In 1996, the USDA began reporting cattle-on-feed placements in various weight groups, which should provide information regarding expected slaughter timings and improve fed cattle price forecasts and marketing strategies. Private data were collected to obtain the necessary degrees of freedom to test statistical relationships between placement weight distributions, beef supply, and fed cattle prices. Use of placement weights improved beef supply forecasts only at a one-month horizon; it contributed nothing to price forecast accuracy or returns from selectively hedging.

The distributional behavior of futures price spreads is examined for four commodities: corn, live cattle, gold and T-bonds. Remarkably different results are found over commodities, time period, and sample size. Actual spread changes for the smaller sample size of gold and T-bonds and for corn produce more normal distributions for weekly than for daily differencing intervals, while all live cattle spreads for actual changes are normally distributed. However, the larger sample size of both gold and T-bonds and the relative spread changes for corn and live cattle do not become more normally distributed under temporal aggregation of the data.

This study focuses on the development of a optimal harvest scheduling mathematical programming model which incorporates within-season changes in perennial crop yields. Daily crop yield prediction models are estimated econometrically for major commercially grown sugarcane cultivars. This information is incorporated into a farm-level harvest scheduling linear programming model. The harvest scheduling model solves for an optimal daily harvest schedule which maximizes whole farm net returns above harvesting costs. Model results are compared for a commercial sugarcane farm in Louisiana.

V.I. Lenin, in defense of communism, often defended governmental control over the “commanding heights” of the means of production. Upon consolidation of the revolution in the 1920s, Mexican leaders wholeheartedly adopted Lenin's approach to government intervention in the economy. The revolution was driven, in part, by a widely accepted need for land reform. The revolutionaries proceeded to restructure Mexican agriculture and adopt socialistic policies which promoted centralized planning. Also, state-owned enterprises (SOE's) began to participate in everything from the production, processing, distribution and commercialization of agricultural products. In recent years, policies have changed and Mexican agriculture is currently going through a dramatic process of reformation.

An expected-utility model and a chance-constrained linear programming model were used to analyze four marketing strategies and seven crop insurance alternatives for cotton marketing in Georgia. The results suggest that existing marketing tools and insurance alternatives can be used to reduce cotton producers' revenue risk. The optimal level of yield and price insurance coverage depends on an individual producer's risk aversion.

Two methods were used to estimate the cost of forward contracting hard red winter wheat. One hundred days before delivery, the estimated cost of forward contracting ranged from six cents/bu. to eight cents/bu. Thus, further evidence is provided that the cost of forward contracting grain is not zero.

Soon after the implementation of the Uruguay Round, U.S. agricultural exports reached their highest level. Now many things, including exchange rates, factor into any rise in exports, but almost all economists agree that lowering trade barriers through trade agreements has been a critical factor. The vast majority— 96 percent—of potential customers for U.S. products, including agricultural products, live outside the United States. We must work to increase our opportunities to sell into these global markets.

A survey of Kansas, Texas, and Iowa agricultural producers was taken to examine the factors affecting their grain marketing practices. Sales indices models and models of qualitative choice are used to determine whether marketers' choices of cash market, forward contract, or futures and options oriented marketing practices are significantly affected by their personal and farm business characteristics. Results indicate that geographic location, farm size, grain enterprise specialization, farming experience, use of grain storage, and use of crop insurance have significant effects upon the respondents' choice of grain marketing practices.

Cattle producers and beef packers need to understand basis determinants as they develop price expectations and make pricing, hedging, and forward contracting decisions. This study empirically estimated factors explaining variability in monthly fed cattle basis. The five main results regarding live cattle basis are 1) corn price is an important determinant, 2) a change in the value of the Choice-to-Select spread positively affects basis, 3) changes in the levels of captive supplies have no significant statistical or economic impact on basis, 4) the June 1995 live cattle futures contract did not impact basis, and 5) both market fundamentals and seasonal components are important basis determinants.

The 1999 round of trade talks in Seattle, Washington got off to a rather shaky start; in fact, it may be several years before new trade talks will be held. Many special-interest groups, including environmentalists and labor unions, were successful in scuttling these trade talks. In addition, agriculture's role and position were not clearly stated. This paper deals specifically with key agricultural issues surrounding future progress in trade talks. These comments integrate the central themes covered by the several authors who participated in the session entitled “The Millenium Round of Multilateral Trade Negotiations.” My discussion illustrates some of the outstanding issues which must be dealt with before significant progress will be made towards freer trade in agriculture.

From 1993–1995, Florida dairy cooperatives implemented a seasonal pricing plan in an attempt to decrease the variability in seasonal production. Farmers that participated in the seasonal pricing plan were able to reduce seasonality in each year when compared to 1992 by as much as 20 percent. For farmers that did not participate, seasonality increased in each year by as much as 32 percent. Overall, the seasonal pricing plan was effective in reducing seasonality for those farmers that chose to participate in the plan and that its limited short-run success was the result of seasonality increases by non-participating farms.

Theory predicts that incentive-based regulatory instruments reduce compliance costs by encouraging efficient resource allocation and innovation in environmental technology. Cost reductions from pollution permit trading often have exceeded expectations, but the devil is in the details: the rules matter. In recent years, IB instruments of many kinds, from permit trading to various informal voluntary agreements, have been introduced in many countries. Point-nonpoint trading programs have been established in the U.S., but recorded trades have been rare. We speculate about prospects for performance-based monitoring of agricultural nonpoint pollution which, we believe, would encourage trading to the benefit of farmers and society.

The US pork sector has experienced many significant structural changes in recent years. Such changes may have influenced price dynamics and transmission of shocks through marketing channels. We investigate linkages among farm, wholesale, and retail markets using weekly price data for the period covering 1987 through 1998. Our analysis uses a threshold cointegration model that permits asymmetric adjustment to positive and negative price shocks. Our results reveal important asymmetries. Our results are consistent with existing literature which has determined that price adjustment patterns are unidirectional and that information tends to flow from farm, to wholesale, to retail markets.

When evaluating the economic efficiency of policies to reduce nonpoint source pollution, administrative or transaction costs are usually not taken into account. While the importance of transaction costs has been recognized in the theoretical literature, the fact that they are not incorporated in empirical analyses means that, in effect, these costs are given a zero value. This issue is examined quantitatively using data collected by the National Resource Conservation Service (NRCS). Transaction costs are found to be a significant portion (38 percent) of overall conservation costs. This provides strong support for including these costs in economic evaluations of alternative policy instruments.

While a carbon market offers substantial opportunities for US agriculture, regional differences in such a market are often ignored. This paper focuses on the advantages and challenges for agriculture in the South. The potential of two promising options are analyzed: conversion from cropland to forests and greater use of conservation tillage. It is argued that the right institutional arrangements can overcome three fundamental challenges to an efficient carbon market: transaction costs, risk, and perverse incentives. Some examples are given, such as the use of a farmer-owned organization and the provision of land use and carbon information by the government.

We estimate actuarially fair premium rates for yield and revenue insurance for Georgia and South Carolina peaches. The premium rates for both products decrease at a decreasing rate as the mean farm-level yield increases. In general, the premium rate for revenue insurance exceeds the premium rate for yield insurance for a given coverage level and expected yield. Although the revenue and yield insurance rates differ in a statistical sense, they do not appear to differ in an economic sense except at high coverage levels for growers with very high yields.

The effect of social capital on economic growth is examined using linear regression analysis and U.S. county-level data. Results reveal that social capital has a statistically significant, independent positive effect on the rate of per-capita income growth.

Nitrate contamination of municipal and domestic well water supplies is becoming an increasing problem in many rural and urban areas, raising the cost of providing safe drinking water. The objective of this paper is to describe a marketable permit scheme that can effectively manage nitrate pollution of groundwater supplies for communities in rural areas without hindering agricultural production in watersheds. The key to implementing this scheme is being able to link nitrate leaching from nitrogen fertilizer applied to crops at a farm to nitrate levels measured at a drinking water well.

Potential benefits of variable rate nitrogen application are illustrated and information needs identified. Lower costs of precision farming services, higher crop prices, and greater divergence in yield response potentials across management zones reduce the spatial variability required for profitable variable rate application. Information needs include identification and measurement of management zones within a field and estimation of management zone yield response functions, crop and input prices, and the cost of precision farming services.

Mathematical programming-based systems analysis is used to examine the consequences of alternative operation configuration for the agricultural operations within the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Continuation versus elimination of the total operation as well as individual operating departments are considered. Methodology includes a firm systems operation model combined with capital budgeting and an integer programming based investment model. Results indicate the resources realize a positive return as a whole, but some enterprises are not using resources profitably. The integer investment model is found to be superior for investigating whether to continue multiple interrelated enterprises.