Pesticide use has changed considerably over the past five decades. Rapid growth char-acterized the first 20 years, ending in 1981. The total quantity of pesticides applied to the 21 crops analyzed grew from 196 million pounds of pesticide active ingredients in 1960 to 632 million pounds in 1981. Improvements in the types and modes of action of active ingredients applied along with small annual fluctuations resulted in a slight down-ward trend in pesticide use to 516 million pounds in 2008. These changes were driven by economic factors that determined crop and input prices and were influenced...

This report examines the effects of the recent major recession and gradual recovery on county employment and unemployment rates, with an emphasis on rural America. The recession was marked by a 6-percent contraction in nonfarm employment and a doubling of the national unemployment rate between 2007 and 2009. Geographic variation in both the employment effects of the recession and the pace of job growth during the recovery has been striking, with large differences between regions, between metro and nonmetro counties, and between more and less rural nonmetro counties. We document these...

According to the U.S. Census of Agriculture, 294,000 farms operated on 10 or fewer acres in 2007. While most small acreage (SA) operations did very little farming, approximately 50,000 SA farms had gross sales of $10,000 or more in 2007; 3,600 reported grossing $500,000 or more. Thus, a limited land base does not necessarily translate into low sales. This report focuses on SA farms, especially those grossing $10,000 or more in a given year, and examines such characteristics as production strategies, types of products, sales, household income, and financial performance. The 46,000 SA farms...

Broilers, young chickens bred for meat, account for nearly all U.S. chicken consumption. U.S. production of broilers grew rapidly until the mid-1990s, but growth then began to slow and production declined in 2009, with very modest growth since then. The industry's distinctive organization-with a high degree of vertical integration, nearly complete reliance on contract growers to raise chickens for poultry companies, and grower compensation based on relative performance-helped fuel growth in the early period, and growth provided good returns and low risks for growers. However, slowing growth...

Conservation payments lead to improvement in environmental quality only if farmers and ranchers who receive them adopt conservation practices that would not have been adopted without the payment. When a voluntary payment causes a change in practice(s) that lead(s) to improved environmental quality, these changes are "additional." We estimate this "additionality" for a number of common conservation practices that are frequently supported by existing conservation programs. We find that the level of additionality varies by practice and that additionality is high for structural and vegeta-tive...

This guide is intended to aid Forest Inventory and Analysis foresters in identifying 43 plants listed in Appendix I of the FIA Field Guide 4.0. This document will change as invasive specifies are added or removed form the list.

Managing forests for carbon benefi ts is a consideration for climate change, bioenergy, sustainability, and ecosystem services. A rapidly growing body of scientifi c literature on forest carbon management includes experimental, modeling, and synthesis approaches, at the standto landscape- to continental-level. We conducted a search of the scientifi c literature on the topic of managing forests for carbon, and compiled an annotated list of citations. We chose to focus specifi cally on studies that addressed carbon in aboveground carbon pools, at both the micro (tree, stand) and macro...

The manuscript that follows has been a work-in-progress for nearly 20 years. In 1979, the Idaho State Office of the Bureau of Land Management, United States Department of the Interior, began the process of collecting relevant publications and technical references to riparian and wetland sites and their management.