishment, and production were not considered due to extreme variability of site requirements and growing methods. The results highlight the importance of urban agriculture to our community's economy and food security, and its needs for greater public awareness and political and programmatic support.</p>

Increasing levels of atmospheric CO2 threaten to change the earth's climate and diversity in numerous adverse ways. This thesis explores aspects of two potential types of terrestrial sinks in East Texas, plantation rotation management and reforestation. I used a simple method of employing government GIS and tabular data for calculating and visualizing the size of those sinks, which could store an additional 2.3 to 98 million Mg C aboveground. The uncertainty of these values is high because of data inadequacies and also uncertainty about future land use trends. The mitigative powers of these sinks are discussed, as is their potential application in newly forming carbon credit programs such as the Chicago Climate Exchange.

A regional water resource model has been developed to simulate optimal water allocation patterns as both municipal and agricultural consumers respond to changes in water supply and rising salinity levels. Analysis of contemporary (1995) conditions indicates evidence of inefficiency in regional market institutions. The added security municipalities derive from higher prioritization of water rights is accompanied by economic inefficiencies in regional water allocation, particularly during drought. It is argued that removal of municipal protection would lower regional economic losses at small cost to municipal water users. Salinity damages to agriculture are modeled with attention to economic principles and a water-salinity-yield relationship that allows greater flexibility in water use with rising salinity. This approach differs from previous work and likely results in smaller reductions in regional net benefits as salinity increases. Empirical data support the use of this method as more accurate in estimating regional salinity effects. Analysis of optimal irrigator behavior indicates that employing surge technology for water intensive crops maximizes regional net benefits. Other more efficient irrigation technologies (relative to flood irrigation) do not enter into optimal solutions. Although useful as a conservation tool, more economically desirable irrigation strategies have little ability to mitigate salinity-related damages. Salinity-related damages in the municipal sector are conservatively estimated, but still sufficient to influence the economic desirability of reverse osmosis when salinity reaches specified thresholds. Salinity threshold for small municipalities (2 MGD) is 1195 mg/l, and for larger cities (12 MGD) 1655 mg/l. Results indicate that these damages can also play a role in determining target concentrations for TDS removal in finished water. Regional observations indicate that urban expansion coincides with the removal of large tracts of irrigated farmland. Current trends suggest the reduction in irrigated acreage makes water available at a rate that significantly outpaces any reasonable estimate of growing municipal demand. Under these conditions, water scarcity becomes less common and the impetus for more efficient and costly technologies is reduced. Projected salinity increases (from 900 to 1600 mg/l TDS) result in a relative decline in regional net benefits of 3--4% as compared with holding salinity fixed at contemporary levels. Following conclusions, five policy recommendations are offered for improving regional water resource development.

Much of the world's food is produced in the wrong quantities in the wrong place. The disarray in world agricultural markets is a symptom of the failures of national agricultural policies in the industrialised world; which by maintaining high guaranteed prices to provide fair income to farmers have induced overproduction and excessive costs of surplus disposal. / This thesis will examine the agricultural policies of the European Community and the United States to demonstrate the plethora of import barriers, subsidised export programmes and internal production subsidies in existence. The operationally-ineffective GATT regime for the agricultural sector will be outlined, with consideration being given to the international disputes that have arisen and have at times threatened the entire future of a liberal trading system. / The importance of a multilateral solution to the distortions in world agricultural trade is clear; the Uruguay Round of GATT negotiations offers the opportunity to move towards more market-oriented farm policies subject to greater international disciplines. The latter part of this thesis focuses on the possibilities for a successful conclusion to the ongoing negotiations in light of political and social realities.

<p>This study was initiated to assess the biological, ecological and sociological aspects of the blue crab, <i>Callinectes sapidus</i>, fishery associated with the Pascagoula River Estuary in southern Mississippi. Household surveys were conducted in the cities of Moss Point and Pascagoula, Mississippi, September 2010 to September 2011, to identify, describe and classify subsistence fishing activities associated with the estuary. A stock assessment of blue crab was conducted to determine how biological and environmental variability affect the people engaged in this subsistence fishery. </p><p> The study revealed two types of subsistence fishing occurring in the Moss Point/Pascagoula area. The first type involves fishing as a livelihood strategy based on economic dependence, and the second type involves fishing as a lifestyle choice based on economic independence. Both are based on customary and traditional patterns of local resource use and consumption and maintained by reciprocal kinship-based social networks. </p><p> The blue crab fishery in the Pascagoula River Estuary was highly variable and exhibited strong seasonal and spatial patterns in distribution and abundance. Subsistence fishers in the region have developed strategies to cope with this biological and environmental variability. These region-specific strategies include but are not limited to: fishing using multiple gears simultaneously (rod and reel and crab nets), freezing fish, relying on other natural resources including agriculture and wildlife, and generalized reciprocity. </p>

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2006. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-02, Section: A, page: 0665. Adviser: Charles H. Nelson. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 120-131) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2008. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-05, Section: A, page: 1910. Adviser: Joost M. E. Pennings. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 125-135) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.