Agricultural and Resource Policy
At the department's inception, farm management was the main area of emphasis in ARE. Over time, our department has diversified and modernized, and our research in the area of agricultural and resource economics has expanded well beyond this initial focus. Some aspects of the department's current program include the following:
- Farmer decision-making
- Risk and insurance
- Storage and inventory management
- Technology adoption and diffusion
- Farm labor
- Water and soil conservation
- Pest management
- Biofuels and renewable energy
ARE faculty and graduate students have made important contributions over the years to general economic theory regarding decision making under uncertainty, technology choice, environmental health risks, storage and commodity price dynamics and other areas, and have applied these new theories to problems of agriculture in California and around the world. Departmental researchers have also made important contributions to the literature on water use, resource conservation and pest management.
Farming in developed countries is going through processes of a transition. Its share of GNP is declining, yet it has become part of a large agribusiness sector that includes input suppliers, major distributors, and manufacturers of value-added food and fiber products. ARE conducts research on many problems relevant to the agribusiness complex including
- Marketing
- Industrial organization
- Production contracts
- Biotechnology and intellectual property
- Agricultural finance
Much of our work in agricultural economics and agribusiness is closely linked to policy questions. Many departmental faculty and alumni have long and distinguished records of government service, and are at the forefront of policy development and evaluation. Our graduate courses in agricultural and resource policy incorporate techniques of policy evaluation drawn from public finance, welfare economics, and applied econometrics.
