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Policy Issues in Modeling
Pages 21-28

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From page 21... ... The focus of the existing programs include environmental resources such as agricultural lands, forests, wetlands, estuaries, rivers, streams, lakes, as well as particular groups of organisms for example, birds. "In developing monitoring for genetically modified crops," Bartell said, "we ought to at least go back and see what those programs are doing how they are set up, how they identified what to measure in relation to their objectives and look at some of the statistical design, some of their mechanics of monitoring." Beyond that, it is possible that ecological monitoring of transgenic crops might be able to piggyback on or at least borrow data from the existing programs. Read the entire page →
From page 22... ... "We want valid, compatible, and consistent data, and that demands training, technical support, data-collection quality-assurance instructions, checks and evaluations, accurate interpretation and classification, and quality, quality, quality." USDA also collects data on farms across the United States with its Agricultural Research Management Studies. The surveys have three main objectives, said Jorge Fernandez-Cornejo, an economist at USDA's Economic Research Service: "first, to gather information about agricultural production, resource use, input use, and farm practices; second, to determine the cost of production; and third, to determine farmers' net income and financial situation." The surveys gather data about farms in nine categories, including Read the entire page →
From page 23... ... Monitoring is an effective way to assess the efficacy of your management program. We can take the information from monitoring and update our guidance so that the outcome is best agricultural practices, or we can use the information to update our monitoring efforts to refine and focus the activities that we are looking at." Any ecological monitoring scheme should start with an understanding of what has already been done, from government surveys to industry stewardship programs, and work from there. Read the entire page →
From page 26... ... It seems to me that the farther away we get from the farmer's field, the more complex the monitoring is, the more expensive it is, and the less likely there are to be funds to do it." "It will be important," Bartell added, "to select ecological effects that are compatibly scaled with the monitoring resources. It doesn't make sense to choose a measurement that requires 50 years of monitoring to demonstrate an impact if the necessary resources to perform such longer term monitoring cannot be reliably committed." A third issue that will affect monitoring programs is the question of who will carry out the monitoring. Read the entire page →
From page 27... ... Instead, it is important to have a process that is open and to do things like monitoring, even when you don't have to, so that people don't have to trust the opinion of an expert." Those who design ecological monitoring programs for genetically modified crops could learn something, Bartell suggested, from the US national laboratories run by the Department of Energy, which have had to regain public trust as they clean up a variety of sites that have been contaminated by nuclear wastes and other hazardous materials. "One of the ways that they have effectively addressed those problems," Bartell noted, "is to allow the development of local stakeholder committees so that the public can introduce what it thinks are the important issues in relation to the cleanup and associated risk-assessment and risk-management issues." Finding ways for the public to have input into the design and oversight of monitoring operations would make it much more likely that the public would trust the results of monitoring. Read the entire page →

From page 21...

... The focus of the existing programs include environmental resources such as agricultural lands, forests, wetlands, estuaries, rivers, streams, lakes, as well as particular groups of organisms for example, birds. "In developing monitoring for genetically modified crops," Bartell said, "we ought to at least go back and see what those programs are doing how they are set up, how they identified what to measure in relation to their objectives and look at some of the statistical design, some of their mechanics of monitoring." Beyond that, it is possible that ecological monitoring of transgenic crops might be able to piggyback on or at least borrow data from the existing programs.

Read the entire page →

From page 22...

... "We want valid, compatible, and consistent data, and that demands training, technical support, data-collection quality-assurance instructions, checks and evaluations, accurate interpretation and classification, and quality, quality, quality." USDA also collects data on farms across the United States with its Agricultural Research Management Studies. The surveys have three main objectives, said Jorge Fernandez-Cornejo, an economist at USDA's Economic Research Service: "first, to gather information about agricultural production, resource use, input use, and farm practices; second, to determine the cost of production; and third, to determine farmers' net income and financial situation." The surveys gather data about farms in nine categories, including

Read the entire page →

From page 23...

... Monitoring is an effective way to assess the efficacy of your management program. We can take the information from monitoring and update our guidance so that the outcome is best agricultural practices, or we can use the information to update our monitoring efforts to refine and focus the activities that we are looking at." Any ecological monitoring scheme should start with an understanding of what has already been done, from government surveys to industry stewardship programs, and work from there.

Read the entire page →

From page 26...

... It seems to me that the farther away we get from the farmer's field, the more complex the monitoring is, the more expensive it is, and the less likely there are to be funds to do it." "It will be important," Bartell added, "to select ecological effects that are compatibly scaled with the monitoring resources. It doesn't make sense to choose a measurement that requires 50 years of monitoring to demonstrate an impact if the necessary resources to perform such longer term monitoring cannot be reliably committed." A third issue that will affect monitoring programs is the question of who will carry out the monitoring.

Read the entire page →

From page 27...

... Instead, it is important to have a process that is open and to do things like monitoring, even when you don't have to, so that people don't have to trust the opinion of an expert." Those who design ecological monitoring programs for genetically modified crops could learn something, Bartell suggested, from the US national laboratories run by the Department of Energy, which have had to regain public trust as they clean up a variety of sites that have been contaminated by nuclear wastes and other hazardous materials. "One of the ways that they have effectively addressed those problems," Bartell noted, "is to allow the development of local stakeholder committees so that the public can introduce what it thinks are the important issues in relation to the cleanup and associated risk-assessment and risk-management issues." Finding ways for the public to have input into the design and oversight of monitoring operations would make it much more likely that the public would trust the results of monitoring.

Read the entire page →

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Policy Issues in Modeling Pages 21-28

Policy Issues in Modeling
Pages 21-28