Announcing 'Ag-Impact'--
An E-Mail Discussion Group
Moderated By
Dr. Lois Levitan, Cornell University

       Ag-Impact Internet discussion group is a new international forum for discussing issues, problems and progress in developing methods for assessing the environmental impacts of agriculture. We hope the discussion will be useful and interesting to the growing body of researchers and practitioners working to develop environmental impact assessment systems, or involved with the application of environmental impact assessment tools.

      Several indicators suggest that the time is ripe for starting this electronic conversation: Most critically, perhaps, is that e-mail makes it possible! But we also note that a substantial part of the recent (Feb. 1996) National Integrated Pest Management Symposium (USA) was devoted to issues around the 'assessment of IPM'. And we see a growing interest among producer and consumer groups in "Green Labeling" products for the marketplace, and find ongoing interest in developing ways to assess the sustainability of natural resources, and investigate the role of agriculture in pollution-generation. Growers, researchers, consumer groups, businesses and regulatory agencies are searching for information on how to assess particular production scenarios and products. We fully expect that discussion of assessment methods will be thrust more centrally into the debate on agriculture and the environment. And we invite and welcome your participation in this dialog.

     'Ag-Impact' provides a forum for open discussion on topics such as:

  • Descriptions of objectives and methods of systems (models/tools) which assess environmental impacts (EI) of agriculture
  • Critiques of EI assessment systems, methods and approaches
  • Identifying target audiences/perceived uses for different EI assessment tools
  • Encouraging application of appropriate EI assessment methods
  • Presenting and interpreting results of EI assessments
  • Methods for adapting existing EI assessment tools to additional agricultural scenarios and site conditions
  • Data & databases for EI assessments of agriculture: sources, availability, quality, methods for filling gaps, etc.
  • Appropriate environmental indicators, test endpoints and decision endpoints
  • Relevant conference and seminar announcements, calls for papers and research/extension proposals, job announcements, abstracts and reviews of articles and reports, and interim research reports are all appropriate and welcome postings
  • Announcement of research plans, to encourage collaboration and/or reduce overlap in effort.

       Ag-Impact began March 1996 as an automated, unmoderated e-mail discussion group administered by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) in Minneapolis, Minnesota (USA) and hosted by Dr. Lois Levitan Department of Fruit and Vegetable Science at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY (USA) .

      IATP also hosts a library list, Ag-Impact-lib, which is a repository for bibliographic listings and documents pertaining to environmental assessment tools and methodologies, including reports, statistics, fact sheets, press releases, statements or other pertinent documents. To post a document to the entire list, send it via e-mail to . Please name documents appropriately. Only subscribers may post to the list, and all postings to the library list will be reviewed by IATP staff previous to posting. This list will be accessible via IATP's watershed home page at "http://www.mtn.org/water".

To subscribe to Ag-Impact or Ag-Impact-lib: