Ellison Chair in International Floriculture
Ellison Chair in International FloricultureTeaching, Research, Extension and Service

Factors Affecting Growers’ Willingness to Adopt Sustainable Floriculture Practices

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From the August 2009 issue of HortScience by Tanya Hall (Purdue University) et al:

In June to Oct. 2008, a U.S. floriculture survey was conducted to examine the factors affecting growers’ willingness to adopt sustainable practices. The factors affecting adoption of sustainable practices were evaluated in five areas: environmental regulations, customer value, growers’ attitudes toward sustainability, age, and operation size. A logistic regression model was used to examine factors affecting growers’ adoption of sustainable practices. Nearly two-thirds (65.2%) of respondents thought sustainability was very important to the environment. Similarly, more than half (63%) of the respondents had sustainable practices in their operations.

Although respondents had positive attitudes toward sustainability and the environment, these positive attitudes alone were unable to predict adoption behaviors. The two most important factors that affected adoption of sustainable practices were the concerns about implementation and the risk perceived by growers. Neither perceived customer value nor the stringency of state regulations affected the adoption of sustainable practices. The results from this study provide original insight into growers’ views of sustainability and identify the educational assistance needed by growers to overcome the factors affecting their adoption of sustainable practices.

Register now for water webinar series

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E71XRCijH9E]

CLICK HERE to register for the first webinar of the series (see below).

August 17, 2009 – 2:00 p.m. CDT
Webinar 1 Topic:
What’s in Your Water? Water Quality and Treatment for Pathogens and Algae
Dr. Paul Fisher, University of Florida

September 15, 2009 – 11:00 a.m. CDT
Webinar 2 Topic:
Knowing Exactly When to Apply Irrigation Water
Dr. Peter Ling, Ohio State University

October 20, 2009 – 11:00 a.m. CDT
Webinar 3 Topic:
Water Management that Makes Cents!
Dr. Don Wilkerson, Texas A&M; University

Using Facebook for commerce

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Most retailers use social media sites as a means to entice and direct consumers to another site to make a purchase. Now 1-800-Flowers.com is foregoing that extra step by enabling consumers to place orders directly on the company’s Facebook page (www.facebook.com/1800flowers).

“Facebook is redefining the social web, a cultural and social phenomenon that has changed the way we connect with one another,” said Jim McCann, CEO and Founder of 1-800-Flowers.com, in a press release. “In 1992, 1-800-Flowers was one of the first businesses to embrace the internet and in 1994 we were the first merchant of any kind to transact on AOL. Fifteen years later, we are extremely proud to again be the first — this time in launching a retail store inside Facebook, a bold step in unlocking the tremendous marketing potential of social media.”

With 1,847 fans as of 8:50 EST last night, 1-800-Flowers is a long way from unlocking the wallets and purses of the 250 million active Facebook users.

Source: Retail Wire

Top 1% now pays more taxes than bottom 95%

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Newly released data from the IRS clearly debunks the conventional Beltway rhetoric that the “rich” are not paying their fair share of taxes.

Indeed, the IRS data shows that in 2007—the most recent data available—the top 1 percent of taxpayers paid 40.4 percent of the total income taxes collected by the federal government. This is the highest percentage in modern history. By contrast, the top 1 percent paid 24.8 percent of the income tax burden in 1987, the year following the 1986 tax reform act.

Remarkably, the share of the tax burden borne by the top 1 percent now exceeds the share paid by the bottom 95 percent of taxpayers combined. In 2007, the bottom 95 percent paid 39.4 percent of the income tax burden. This is down from the 58 percent of the total income tax burden they paid twenty years ago.

To put this in perspective, the top 1 percent is comprised of just 1.4 million taxpayers and they pay a larger share of the income tax burden now than the bottom 134 million taxpayers combined.

Some in Washington say the tax system is still not progressive enough. However, the recent IRS data bolsters the findings of an OECD study released last year showing that the U.S.—not France or Sweden—has the most progressive income tax system among OECD nations. We rely more heavily on the top 10 percent of taxpayers than does any nation and our poor people have the lowest tax burden of those in any nation.

We are definitely overdue for some honesty in the debate over the progressivity of the nation’s tax burden before lawmakers enact any new taxes to pay for expanded health care.


Source: Tax Policy Blog

Friedman on capitalism

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWsx1X8PV_A]

Thirty years ago, in 1979, Milton Friedman—the Nobel Prize-winning economist and Britannica contributor who was born this day in 1912—famously “schooled” talk-show host Phil Donahue on the nature of greed and the virtues of capitalism.

HT: Britannica Blog

The cost of "reform"

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The latest CBO report was released yesterday (click here) analyzing the specifications related to health insurance coverage that are reflected in the America’s Affordable Health Choices Act, which was released by the House Committee on Ways and Means on July 14. Here are the highlights (emphasis mine):

Looking ahead to the decade beyond 2019, CBO tries to evaluate the rate at which the budgetary impact of each of those broad categories would be likely to change over time. The net cost of the coverage provisions would be growing at a rate of more than 8 percent per year in nominal terms between 2017 and 2019; we would anticipate a similar trend in the subsequent decade. The reductions in direct spending would also be larger in the second decade than in the first, and they would represent an increasing share of spending on Medicare over that period; however, they would be much smaller at the end of the10-year budget window than the cost of the coverage provisions, so they would not be likely to keep pace in dollar terms with the rising cost of the coverage expansion. Revenue from the surcharge on high-income individuals would be growing at about 5 percent per year in nominal terms between 2017 and 2019; that component would continue to grow at a slower rate than the cost of the coverage expansion in the following decade. In sum, relative to current law, the proposal would probably generate substantial increases in federal budget deficits during the decade beyond the current 10-year budget window.

My take on this: If cost savings is the objective, the current plan will not get us there. Basically, it comes down to this — you can either expand health care coverage or reduce costs, but not both as the above analysis shows. It would take a miracle, not rhetoric, to pull that one off.

New water webinar series upcoming

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Given the success of its inaugural Shine in 09 webinar series (recordings are online at http://ellisonchair.tamu.edu/webinar.htm), the Ellison Chair in International Floriculture announces a new 3-part webinar series that focuses on water quality, conservation, and management.

Why water?

Access to an adequate supply of high quality water is also a growing concern for the nursery/floral industry due to drought, urbanization, and competing demands have decreased available irrigation water. Additionally, regulations on consumption and runoff have greatly impacted greenhouse and nursery management and profitability!

The first of these water-related webinars will be presented on August 17 at 2:00 p.m. CDT by Dr. Paul Fisher, Associate Professor and Extension Specialist at the University of Florida. His topic will be: “What’s living in your water? Water quality and treatment for pathogens and algae.”

Paul also serves as the lead collaborator for the Water Education Alliance for Horticulture. The goal of the Alliance is to reduce runoff and water-related disease issues in the greenhouse and nursery industry by increasing grower knowledge of water technologies and water conservation practices. Current projects are focusing on the development of accessible educational materials for growers. They are also researching practical methods to assess how well treatment technologies work to treat pathogens. Click here to review some of the activities, programs, and educational materials of the WEAH.

To register, click here, or copy the link below into your browser:

Program: Ellison Chair Water Webinar Series
Program address: https://tamu.webex.com/tamu/onstage/g.php?p=1&t;=m

From the latest SAF Trend Tracker

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From Robert Barr…

Has the economic storm passed? The trashing of the wind and rain has settled down significantly, and perhaps it’s time for consumers and business to come up out of their shelters, look around, start removing debris, and start the economic recovery.

That’s one way to think about the economic conditions today — but a more appropriate analogy is that the relative calm we’ve seen during the late spring and early summer is only the eye of a passing hurricane. We’ve gone through great economic tumult, especially since September 2008, but there’s still more economic adjustment yet to come.

Two areas of particular concern that haven’t yet grabbed the headlines in the same way that residential real estate has are commercial real estate, where refinancing maturing loans is becoming more and more difficult, and consumer credit cards, which will probably face huge write-offs in the coming few years.

And we’re still facing an adjustable-rate mortgage reset problem, as the popular five-year ARMs taken out in 2005-06 go through the same initial reset phase we saw in subprime mortgages (which generally reset after the first two or three years). One mitigating factor is that today’s lower interest rates mean that the new, reset rates won’t generate the same amount of payment shock seen with the subprime mortgages.

Meanwhile, consumers aren’t spending in the same way they had a few years ago, pushing the consumer savings rate from about zero a few years ago to almost 7% of GDP this spring. That’s prudent, of course, and good news for the long-term health of the economy. Consumers know that jobs are being cut and that the soaring government deficit will have to result in higher taxes down the road. Baby boomers, seeing the devastation in their 401(k) accounts just as their oldest members reach retirement, know they need to save more today to ensure a financially secure tomorrow. All of this is keeping consumers from reaching for their wallets, and it amounts to another difficult economic adjustment.

Meanwhile, in addition to grappling with the recession, businesses face a couple of critical unknowns in how they will be able to operate within the next few years. Whether or not you support national healthcare or the cap-and-trade energy legislation working its way through Congress, there’s great uncertainty about how this will play out in two to five years from now. Sound long-term investment decisions are difficult to make when the rules of the game are subject to such significant change – even apart from whether the changes actually support or harm the business climate. Even if the recovery does take hold, expect another “jobless” recovery as businesses bide their time to sort out the ramifications of what the federal government decides to impose.

Meanwhile, the rate of economic contraction in the global economy accelerated during the first half of 2009, and that of course will harm our exporting industries.

What to make of all this? Despite the media reports of the “green shoots” of economic recovery, we still have many difficult economic adjustments ahead of us that will keep any recovery subdued for some time. And that timetable is subject to whatever comes out of Washington, DC – not a good position for private businesses looking to rebuild after the destruction of the storm of the past couple of years.