The value and quantity of agricultural commodity production in various regions of the United States determines farmers' income in each region. Many farmers, businessmen, policy makers and administrators are concerned with the problem of change in farm income resulting from water quality restraints placed on cropland agriculture. This study evaluates the income change from a series of hypothetical national water quality policies by examining the changes in national and regional gross farm income. Long-run changes in total national income of controlling water pollution from farmland by soil loss restraints are relatively small, as aggregate gross income increases by four to six percent depending on the level of control studied.

The changes in regional gross farm income are more extreme since various regions of the country, including the southern states, are affected differently by potential water quality control. This study utilizes a national modeling system to examine these variables and reports an analysis of potential changes in gross farm income caused by environmental restraints placed on agriculture. Environmental goals analyzed are national soil conservation ones, with implications for national and regional farm incomes.

The South plays an important role in American agriculture in that it is a major supplier of several commodities. However, due to relatively low yields, the region is a marginal producer of some important farm commodities grown in the United States. Given this constraint, the South still offers the greatest potential for expansion of agricultural output of any region in the country. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate this assertion. A rather broad perspective with implications for future research is provided.

Communities interested in economic growth and development need to be concerned with understanding at least three aspects of the development process. The first deals with identifying existing and historical composition of industry in the community, including an explanation of how changes in the study area differ from changes in other areas, and an identification of industries in which the community has had a comparative advantage. The second aspect deals with the many considerations involved in increasing desired economic activity in the community. This includes business and industrial development. The third aspect is addressed to estimating impacts of growth and development on the local community. Knowledge of expected consequences of alternative growth and development possibilities improves residents' ability to select preferred types of community growth. All three aspects must necessarily be considered as a community strives to expand and improve economic opportunity for its residents.

Environmental and resource quality recently have become special public concerns. A few states have already enacted legislation posing land use-environmental restrictions. Vermont, Hawaii, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts and New York, passed land use laws. Illinois formed a Pollution Control Board to quantify nutrients and sediment polluting streams and suggest action. In 1971, the Iowa Legislature passed the “Conservancy District Act,” creating soil conservancy districts “to preserve and protect public interest in soil and water resources for future generations.” Legislation centers on soil erosion and sedimentation. Erosion is declared a nuisance if it results in siltation damage. The law sets allowable soil loss limits on land at one to five tons per acre per year, depending on soil type.

The primary purpose of this paper is to provide estimates of the government subsidy that would have to be paid to wheat producers if Bolivia is to reach self-sufficiency in wheat. These estimates are then utilized in a producer's surplus analysis to determine whether or not such a policy would enhance the economic welfare of the country.

Bolivia has a chronic deficit in wheat production. Imports composed about 80 percent of consumption in 1971, the last year of our data series (Table 1). Domestic production in 1971 was roughly the same as 14 years earlier, while imports have steadily increased. A linear regression of imports on time revealed an annual increment of imports of 7,748 metric tons (MT), whereas total annual consumption increased by 8,833 MT. (Thus increases in imports have supplied about 88 percent of the estimated increases in consumption.) Requirements of foreign exchange for wheat purchases have been heavy, especially as Public Law 480 concessional sales have been winding down and Bolivia has had to turn to purely commercial transactions to satisfy her consumption requirements.

Emphasis at nearly all levels of government has been placed on rejuvenating rural areas in terms of their income and employment opportunities. Implicitly this rejuvenation is to occur in rural towns and not on farms, since employment opportunities in farming, while improving in the 1973-1976 time period, are not likely to expand greatly. Popular doctrine to stimulate economies of rural towns is fostered by the observed problems of pollution (air, water, noise), slums and human crowding, crime and traffic congestion associated with many large cities, and the concomitant problems of low income, poor consumer and producer services, and declining job opportunities in numerous rural towns. According to popular political opinion, a more desirable social state could be reached by reversing the migration flow, thereby relieving pressures of large cities and enhancing the standard of living potential in rural areas.

Consumer acceptance of Choice, grain-finished beef has been attested in millions of American homes. Abundant feed grain and feeder calf supplies has made it possible for almost all Americans to purchase and consume feedlot beef.

Consumer acceptance of any product, however, can be changed when input substitutions in production are made. For various reasons, livestock producers may feel justified in changing inputs before analyzing an effect on the product or its demand. An example of input substitution occurred in mid-1974, when some beef producers began to market beef for slaughter directly from forage (or limited-grain) diets rather than after normal full-grain feeding. Consumer acceptance of forage-finished and limited-grain finished beef was uncertain at that time, particularly among customers of large supermarkets accustomed to Choice grade beef.

The ethnic balance in several major cities has changed in recent years. Black population of the central cities has increased because of migration to cities from rural areas. At the same time, the white population of suburban areas has increased because many whites have left the central cities for suburban metropolitan areas. More blacks than whites, in general, suffer from underemployment, low incomes, high crime rates, substandard housing and poor health and sanitation conditions. These factors tend to influence the kinds and amount of community services local governments provide or deny to their constituents.

Studies done by such political sociologists as Clark, Lineberry and Fowler, Hirsch, Sanders, and Wilson and Banfield suggest that community attitudes on bond issues, local taxes or local government spending are influenced by the community's ethnic ties.

Use of peanuts in edible products is expected to increase five percent in 1975-76 to 1.9 billion pounds. Despite the increase in consumption, supplies are well in excess of edible requirements. The 1975-76 peanut supply is estimated at a record 5.0 billion pounds, about 20 percent above the previous year. Surplus production is an increasingly important problem for the peanut sector. Total peanut production has doubled since 1960, although planted acreage has been restricted by the peanut program to a maximum of 1.61 million acres. Due to increasing yields, acquisitions by the Commodity Credit Corporation have increased from 17 percent of total production in 1960 to 30-35 percent in 1975.

Much effort is devoted to explaining and forecasting changes in marketings of agricultural commodities. The usual procedure involves formulating hypotheses about behavior of individual producers, then testing them and quantifying relationships by using aggregate data. The purpose of this paper is to suggest and illustrate a procedure that may provide a foundation for improved explanation and prediction of period-to-period changes in marketings.

The procedure uses data obtained from individual producers to test hypotheses about period-to-period changes. Results obtained from an application of this procedure (to analysis of year-to-year changes in hog marketings) suggest that expected profitability alone is unlikely to provide either a very complete explanation or accurate predictions of year-to-year changes.

Accurate estimations of recreational demand schedules are important for projecting attendance at new facilities. Projecting future demand levels and calculating social benefits of additional facilities can be biased, however, if an analyst does not consider the influence of recreational opportunities. The Lancasterian theory of household behavior provides a framework for exploring implications of the influence of such recreational opportunities on demand estimations, projections, and consumer surplus measures. A case study of boating demand is presented to empirically investigate this framework.

Fluid milk marketing is characterized by daily and seasonally fluctuating raw milk production, variable fluid processing schedules and seasonally fluctuating consumption patterns. These conditions, plus the perishable nature of the product and a relatively low short-run elasticity of demand for fluid milk, are generally considered to be factors requiring volume of Grade A milk available to an area at any given time to exceed the amount actually consumed in the fluid form—if the market is to be characterized by a reasonable degree of price stability. This excess is often referred to as the minimum or “necessary” reserve. The volume of excess milk available may be greater than this minimum, however, as a result of other factors such as classified pricing or producer prices above equilibrium levels.

The importance of agriculture in developing economies is reflected in the share of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) originating in that sector and in the percent of population working in that sector. Brazil received 19 percent of its GDP from agriculture in 1968, and 60 percent of its population was in agriculture. In contrast, only three percent of GDP came from agriculture in the United States, and only six percent of the population was employed in agriculture.

Development of a country's agriculture is dependent on a multitude of factors—not the least of which is availability and use of good seed. Use of high quality seeds increases total yield; allows for more efficient use of fertilizers, pesticides and irrigation because of greater uniformity, better stands and more vigorous plants; usually results in higher quality produce; requires lower planting rates; and usually reduces weed, disease and soil insect problems. Other inputs such as fertilizers, pesticides, technical assistance and credit availability are necessary to achieving a sound agriculture.

While many methods have been proposed for evaluating agricultural processing market efficiency, estimation of product marketing margins has received the most attention and direct research effort. Despite this fact, there are many technical and statistical problems associated with both the performance of marketing analyses and utilization of margin reports. Most early marketing margin studies either ignored or circumvented these problems, concentrating on estimating absolute magnitudes of marketing margins over time. Marketing margin studies performed in the last few years have continued, in varying degrees, to ignore these and other problems implicit in the analysis. Relative levels of marketing margins over time may provide some insight into marketing efficiency, but those of various cost components of the marketing margin over time appear to give even more suitable indications of changing market performance.

New directions in national transportation policy have rekindled interest in transportation market structure. The Department of Transportation policy goal to equalize competitive opportunities between modes requires greater understanding of intermodal competitiveness in terms of inherent advantages of each mode in serving particular transportation markets. Flexible railroad ratemaking in the absence of market dominance, provided for in the Railroad Revitalization and Regulatory Reform Act of 1976, requires measures of intermodal competitiveness to define market dominance.

This article serves two purposes. The first is to develop market area sensitivity as a tool for distinguishing competitive from noncompetitive transportation market structures.

Farm planning and enterprise selection have been studied by agricultural economists for many years. Detailed methodology has been developed to analyze the economic situation of farm firms and to project optimum combinations of resources used in producing selected enterprise activities. Programming techniques have been used extensively. They provided planning guidelines, with quality dependent on availability of data and completeness of the programming format.

One area of concern arising from many programming efforts is that resource utilization and, ultimately, enterprise selection do not accurately project the general patterns of production observed in a specific area. Furthermore, there is little observable indication that farmers tend to move toward the programming solution. This problem is apparent when more variable enterprises are programmed with traditionally less variable enterprises. The more variable enterprises are frequently indicated to be profitable in the programming solutions, but farmers are not very interested in growing them.

Pronounced short-run movements in production, marketings, slaughter and prices of live hogs create problems of uncertainty in the decision-making process of producers and other participants in the hog-pork industry. The objective of the present study was to develop quarterly prediction models for live hog prices, based on structural relations representing the price-determining forces in the sector.

The relative importance of the hog sector in the livestock industry is underscored by the fact that the annual cash income for the sector ranks second to beef. For instance, in 1970, hogs accounted for about 15 percent of the total cash receipts from all livestock products. About one-half of total hog production in 1970 was in the seven states of West North Central Division, with Iowa accounting for almost one-fourth of all hog production in the United States. This division, along with four continguous and six southern states, accounted for about 90 percent of the total U.S. hog production. Although the total consumption of pork has increased over past decades, pork has represented a smaller percentage of total meat consumption. The per capita consumption of pork has shown no appreciable increase since the middle fifties, while that of beef rose steadily during the period.

Extremely dry conditions in the Great Plains during Spring and Summer of 1976 have greatly increased the awareness of rural residents and decision-makers of the need for increasing rural fire protection. In addition, increasing investments in farm machinery, buildings, crops and livestock, and urban sprawl have increased the need for improved rural fire protection. Oklahoma farmers have six billion dollars invested in farm property and annually produce crops and livestock worth about 1.9 billion dollars. More than one-third of the state's population lives in rural areas. These large agricultural investments, movements of urban people to small acreages and extremely dry conditions have induced rural residents to pressure county and community officials to improve fire protection. The usual procedure is to approach county commissioners and ask them for funds. Commissioners are acutely aware of the problem, but have several crucial needs competing for limited funds. If they decide to invest in fire equipment such as providing rural truck(s) for an existing department(s) to operate, the problem of optimum placement becomes very important.

The Florida citrus industry is in the unique position of being both importer and exporter of frozen concentrated orange juice. On one hand, exports provide the industry with an additional outlet for concentrate. On the other, imports being brought into the U.S. market creates considerable controversy as to whether this imported juice is economically desirable for the industry.

Two basic issues have evolved from these international trading activities. First, Florida exports concentrate on both Canadian and European markets. The former differs little from the domestic market. In contrast, the European market is expected to differ substantially from the U.S. market. Florida faces a number of competing suppliers in Europe. Often, the price of foreign concentrate exported to Europe is priced lower than Florida's export price. Recognizing that competition exists in the European market, how then should Florida price its product relative to the world price? Similarly, should the Florida export price be discounted to the domestic?

Demand for soybeans consists of the derived demand for its use as an input in the production of soybean oil and meal. The marginal value product of any bushel is determined by its oil and protein content and the price of oil and meal. Until recently, traders have been forced to estimate the value of soybeans through a grading scheme based on visual inspection and measured moisture content. Instruments that provide a quick and accurate measurement of the protein and oil content of soybeans and other grains are becoming available. Their use will allow purchasers to adjust the price paid for soybeans that do not possess average protein and oil contents.

The purpose of this paper is to report the development of a system of discounts and premiums that would complement the use of these new instruments in the pricing of soybeans.