From mritchie@igc.apc.orgSun Aug 18 10:36:38 1996 Date: Tue, 12 Mar 1996 03:46:23 -0400 From: mritchie@igc.apc.org Announcing a New E-Mail Discussion Group: "Assessing Environmental Impacts of Agriculture" We are forming a new Internet discussion group and invite your participation. 'Ag-Impact' will be a forum for discussing issues, problems and progress in developing methods for assessing environmental impacts of agriculture. It is intended as an international forum for the growing body of multi-disciplinary researchers and practitioners working to develop environmental impact assessment systems and assessment tools, or involved with the application of environmental impact assessment methods. With a large portion of the recent National Integrated Pest Management Symposium (USA) devoted to assessing IPM activities, with growing interest among producer and consumer groups in "Green Labeling" products for the marketplace, and with ongoing interest in assessing natural resource sustainability and the role of agriculture in pollution-generation, we expect that discussion of assessment methods will be thrust more centrally into the debate on agriculture and the environment. Increased interest in this field is being shown by growers, researchers, consumer groups, businesses and regulatory agencies which are searching for information on applying assessment systems to particular production scenarios and products. 'Ag-Impact' will be 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 and 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' will be 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) (e-mail: LCL3@cornell.edu). To post a message to the entire discussion group, send to: . IATP will also host a library list, 'Ag-Impact-lib', which will be 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. IATP staff will administer this list. 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 [Note: Name not confirmed 2/25/96.] To subscribe to Ag-Impact or Ag-Impact-lib: 1. send e-mail to listproc@mtn.org 2. leave subject line blank 3. In the body of the message say: "subscribe Ag-Impact [or] Ag-Impact-lib [your name]" 4. If you wish to subscribe to both lists, give subscribe command for each list on separate lines of the message. For example: subscribe Ag-Impact Mary Black subscribe Ag-Impact-lib Mary Black If you questions about administration of either list, please contact Emily Green or Jim Kleinschmit . ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Dr. Lois Levitan Department of Fruit and Vegetable Science 162 Plant Sciences Cornell University Ithaca, New York 14853 Phone: (607) 255-3033 FAX: (607) 255-0599 e-mail: LCL3@Cornell.Edu ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ---- Mark Ritchie President Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy 1313 Fifth Street, SE, Suite 303 Minneapolis, MN 55414 USA tel. 612-379-5980 fax. 612-379-5982 email mritchie@iatp.org URL: http://www.iatp.org/iatp