Any deviation from a bright-red color leads to a discounted price or beef is discarded. Limited data are currently available on the economic losses due to retail beef discoloration. Therefore, the objective of the study was to estimate economic losses, the amount of beef discarded, natural resource wastage, and environmental impact due to beef discoloration. One-year data of total beef sales, total beef discarded, and discounted sale values were collected from 2 national retail chains and 1 regional retail chain located in the Southern United States, representing data from 5,034 stores and 44 states. The US beef system life cycle parameters from published literature were used to calculate the impact of discarded meat on water and energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. The study noted that approximately 2.55% of beef is discarded because of discoloration. The results indicate that the US beef industry loses $3.73 billion annually owing to discoloration. The total amount of beef discarded per year in the US corresponds to 194.70 million kg, which represents wasting 780,000 animals and the associated natural resources used in their production. A 1% decrease in discolored beef in the US could reduce natural resource waste and environmental impact by 23.95 billion L of water, 96.88 billion MJ of energy consumed, and 0.40 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emission along the beef upstream value chain. Therefore, improving the color stability of meat could increase the sustainability of beef production and limit the waste of nutritious beef, so the application of novel technologies to mitigate color deterioration should be imperative.

Smaller scale agricultural production for food, income, and as a hobby is a growing trend among United States (US) producers. Laying hens or quail are an economically viable livestock enterprise for small-scale producers with limited resources. In this study, we evaluated the economic feasibility of small-scale egg production (1,000 birds) and compared the profitability under 3 different production systems, and 2 price scenarios. The cost-benefit analysis in this study encompasses calculating and simulating all costs and returns associated with chicken and quail production over a 10-yr period. Two prices were evaluated, farm gate prices that US commercial producers face, and US farmers' market prices more often faced by small-scale producers. In all 3 production scenarios (chicken with the option of natural molting, chicken without molting, and raising quail) small-scale egg production is economically viable when farmers' market egg prices were used to calculate the Net Present Value (NPV). Using farmers' market prices, raising quail has the highest NPV. Raising chickens without molting has the second highest NPV, while raising chickens and allowing them to undergo molting has the lowest NPV. Contrarily, when farm gate egg prices are used in the estimation, only raising quail had a positive NPV. Although the quail enterprise resulted in the highest NPV under both price conditions, there may be marketing difficulties based on the producer's location. Producers located near cities, or Asian populations where quail eggs are more popular may be successful with small-scale quail operations.

United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) drinking water violation report is currently one of the most reliable measures of evaluating United States drinking water quality. While states continuously strive to comply with federal water quality standards making this documentation continuously relevant, consumers are likely to perceive water quality through sensory aesthetics or physical and virtual social networks. This research quantifies the relationship between consumer perceptions and government-reported drinking water quality to provide insights to state water managers and policymakers. We evaluated consumer perceptions of tap water using weekly social media data. The online search returned 898,709 mentions and 799,035 posts. Net sentiment, measured as the number of negative posts minus the number of positive posts divided by the number of posts expressing sentiment, was determined and ranged from −100 to 100. Net sentiment was uncorrelated with USEPA weekly water quality violations for most states. Net sentiment was correlated with violations related to arsenic standards (−0.223) and a total number of violations (−0.220) for Washington. For California, net sentiment was correlated with violations related to disinfectants and other organic compounds (−0.295). In many cases, water violations in one city became national news, which eclipsed local water issues circulating on social media.

Record flooding in Spring 2019 caused Oklahoma’s only inland navigable waterway to close. Closure disrupted the supply chains of agricultural and manufacturing industries. This research quantified the economic loss experienced by the region’s economy due to the disruption of waterway transportation services. We used a multi-regional input–output model to analyze impacts for the state’s congressional districts. The study found expected losses in employment of 63 to 750 jobs, $14.5 million to $165 million in output, and $5.7 million to $68.7 million in value-added to the economy, depending on the expected duration of closure and on assumptions regarding the sourcing of intermediate goods and services. Economic impacts were disproportionately experienced in different congressional districts and across economic sectors, depending on how tightly integrated those districts were to the manufacturing or agricultural sectors.

This paper analyzes public willingness to support farmer adoption of best management practices in Oklahoma’s Fort Cobb Watershed, a multiuse area for agriculture, residential water provision, and recreation. The study uses Oklahoma’s Meso-Scale Integrated Sociogeographic Network survey to conduct a contingent valuation analysis of a hypothetical, one-time tax that would support farmer adoption of pasture and riparian buffer management practices. Respondent heterogeneity is modeled using beta-binomial regression. Public support for the hypothetical program is stronger for the tandem implementation of riparian buffer establishment and pasture expansion (willingness to pay [WTP] = $290) and riparian buffer establishment (WTP = $317).