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Agricultural industrialization and the subsequent reliance on pesticides has resulted in numerous unintended consequences, such as impacts upon the environment and by extension human health. Eco‐efficiency is a strategy for sustainably increasing production, while simultaneously decreasing these externalities on ecological systems. Eco‐efficiency is defined as the ratio of production to environmental impacts. It has been widely adopted to improve chemical production, but we investigate the challenges of applying eco‐efficiency to pesticide use. Eco‐efficiency strategies include technological innovation, investment in research and development, improvement of business processes, and accounting for market forces. These components are often part of integrated pest management (IPM) systems that include alternatives to pesticides, but its implementation is often thwarted by commercial realities and technical challenges. We propose the creation and adoption of an eco‐efficiency index for pesticide use so that the broad benefits of eco‐efficient strategies such as IPM can be more readily quantified. We propose an index based upon the ratio of crop yield to a risk quotient (RQ) calculated from pesticide toxicity. Eco‐efficiency is an operational basis for optimizing pest management for sustainability. It naturally favors adoption of IPM and should be considered by regulators, researchers, and practitioners involved in pest management. © 2019 Society of Chemical Industry

Biomass inventories and techno‐economic supply studies tend to overestimate economic supply of crop and timber residues, because they ignore human decisions on whether to permit residue removal. By combining information about biophysical availability, production and delivery costs, and the willingness of different types of decision maker to permit removal of logging residues, we develop a realistic prediction of economic supply that becomes very price inelastic. Because managers of only 52% of Michigan and Wisconsin forestland studied would allow the removal of logging residues, we conclude that most forecasts overestimate residue biomass supply by 50 to 100%.

Institutional structure--or the rules and laws (both formal and informal) in use informing human interaction--is often held separate from mainstream economic research and analysis. The Legal Economic Performance (LEP) Framework, as developed and utilized by the author (with Eric Scorsone) in real-world extension work, centers on the analysis of human interdependence and its key legal components to consider the impacts of proposed or past changes to institutions. A language of legal relations-Hohfeldian analysis-is used to break down and describe the situation. Through this process, the key issue or issues of interdependence are identified, enabling the analyst to identify the structural options available to address it. Finally, the structural components of the institution, the distributional outcomes they give rise to, and assumptions about human conduct or behavior are considered. This paper introduces the LEP model and its uses by the wider heterodox community, with special attention to its application in the domain of housing rights and roadway congestion management.