Equilibrium in a free market can result in prices and quantities which maximize society welfare for a given resource distribution. Departures from equilibrium of the competitive model will involve changes in net social gains and losses not only for the national economy as an aggregate, but also for particular groups or regions. The trade-offs between groups or regions, in fact, may be much larger than the aggregate changes averaged over all groups.

Departures from equilibrium under restricted pricing conditions, such as exist with the federal order marketing system in the fluid milk industry, also will involve social gains and losses on national, regional, and local levels. Given the rapid decline in Grade B or manufacturing grade milk production, the concern about equity, and the evolution of new institutions in the milk market, conditions affecting equilibrium in the fluid milk industry also must change. The nature of these changes can have marked effects on the benefits received by the participants in the industry.

Formulation of marketing policies often is based on the knowledge of various demand elasticities for the commodities under consideration. One important aspect of demand analysis is to inquire qualitatively or quantitatively into the extent of demand substitution between commodities. The Florida citrus growers and processors have been much concerned about the impact of flavored and synthetic citrus product substitutes for which the market, in terms of absolute sales, has doubled in less than one decade (Table 1).

The entry of a new product often takes place during the time when a dramatic leftward shift in supply occurs. A most recent example is the introduction of textured vegetable protein in ground beef when a severe shortage and a dramatic increase in the price of beef occurred in 1973. In the case of the citrus juice market, the introduction and market penetration of synthetic and partially natural citrus-flavored drinks were stimulated during the two Florida freezes in 1957 and 1962.

The main objective of this study is to derive economic strategies or decision rules for beef cow-calf farmers making production and marketing decisions under uncertain beef prices and pasture conditions. The problem analyzed relates to decisions concerning alternative beef systems for a 400-acre beef farm in the Shenandoah area of Virginia. At the beginning of the fall season, given the level of corn production and cow herd size, a beef farmer, faced with uncertain pasture conditions and uncertain feeder and slaughter prices for the coming year, must decide whether to sell his weaned calves or to keep them for sale later. At this time the farmer decides the amount of corn to be harvested as grain and as silage and the amount of corn to sell.

A basic management responsibility in community service planning is to evaluate alternative methods of providing various public goods and services such as transportation services, sewage and solid waste disposal, and water for home and industry. These alternative methods frequently involve new or different technologies and various combinations of inputs such as capital and labor.

For example, in the disposal of solid waste, the use of different sizes and types of bulldozers, compactors and cranes may lead to significantly different combinations of capital and labor resources. For accurate analysis, the quality and quantity of the service that can be provided with limited amounts of the various resources or inputs must be considered. Thus, the basic concepts that have been used in private business to allocate limited resources to obtain the desired output are equally applicable to the management and planning of community services.

The federal government has supported and continues to support or share in the support, financially and technically, of several regional pest management programs. Implicit in continued federal support is the concept that the benefits of the program to society exceed the governmental portion of the costs. As these programs are evaluated and consideration is given to discontinuing federal support, improved estimates of program benefits, or costs of discontinuing, are needed.

The objective of this study was to identify and quantify the expected effects in terms of agricultural output, insecticide use, and production costs of discontinuing a regional boll weevil suppression program on the Texas High Plains. Results of this study are useful to governmental decision makers, local producers, environmentalists and economists.

Animal scientists and agricultural economists have been working together to answer the question, “What is the least-cost feed mix for a given set of prices?” In the 1950's sophisticated mathematical programming via computers generated a renewed interest in ration formulation. Since then, animal scientists and agricultural economists have been intrigued with determing least-cost rations for various livestock species. But this research has been devoted to determining the least-cost rations rather than minimizing feed cost per pound of gain or pound of product produced and/or minimizing total cost per pound of gain or product produced. Answering the latter question is a prime goal of animal nutrition research.

During the last three decades, a major change affecting rural America has been the dramatic increase in the productivity of agricultural labor. Output per farm worker increased by 237 percent between 1947 and 1970. Although this growth in productivity provided increased income to some farm operators, it also resulted in decreased income opportunities for others. This decrease in opportunities led to migration of people from rural to urban areas. As the farming industry became more mechanized and as more rural residents were forced to migrate to urban areas in quest of jobs, the economic viability of many rural communities declined drastically. Mayer summarizes these changes in economic activity as follows:

“… the changing structure of agricultural production has significantly altered the flows of money in rural towns. More money flows to sources in urban areas and less remains to provide jobs in rural towns. As mechanization of agriculture increased and as capital intensification occurred, rural towns have experienced a slow draw-down of economic vitality.”

For a decade or longer it has been recognized that pricing of food products in supermarkets is not a matter of competitive price discovery but of intricately interwoven pricing and merchandising strategy. In the search for patterns of that strategy, the more conventional approach has been to apply customary data on market structure. In a further search for conduct patterns, because of the prohibitive expense of a comprehensive multi-city study, the best research course is to build up a library of case studies. This case study of 14 supermarkets in Columbia, Mo., reports two contrasting patterns of advertising-pricing behavior. Prices are not varied as much as the ads imply.

Poultry products are an important source of agricultural income in Georgia and other southeastern states. Yet, the waste from poultry operations can lower water quality unless ways are found to reduce quantities discharged into streams and waterways. Present regulations require that all sewage discharged from processing and rendering plants have the equivalent of secondary stage treatment as defined by conventional biological standards [4]. More stringent regulations that would completely eliminate discharge of pollutants into waterways have been proposed [10]. Poultry processing and rendering plants must therefore adopt more advanced in-plant processes or private treatment systems or utilize public systems to achieve higher levels of waste water treatment in future years.

Total money income typically is used to indicate the relative economic status of people. A family with total money income below some commonly recognized standard may be deemed to be poor. For example, the official low-income standard is the benchmark used by most analysts to indicate persons in poverty [15]. Historically, the proportion of farm people with low incomes has been greater than that for nonfarm people. In the 1960's, however, the income gap between farm and nonfarm people narrowed due primarily to increased off-farm income [2]. Growth in off-farm income in recent years ranks among several major changes affecting families in the farming sector [3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 16].

We recognize that the concept of economic status is multi-dimensional including elements other than current money income. Some of these include aspects of permanent income [4], net worth [18], and the general quality of life [1, 6].

Recycling can recover the value of solid waste materials. Recycling reduces solid wastes, conserves virgin materials, and preserves and improves environmental quality. Ideally, it has been stated that “what we must aim for essentially is a steady-state world, one in which per capita consumption has virtually leveled off and the goods used are for the most part produced from recycled materials” [6]. Trends in recycling, however, are not encouraging, and, in fact, resource recovery is losing ground [3, 7].

Currently, recycling is largely that of relatively homogeneous waste materials. The Council on Environmental Quality has identified over 50 systems in various stages of development aimed primarily at the technology of recovering materials from mixed wastes [7].

Since spring 1967 when the late Sen. Robert Kennedy and former Sen. Joseph Clark ‘officially” discovered hunger in less-visited areas of the South, hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles, several books, a television documentary and numerous committees conferences, and agencies have focused on the incidence and consequences of inadequate nutrition in America. Several private and public programs have been created to help alleviate food and nutrition problems of the poor. Among the nutrition education programs, the expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program (ENP) is perhaps the most notable. The major aim of ENP is to improve the diets of low-income families by offering homemakers free instruction in food budgeting and shopping, choice and preparation of nutritious meals and in other topics. Instruction is given by aides who personally visit the homes of participating lamilies to discuss these topics with the homemaker.

Range livestock is important to the economy of the state of Texas. Over 4.2 billion lbs. of beef were produced in Texas with a value of over $1.2 billion in 1971, which was the greatest for any of the 50 states. Sheep and lamb production in Texas for 1971 exceeded 200 million lbs. and was valued at $43.4 million which was the highest of all 50 states. Cash receipts from cattle, calves, sheep, and lambs marketed in Texas in 1971 were estimated at $1.6 billion.

Texas' production of range livestock is limited by the availability of rangeland. In 1967, over 53 percent of the land area in Texas was classified as rangeland. Undesirable woody plants which compete with favorable grasses for moisture and sunlight have infested 82 percent of the grasslands in the state.

A question of particular concern in recent years is: what happens to personal income distribution as the average level of income rises? The purpose of this study was to add knowledge to empirical answers to this question by way of estimates of changes in Florida-both within and between regions with different income levels.

Williamson suggests that as significant economic growth first occurs in one region, the absolute income differentials between rich and poor regions are expected to persist or even to increase; but sometime during the course of development, some or all of the disequilibrating tendencies diminish, and the regional differences in incomes decline. Labor migration, capital movements, government policy, geographic size, and labor participation rate were discussed by Williamson as important elements in the exploration of changes over time in incomes among regions.

A question now being asked in many states is whether the property tax is too burdensome and whether it should be displaced by another tax. Many states have lowered property taxes on specific classes of property, while other states are considering more widespread relief from property taxes. If property taxes are reduced, other taxes will have to be increased in order to offset reductions in government revenues. What is the effect of substituting one tax for another; who will pay more and who will pay less if property taxes are decreased and sales or income taxes increased? Will overall regressiveness of taxes be reduced by substitution? The basic technique of sampling and analysis presented here hopefully will be applicable in many states and will provide important answers to these questions.

Rural youth who fail to complete high school often experience a great deal of difficulty when competing for available jobs. All rural youth cannot hope to find employment at satisfactory wage levels in the local community. Many must leave. It has long been known that economic mobility is highly related to the educational level of an individual. Dropping out of school at an early age poses a substantial deterrent to educational attainment and subsequent mobility.

It has been proposed that the number of dropouts can be reduced by pumping more money into the public schools. Educators have contended that inexperienced, poorly trained, and low-paid teachers often found in rural areas can lead to large numbers of dropouts. The analysis that follows was therefore designed to isolate determinants of dropout numbers from public schools. The model construes the formal educative process in a production function context as have other studies. Minimization of the number of dropouts is assumed to be one of the goals of the local school administrator. Hence, the dropout rate is one possible measure of an output. Inputs to the production process consist of characteristics of the school and community believed to have an influence on a student's decision whether or not to stay in school.

Shortages of hydrocarbon-based fuels (petroleum and natural gas) for all uses in the United States have caused concern among agricultural leaders and farmers over their ability to obtain fuel for agricultural production purposes in competition with other users. During the 1973 crop year, for the first time in recent years, farmers were faced with the consequent need to make necessary adjustments in production and harvesting practices to utilize the fuel available. Analyses that have appeared since the recent widespread recognition of the energy crisis conclude that this is not a short-run phenomenon. Rather, farmers are likely to find themselves competing with other major users for limited petroleum supplies for some time to come.

Intermittent periods of excess supply as well as excess demand are likely to characterize American agriculture in the years ahead. Government again may choose to intervene to clear the market at acceptable prices during periods of excess supply. The principal means of removing excess capacity has been to restrain output through voluntary programs which pay farmers to divert cropland to soil-conserving uses and through aid programs which dispose of surpluses in needy countries, presumably in ways that do not interfere with commercial exports. But have these programs provided (a) maximum net farm income, (b) maximum real foreign aid, or (c) minimum U.S. Treasury Cost?

This study reports a model to estimate the most efficient allocation of agricultural capacity with a domestic general land retirement program and food aid to foreign nations.

Economic logic and empirical observation suggest that increasing numbers of part-time farms can have important implications for organization of agricultural production and development of rural areas. Production relationships on part-time farms may differ because:

1) Farm operators working off the farm may organize resources and respond to price changes differently than full-time operators;

2) Part-time operators may have different demand functions for production inputs, particularly land and labor, and

3) Part-time operators may achieve different levels of efficiency than their full-time counterparts.

Solid wastes that are residuals of production and consumption have steadily increased in quantity in recent years. Historically, many of these residuals have been discarded into the environment which appeared to have the capacity to handle them. However, now it is widely believed that these residuals are responsible for the degradation of environment quality by increasing air, water, and land pollution. Ecological considerations have increased the complexity of handling solid wastes and have stimulated the need for alternative methods of managing various types of wastes.

Local and municipal authorities and private industry provide waste collection and disposal services. Municipal services are generally financed out of taxation revenues, so it is in the public's interest to have an efficient, cost-minimizing operation at some publicly acceptable standard of quality of service.