Let Us Hear You PERC’s Mid-Term Report Card on the Bush administration’s environmental policy has prompted many comments. We welcome responses from all comers and would like to post them on this page. Please email your comments to us at perc@perc.org and include some brief information about yourself, your job, or your particular interest inContinue reading “Commentary on Mid-term Report Card”
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Can We Expect Environmental Progress From the Bush Administration?
President Bush had numerous chances to show that conservative principles include conservation, yet at midterm scores low grades for implementing the tenets of free market environmentalism, which emphasizes establishing incentives and clarifying property rights within a growing economy that values environmental quality. Instead his administration continues an unfortunate trend of making the Republican Party lookContinue reading “Can We Expect Environmental Progress From the Bush Administration?”
Ecological Agrarian: Agriculture’s First Evolution in 10,000 Years
Demands on agriculture are changing and the focus of agriculture is changing too.
Property Rights: Cooperation, Conflict, and Law
An introduction to the economics and law of property rights.
Agricultural Policy and the Environment
How and why politics has affected the traditional stewardship role played by agriculture
Restoring Harmony in the Klamath Basin
Restoring Harmony in the Klamath Basin explains how this conflict developed and offers a solution—markets in water. Written by Roger Meiners and Lea-Rachel Kosnik, this paper persuasively argues that clarification of property rights to water is fundamental to ending the crisis.
Blast from the Past
Grain growers in Washington’s Spokane Valley traditionally burned the rubble on their fields after harvest. More recently, concern about air quality amidst the growing population is forcing many of them to give up the practice. As a result, the farmers have been left in the lurch. They still must remove the rubble, which they doContinue reading “Blast from the Past”
Alligators Go West
The high desert of southern Idaho seems an unlikely spot for fish farms and alligator ranches, but one ingenious farmer has made a success of just such an operation. Leo Ray, who studied fish farming at the University of Oklahoma, visited the area after graduation and decided it would be a near perfect location forContinue reading “Alligators Go West”
Wastewater on Sale
A tidal wave of wastewater from rapidly growing towns and suburbs is creating a headache for officials in counties north of San Francisco. Somehow, somewhere, they have to dispose of it. Small farmers who buy the water for agricultural uses have helped relieve some of the pressure. They also have eased the problem in anotherContinue reading “Wastewater on Sale”
What’s So Special About the Farm?
Why have farmers received such largesse from the federal government?