Agriculture as a Managed Ecosystem: Implications for Econometric Analysis of Production Risk

Managed ecosystems are complex, dynamic systems with spatially varying inputs and outputs that are the result of interrelated physical, biological, and human decision making processes. There is a growing recognition by the scientific community that principles from the biological, physical, and social sciences must be integrated to understand and predict the behavior of complex biological and human systems such as managed ecosystems. This recognition is evidenced by recent federal government research initiatives on biocomplexity by the National Science Foundation, and on human dimensions of climate change by agencies such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Energy. Agricultural ecosystems are arguably the most important and pervasive managed ecosystems. Understanding and predicting the behavior of agroecosystems is critically important for a number of leading public policy issues. These issues include the environmental and human health consequences of agroecosystems, and the impacts of climate change on the global food supply.

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