OreCal conducts research in the following four areas:

Agricultural Economies & the Environment

Rural Families, Households, & Economies

Risk Management for Specialty Crops

Consumers, Food, and Nutrition

OreCal can help policy makers and resource managers answer questions such as these:

  • How do changes in commodity, conservation, and safety net programs affect farm income, local economies, and water quality?
  • How should crop or revenue risk management programs for specialty crops be redesigned to provide insurance benefits with minimal distortions?
  • How would reduced commodity support affect food prices and consumer access to nutritious food?
  • How do water quality regulations influence the economic viability of farming and the health of wildlife?
  • What policies will help farmers prosper in a changing environment?

Some of the models that will be employed include:

  • Regional Spatially-Explicit Land Use Modeling
  • Tradeoff Analysis Model for Multi-Dimensional Impact Assessment
  • Models to Assess Agriculture-Wide and Rural Economic Interactions of Commodity Policy Change
  • Household-level and Community-level Policy Impact Models
  • Regional Computable General Equilibrium Models
  • Multi-regional Urban-core/Rural-periphery Input-output Models
  • Models of Dairy Policy in a Global Context
  • Risk Management Models
  • Crop Insurance and the PRISM Climate Mapping System
  • Consumer, Food and Nutrition Frameworks