This study assesses the 2008 melamine scandal's impacts on China's dairy market and derives policy implications. Specifically, time-series data from 1995 to 2024 are used to assess the changes and trends in China's milk production, dairy product imports, total dairy product consumption, and self-sufficiency ratio through graphical analysis and then to assess the melamine scandal's impacts on China's milk production and dairy product consumption via regression analysis. This study suggests 3 major findings: First, while China's total milk production increased steadily by an average of 2.31 mmt per year from 1995 to 2008, it fluctuated around a flatline from 2009 to 2018 and the major factor for the 10-year stagnation was very likely the melamine scandal. Second, the melamine scandal's impacts on China's total dairy product consumption were relatively limited and the significant gaps between domestic consumption and production were met through increased dairy product imports, from 3.15 mmt in 2008 to 16.47 mmt in 2018 and reached a record high of 22.65 mmt in 2021. Third, the rapid increase in China's imports reduced its dairy product self-sufficiency ratio steadily from 91.12% in 2008 to 62.52% in 2021, resulting in significant policy concerns about whether China depended too much on dairy product imports. While the melamine scandal severely damaged consumer confidence in domestic dairy products and it took 10 years for China's milk production to recover to the 2008 level, China must take serious measures to improve its food safety and avoid safety scandals and outbreaks. Also, China is likely to remain as a large dairy product importer and continue to use international trade as an effective way to balance its domestic demand and supply of dairy products.

In response to the growing environmental problems directly or indirectly caused by plastic bags, many national and local governments around the world have enacted legislation or ordinances to ban or tax plastic bags and associated products like paper bags. While the effectiveness of such policy interventions is highly dependent on consumer reaction and behavior change, there are limited empirical studies on how such legislation and ordinances have changed consumer behavior in terms of their plastic and paper bag use in the United States. This paper empirically assesses the impacts of the state-level legislation in Vermont that has banned single-use plastic bags and imposed a fee on paper bags. Findings from a statewide survey conducted in 2022 indicate that self-reported average weekly use of plastic bags dropped by 91.47

While maple syrup as an iconic sweetener predominantly produced in Canada and the United States has experienced significant growth in the past four decades, the industry faces many climate, economic, and policy challenges. This study reviews the industry’s development, analyzes the major challenges faced by the industry, and derives recommendations for addressing such challenges and moving towards more sustainable development. Specifically, data from Canadian and U.S. government agencies and other sources is used to trace the industry’s development, examine the correlation between U.S. and Canadian maple syrup production and producer prices, assess the market impacts of Quebec’s production quota system, and discuss potential strategies. Historical data indicates that the maple syrup industry in both nations has experienced significant growth in production since the early 1980s but also increased volatility in both sap yield and maple syrup output, downward trends in producer prices, rising production costs, and increasing impacts of trade disputes and retaliations. Empirical analysis suggests that the production quota system in Quebec started in 2004 has limited the region’s production growth as compared to other major production regions, stabilized its producer prices around a level that is lower than the prices received in the late 2000s, and likely affected the prices received by U.S. maple syrup producers. Major recommendations from this study include shifting the focus from supply-side interventions to include more demand-side enhancement, increasing investment in technical innovation and climate mitigation, developing more value-added maple syrup products, and strengthening the marketing and promotion efforts to increase the demand for maple syrup in the domestic and foreign markets.

While there is very limited information on the cost of production (COP) for the emerging 100% grass-fed organic dairy sector, this study (1) estimates the COP using primary data collected from on-farm surveys, (2) assesses the correlation between COP and key production and management factors, (3) examines how land, feed and labor efficiency, and production scale affect the COP, and (4) derives recommendations for enhancing the economic efficiency of grass-fed organic dairy farms. Data collected via annual surveys in the Northeastern United States from 2019 to 2022 were analyzed through descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, hypothesis tests, and regression analysis. At an average cost of USD 45.91 per hundredweight equivalent of milk, the marginal impacts of the cows managed per full time equivalent labor and milk sold per cow on the COP were −USD 0.166 and −USD 0.003, respectively. Conversely, the COP increased by USD 1.44 when the crop acres per cow increased by one unit, and the COP of small farms with less than 45 cows was USD 6.20 higher than other farms. As farms are significantly different in resource endowment and other factors, the strategies for reducing the COP and improving the economic returns should be identified for individual farms. However, our analyses highlight the importance of enhancing labor efficiency in forage production, land management, milking and feeding, improving herd management and optimizing nutrition and dry matter intake to support high milk productivity. This study may help existing grass-fed dairy farms improve their farm management and reduce COP and help prospective farms assess their suitability for transitioning to grass-fed operation.

This study reviews the development of the U.S. maple syrup industry, assesses its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT), and derives recommendations for the industry to attain a more sustainable development. While the industry faces the challenges of increasing yield and production volatility, a downward trend in producer prices since 2008, increasing competition from imports, and impacts of trade policies, etc., it needs innovative strategies to turn its weaknesses and threats into strengths and opportunities. Major recommendations, based on a comprehensive review of the industry's development and trends and a SWOT analysis, include establishing a national or regional producer governance organization, similar to the Quebec Maple Syrup Producers (QMSP) or the American Honey Producers Association, to advocate for maple syrup producers on issues like trade policies, quality standards and certification, environmental regulations, and to enhance maple syrup producers' market power, increasing the investment and adoption of climate-resilient technologies, developing more value-added maple syrup products according to consumer preferences and demand, and strengthening the marketing and promotion efforts of industrial organizations, government agents and private enterprises through collaboration for the goal of increasing the demand for U.S. maple syrup in the domestic and foreign markets.

While joining farmer cooperatives has been identified as a way for farmers, especially small farmers, to overcome their limitations in the marketplace and increase their income, this paper presents an analytical framework for examining how farmer cooperative may increase farmer income in rural China, empirically assesses the impacts of such membership on household income, and examines how the membership may affect income inequality. Data from a large-scale survey of rural households in China are used to examine the impacts of farmer cooperative membership and other factors on household income through a multivariate regression analysis and to test whether the impacts are different across income groups through a quantile regression analysis. The propensity score matching technique is used to address potential self-selection bias problems in the dataset and quantile regression is used to examine the impact for different income quantiles or groups of farmers. The empirical results indicate that farmers participating in professional cooperatives, on average, earned significantly higher income than their counterparts, but the positive impact was not statistically significant for low-income quantiles. This finding suggests that encouraging the development of and participation in farmer cooperatives could increase the average income but may not contribute directly to the policy goal of reducing income inequality in rural China.

Objective: This research examines the effects of educational materials, delivered with "take-home and cook-with-friends" meal kits, on college students' food agency. Participants: In the spring of 2021, 186 students were recruited at a US public university and randomly allocated into either an intervention group that received meal kits and educational materials or a control group that received only meal kits. Methods: Meal kits containing local ingredients were distributed weekly to the participants and surveys were conducted to measure participants' food agency, using the Cooking and Food Provisioning Action Scale (CAFPAS). Hypothesis tests and regression analysis were then conducted to examine the educational intervention's effects on the CAFPAS scores. Results: The educational intervention had a positive and statistically significant effect on students' CAFPAS scores. Conclusions: Educational interventions hold promise in enhancing college students' food agency, at least in the short term.

While charitable donations help to raise funds and contribute to pandemic prevention and control, there are many unanswered questions about how people make such donation decisions, especially in countries like China where charitable donations have played an increasing role in recent years. This study contributes to the literature by assessing the potential impacts of Chinese netizens' experience with the 2002 severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic on their willingness to donate for COVID-19 pandemic prevention and control. Specifically, this study applies a difference-in-differences (DID) model to a dataset collected from a nationwide survey to examine how individuals' exposure to the SARS epidemic affects their willingness to donate to alleviate the COVID-19 pandemic. The results suggest that individuals' SARS epidemic experiences in their early lives, especially during the "childhood-adolescence" period, had a lasting and far-reaching impact on their willingness to donate toward COVID-19 pandemic prevention and control. Also, the impacts were likely heterogeneous by such sociodemographic factors as educational background, health status, and income level. The empirical findings highlight the importance of considering early-life experiences in developing and implementing epidemic prevention and control policies. While the SARS experience likely affected Chinese netizens' willingness to donate toward COVID-19 pandemic prevention and control, lessons learned from both the SARS epidemic and COVID-19 pandemic could be used to develop more effective public health education and prevention programs as well as to increase public donations for future pandemic prevention and control.

While farmland transfer in rural China has emerged as a critical issue in China’s land use policy, there are many unanswered questions about the factors behind ongoing farmland transfer. This study uses survey data from 243 villages in Southwest China to examine how nonfarm employment and large-scale farm enterprises might affect farmland transfer. Specifically, this paper employs a spatial autoregressive (SAR) model with a geographic distance weighting matrix at the village level to explore this effect. Empirical results suggest that the proportion of migrant workers and large-scale farm enterprises positively affects the scale of farmland transfer, while the proportion of local nonfarm workers negatively affects it. By comparing estimation results from the SAR with those from the OLS model, it is found that the OLS model may overestimate the positive impact of migrant workers and underestimate the negative impact of local nonfarm workers on farmland transfer.

The distribution of more than 100 billion plastic bags every year in the United States has caused many environmental problems and an increasing number of local and state governments have enacted ordinances and legislations to ban or tax single-use plastic bags and other plastic products. By February 2022, a total of 11 states had enacted statewide plastic bag bans and several other states have proposed similar legislative bills. This paper reviews the development of state-level plastic bag legislation, discusses the preemption conflicts between local and state governments and other obstacles, and assesses the potentials and challenges of further plastic bag legislation for enhancing the effectiveness and efficiency of legislative interventions. This study suggests that the United States should start to develop federal plastic bag legislation to overcome the preemption conflicts between state and local governments, reduce the inconsistencies in plastic bag legislations across states, and catch up with many other developed nations in plastic waste reduction. Also, public investment in research, information dissemination, environmental education, and policy assessment should be increased to enhance public awareness of, participation in, and support for reducing plastic waste.

The two purposes of this study are to identify factors for the failure of 31% of community anaerobic digesters (CADs) in the United States through a case study of the development, operation, and shutdown of a $4.5 million CAD in Vermont, and to derive policy recommendations for sustainable development of CADs. While many studies have used aggregated data to assess the potentials, obstacles, and policy implications of on-farm biogas production, this paper contributes to the literature with a case study of a large CAD's investment and funding sources, feedstock utilization, energy output, and operating costs and revenues over multiple years. Empirical findings suggest that it is technically feasible to use cow manure and organic wastes from multiple sources to generate electricity, but the economic feasibility and returns depend highly on grants and subsidies for initial investments and on such factors as electricity price, feedstock availability and quality, and market price of renewable energy credits (RECs). Major reasons for the shutdown of this CAD, and likely a large proportion of other CADs in the country, include underestimation of technical problems and operating costs, overestimation of financial returns, and low REC price in the past several years. Future CADs should be invested in and operated by commercial enterprises and government subsidies, and public supports should be based on CADs' outputs such as electricity and utilization of their byproducts like waste heat and recycled nutrients. Also, the educational and research needs of nonprofit organizations could be met via collaboration with privately operated CADs.

PurposeThis paper traces the timeline and milestones of Chinese graduate students in agricultural economics and related fields at foreign universities, with an emphasis on North American universities, since the early 1980s, and assesses the contributions of Chinese doctoral recipients from foreign universities to agricultural economic research and education in North America and China.Design/methodology/approachData from department and college websites, associations of agricultural economics, university libraries and databases of theses and dissertations and selected agricultural economic journals in English and Chinese are used to attain the above purposes through graphical and bibliometric analyses.FindingsFirst, the numbers of Chinese doctoral recipients and tenure-track and tenured faculty in agricultural economics at North American universities have increased steadily and significantly. Second, Chinese scholars in North America have achieved tremendous success in agricultural economic research via high-quality publications, prestigious awards, editorship of top journals, leadership in professional organizations, etc. Third, more Chinese doctoral recipients overseas have increasingly returned to China and are playing important roles in China’s agricultural economic research, education and international collaboration. Fourth, the publications of overseas Chinese scholars in Chinese journals and those of their counterparts working in China on topics beyond China are relatively limited and more collaboration may enhance the global impacts of Chinese agricultural economists.Research limitations/implicationsThis research is limited by data availability and quality and the data problems are discussed in the paper.Originality/valueThis is likely the first study to assess the contributions of Chinese doctoral recipients from foreign universities to agricultural economic research and education in China and abroad.

The purposes of this study are to assess the COVID-19 pandemic's impacts on the dairy industries in China and the United States and to derive policy recommendations for enhancing the diary industries' resilience to pandemics and other market shocks. Specifically, data from the two nations are used to analyze and compare the mechanisms through which the pandemic has affected their dairy industries and to discuss potential lessons from their experiences. The findings suggest that this pandemic has heavily affected the dairy industries in both China and the United States through similar mechanisms, such as decreased farmgate milk prices, disruption and difficulties of moving milk within the supply chains, worker shortages, increased production costs, and lack of operating capital. There were also significant differences in the affecting mechanisms between the two nations, including transportation difficulties from widespread road closures and significant reduction in holiday sales of dairy products in China, and the shutdown of many dairy processors in the United States due to the closing of schools, restaurants, and hotels. While government financial reliefs are highly needed to help many dairy farms and processors survive this pandemic in the short term, the dairy industries and governments need to work together to develop long-term strategies and policies to balance the industries' efficiency and flexibility, product specialization and diversification, supply chain integration and local food systems, and market mechanisms and policy regulations and interventions.

This study examines the development and trends of China's alfalfa market and imports, identifies key factors for the rapid increase in China's alfalfa imports, and discusses potential impacts of the U.S.–China trade dispute and retaliations on the alfalfa markets and trade in both nations. China's rapid transition toward larger-scale commercial dairy production, with enhanced feed and cost management as well as quality and safety control, and its limited resources for high-quality alfalfa production are key factors for the dramatic increase in its alfalfa imports, from 19 601 metric tons in 2008 to 1.38 million metric tons (mmt) in 2018. While the United States dominated China's alfalfa imports with an average share of 97.01% from 2007 to 2017, the share dropped to 83.76% in 2018 and 63.28% in January 2019 due to the trade dispute and retaliations started in 2018. China will likely remain a large importer of alfalfa because of both its growing demand and the comparative advantages of imported alfalfa in quality and price, but the imports from the United States will be highly affected by the ongoing trade dispute and negotiations. China is also expected to make more efforts to reduce its dependence on U.S. alfalfa through increased investment in domestic alfalfa production and identification of alternative sources of alfalfa and other hay imports.

Many U.S. dairy farms, especially small farms, are struggling to stay in business due to difficult economic conditions. While switching to organic milk production has been identified as one way to improve farm profitability, there are very limited economic data available on organic dairy profitability and the key factors contributing to its variation among organic dairy farms. This study analyzes a 10-year longitudinal dataset of Vermont organic dairy farms (2006–2016), collected by the University of Vermont Extension, to identify key factors influencing farm profitability and quantify their impact on farm return on assets (ROA) through a multivariate fixed-effects regression model. Results suggest that significant factors for organic farm profitability measured by ROA include feeding management, farm management, farm size, milk price and input costs. Such findings may help many organic dairy farms identify potential areas for improving their profitability and conventional farms evaluate the potential financial benefits of switching to organic operation.

Information on public support and willingness to pay (WTP) for renewable energy from alternative sources is critically important for the development and evaluation of renewable energy policies and programs. This study assesses consumer support and WTP for electricity from solar panels, wind turbines, and on-farm anaerobic digester systems (ADS) in the United States, using data collected from a household survey in the state of Vermont. Empirical results suggest that solar power was the respondents' top choice for public investment, and cow power (electricity generated from ADS) was the least-favored choice. Also, the variations in the likelihood of being willing to pay a premium for each renewable electricity across respondents were closely associated with factors such as education, political affiliation, homeownership, and local agricultural engagement. The relatively low level of public support and WTP for cow power is likely the result of unfamiliarity with this renewable source of electricity, and more educational efforts are highly needed to promote this renewable energy with many environmental benefits for a dairy state.

While gender-imbalanced marriage migration across borders and regions and its socioeconomic impacts have been widely reported in developing nations, this paper reports empirical findings based on data from China since 1980. China’s international marriages were characterized with more than 95% of brides from mainland China in the 1980s but the proportion has dropped gradually to around 60% in recent years. Analysis of China’s census data and a panel dataset from Shanghai suggests that proportionally more women migrated from relatively less-developed to more-developed regions through marriage and the variation in income across regions is the key factor behind the migration pattern. China’s gender-imbalanced marriage migration has caused problems such as male marriage squeeze in poor rural areas and “leftover women” in large cities like Shanghai. Policies for poverty reduction and more balanced economic development across regions are recommended for reducing such gender imbalance and the associated socioeconomic problems.