In response to a concern about irrigation owners' exploitative pricing to buyers, this paper investigates the determinants of groundwater price in Madhya Pradesh, India. Observing bilateral negotiations over groundwater prices between water sellers and buyers, we explicitly incorporate the differences in bargaining power as one of the determinants. Since the past literature on land tenancy markets suggests that prices become higher under output sharing contracts, we also examine whether this applies to groundwater markets. Our empirical analyses show that output sharing buyers pay higher prices to the sellers than buyers under either fixed or flat charge contracts presumably due to a risk premium payment and an implicit interest payment. Furthermore, we found that the water price becomes higher when the buyers have no alternative water seller nearby. Although these premiums attached to the water price may not be considered excessively high under the constraint of imperfect contingent markets, if equity is to be achieved, the individuals who must be targeted first are output sharing buyers who have no alternative sellers.

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This paper estimates "input-saving" and "output-augmenting" productivity (PGX and PGY) with respect to the stock of technological knowledge resulting from public R&E investments as well as returns to scale (RTS) at farm level in Japanese agriculture for the period 1965-97. It also investigates the impacts of set-aside and public R&E policies on PGX, PGY, and RTS. In attaining objectives, a multi-product translog variable cost function is estimated using farm management data for Japanese agriculture excluding the Hokkaido district. Empirical results show that both PGX and PGY have experienced decreasing trends, while returns to scale have shown increasing trends since 1972. Additionally, the set-aside programs seemed to have the effect of discouraging larger-scale farming. Meanwhile, public R&E activities have encouraged larger-scale farming but have had negative effects on PGX and PGY. The negative effects may have been caused mainly by declining effciency in the utilization of research outputs on the part of farmers probably because of dampened incentives due partly to the set-aside programs.

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This paper presents the results from a survey of New York dairy farms that links manure management practices and farmer willingness to participate in voluntary environmental programs, focusing on those operations that are not automatically designated as Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations. A wide divergence is found between actual and recommended manure management practices on individual dairy farms, the apparent ability of farms to divert financial resources to environmental practices, and the willingness to participate in voluntary programs at various annual costs per cow. These findings have policy implications for the USDA-USEPA [30] National Strategy for Animal Feeding Operations. The findings also may help foster comparisons and enhance understanding of environmental management issues in Japan and the United States.

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Based on intensive village study this paper tries to show that the rapid agricultural growth in West Bengal since the 1980s is mainly attributable to the development of private shallow tubewell irrigation, rather than the agrarian reforms. Large farmers mainly invested in tubewells, but it does not mean that they monopolize agricultural profit as the so-called 'waterlords'. On the contrary, water sales business became less profitable as the number of tubewells increased in the village, and the real water charge declined through the changes of contractual arrangement in the groundwater market. It also comments on the current situation of irrigation subsidy relating to state-operated DTWs and power subsidy given to electrified tubewells, as well as their effects to irrigated farming. Lastly, it points out the large difference in factor shares in rice production between West Bengal and Bangladesh, arguing that West Bengal agriculture is much more equitable in favor of landless laborers.

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