A useful guide for the direction of future agricultural policy on energy requires, in part, detailed knowledge of the demand for different types of energy in different types of agriculture. Two approaches have been used in examining these demand relationships: (1) projecting total agricultural energy requirements, allocating these requirements among different agricultural subsectors, and estimating energy use in different agricultural enterprises; and (2) linear programming (LP) or constrained input-output (I/O) analyses to assess impacts of high energy prices and quantity restrictions on agricultural activities. However, these approaches usually require some stringent assumptions which limit the applicability of the results, and they provide little information about the economic factors that influence the demand for various types of energy. In short, the two approaches may be too restrictive to portray adequately the range of opportunity and response open to the agricultural sector. Emphasis needs to be given to those approaches which can provide information about the economic structure of energy use in the agricultural sector.

Approximately 50 million metric tons of poultry wastes are produced annually in the United States. Production of this byproduct is not without costs. Cost incurred for handling and disposal of broiler litter, for example, has been estimated to be .26c per kg of liveweight salable bird [1].

Although costs are associated with this byproduct, it is not a source of revenue for many producers. The traditional use of litter has been as a fertilizer. However, for many poultry producers, land is a limiting factor. In some cases, the value of the plant nutrient content of the wastes does not justify their use instead of commercial fertilizers when handling costs are considered. Thus in many instances these wastes create a pollution problem and may be negatively priced.

Numerous reports citing experiment data continue to claim advantages in gain rates and feed efficiency for bulls in comparison with steers. Although most experiment data agree about such advantages, magnitudes differ considerably among the reports for good reason. Variations in the design of bull-steer experiments are almost as copious as the number of stations reporting results. Bulls and steers used in any given experiment are generally of comparable age and have been subjected to the same feeding environment, but rations tend to differ among experiments, as do breed, age, and time on feed. Though some researchers feed to a predetermined slaughter weight which may differ for steers and bulls, others feed both on equal number of days. Likewise, because some studies have been designed for carcass comparisons of steers and bulls, they fail to provide critical feedlot performance data such as feed efficiencies. Carcass data may or may not include slaughter weights, dressing percentages, or yield of retail cuts.

Fuel shortages, along with dramatic increases in the price of energy, have placed considerable emphasis on the development of new and competitive energy supplies. In irrigated regions, the increased price and threat of curtailed supplies of natural gas have serious economic implications for the farm firm [4, 13]. Agriculture has the potential of replacing part of the energy it uses in the form of agricultural residues. The purpose of this article is to evaluate the use of residues from crop production in Texas as a feasible energy source.

Historically, the economic problems of Appalachia have been closely linked to the problems of the coal industry, which, with its boom and bust cycles, often has intensified the conditions of poverty, unemployment, out-migration, and capital flight from the area. For more than a decade it has been national economic policy “to develop in Appalachia a self-sustaining economy capable of supporting the people with rising incomes, improving standards of living and increasing employment opportunities” [1, p. 64]. It has been widely hypothesized that this societal goal will be achieved through exogenous increases in demand for coal as the result of its substitution for other energy sources. Therefore a study was made of the impacts of the increased demand for coal on the economies of the 18 coal-producing counties in Appalachian Kentucky.

A topic of considerable recent discussion is the use of high return per acre crops such as vegetables as a possible means of improving income levels on small, limited-resource farms. Though production economic analyses (those using conventional techniques such as budgeting and linear programming) indicate that farmers with small acreage might increase their income substantially by selecting vegetable enterprises, very few farmers are selecting vegetables over field crops. One possible explanation for their failure to do so is that the income from vegetable crops is more variable than that from field crops, and owners of small farms are more inclined to produce crops that will yield a lower but more stable level of income.

Because of growing stocks of grain and the reinstitution of production controls, the question of what allocative impacts such controls imply is once again relevant. The prospect that restrictions on land use may initiate an intensification in the use of substitute inputs such as fertilizer, which are already high in price, is discouraging. Although the issue is an old one, empirical evidence on the extent of these effects is incomplete.1 The purpose of this article is to derive a convenient means of measuring the allocative effects of changes in input restrictions. As an example of empirical application, results are presented which indicate the impact of acreage restrictions during the marketing quota years in North and South Dakota.

Trade in temperate zone agricultural products has remained largely outside the trend toward liberalization that has characterized international trade in the last 30 years. One of the most debated issues in this regard has been the European Community's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and its effects on world trade. Recent evidence emphasized the implications of the protectionist nature of the CAP in stimulating internal trade and slowing down third countries' farm exports to the EEC. But, no attempt has been made to estimate quantitatively the magnitude of the effect of the CAP system of import protection on EEC supply, consumption, and trade of agricultural products.

The U.S. grapefruit industry is dependent on continual growth in fresh sales in both domestic and foreign markets. From 1969 to 1975 slightly more than 40 percent of each season's output went to fresh use. Much of the future growth in fresh use is expected to come from new and larger export markets. Both political and economic trade problems continue to occur as greater emphasis is placed on the export markets for fresh grapefruit. Threats of Japanese embargoes and restrictions on containers and fumigants present continual problems with the development of the Japanese export market. The ultimate result of these export restrictions is reallocation of supplies among markets.

Spiny lobster (Panulirus argus) landings in Florida increased from 1.9 million pounds in 1954 to 6.6 million pounds in 1974 [1], a gain of 239 percent. Florida landings currently account for 94 percent of U.S. spiny lobster landings. Total Florida spiny lobster landings have declined since 1974 for two reasons. First, prohibition of Florida fishermen from lobster fishing on the Bahamian continental shelf reduced landings considerably. Florida landings declined approximately 3.5 million pounds between 1974 and 1975, mainly because of the loss of the domestic landings which were caught in Bahamian waters. Second, domestic landings from Florida waters appear to have reached a maximum in 1974 and have since remained relatively stable or declined slightly.

Most area economic development impact models are based on the premise that the basis of an area economy is a group of local firms which produce goods and services for sale outside the area. Agriculture, mining, and manufacturing firms typically make up a large part of such a group of exporting or basic firms. However, in most communities and some larger areas, many service firms (wholesale, retail, transportation, finance, medical, utilities) sell some of their products outside the local economy. These exports are part of the area's economic base. That portion of the output of the firms in an area which goes to satisfy local demands is nonbasic output. Area employment used to produce basic and nonbasic goods and services can be classified similarly as basic and nonbasic employment, respectively.

Economists have a continued and justified interest in agricultural water demand estimation. Water is becoming a scarce resource throughout much of the United States, even in “water abundant” eastern states such as Florida. As a result, new water institutions are evolving to address the water allocation problems. Estimates of values in alternative uses are important information in these water allocation decision processes.

Statistical methods for estimation, hypothesis testing, and confidence statements are based typically on exact specification of the response variates. In the applied sciences another kind of multivariate problem is common in which an observation must be assigned in some optimal fashion to one of several populations. Classification rules based on an index called the linear discriminant function provide a method for such assignment.

Use of the linear discriminant function is relatively new to regional economics. Previously it has been used in such disciplines as botany to classify a new specimen as belonging to one of several recognized species of a flower, in educational psychology to develop rules for admitting applicants to college programs, in routine banking to aid credit officers in evaluating loan applications, and in agricultural economics to determine producer plans for changes in hog marketings and to identify factors associated with watershed development.

Much dialogue has been devoted to the “farm problem” by both the public and private sectors in recent months. Expressions of concern about chronic low farm income because of low prices received have again become common. Numerous proposals have been offered as solutions to the problem.

It is of concern to the authors that many of these proposals emphasize production control as means of maintaining adequate farm price levels. Economists routinely receive training in the concepts of demand and supply response which, although difficult to quantify, offer easily understood market principles. For example, elasticity of demand can be used to show U. S. farmers how actions taken to reduce domestic production could be less than beneficial to the producer. Perhaps economists have failed to apply some of these concepts in the evaluation of policy alternatives or have not clearly demonstrated the effects (particularly long-run) of unilateral actions taken by the United States.

The first significant changes in the peanut program in more than 20 years are contained in the Food and Agricultural Act of 1977. The new program retains the use of acreage allotments, marketing quotas, and support prices but changes the procedure used to establish the size of the allotments and quotas given. The new program provides for two support prices versus one under the old program and no longer relates the support price level to a “parity price” concept.

In anticipation of the changes expected to be forthcoming from the new program during 1978 and future years, an analysis was undertaken to determine the effect of changing peanut marketing quotas and support prices on producer income, peanut consumer surplus, and peanut program costs. The analysis does not focus on changes generated by the new program because specific aspects of the program were not known when the research was conducted. Rather, the effect of a change or combination of changes in marketing quotas and support prices is analyzed in a general manner. Generalizations about the new program can be made on the basis of the analysis.

In a recent attempt to emulate by simulation and then to improve upon a farm supply cooperative's distribution system, a lockset algorithm that included a backhaul routing capacity was constructed. The author describes the problem that motivated that modification, the modification itself, and a possible methodological improvement for applying routing models to firm-level distribution problems. The modified lockset's simulation capability is discussed with respect to capacity control and “load size/loading time” trade-off. Finally, the potential for determining visit frequency within a distribution routing analysis rather than accepting it as a given is discussed.

The age-old conflict between producers and market middlemen in the food industry has surfaced in the finfish industry with respect to market prices, producer prices, and marketing margins. Unrest among fishermen (producers) about the performance of the marketing system for various species of finfish has sparked numerous protests in the United States. Some protests have ended in lawsuits; in other cases, marketing cooperatives and/or marketing associations have been formed to integrate several steps in the marketing process. These events have been common in the Florida Atlantic Coast marketing system.

Decision makers face two opposing forces in the provision of emergency services. Their constituency wants more and better services, but financial considerations limit the quantity and quality of services provided. This classic economic confrontation requires a decision based on the trade-offs between the benefits of protection provided by additional services and the cost of providing these services. Such a decision is needed for ambulance service, fire protection, and law enforcement.

The notion that one economic variable has an impact on another over several time periods is not uncommon to economic thought. Irving Fisher was the first to introduce empirically the notion of distributed lags using different shapes of probability curves. Alt continued the work, but made no a priori assumptions about the distribution of the lag as Fisher had done. Koyck and Nerlove returned to and extended the work of Fisher assuming a priori a monotonically declining distribution. More recently Jorgenson, Almon, and Johnson have developed estimators which, like those of Alt, assume only a continuous lag function of unspecified shape. There is evidence, however, that the Jorgenson and Johnson techniques are extremely sensitive to errors of measurement and specification because in applied work, reasonable estimates of lag distributions occur infrequently.

Coastal marine wetlands, in their natural state, are important biological and hydrological resources. Wetlands yield numerous valuable services such as provision of nursery and feeding habitat for fish and wildlife, and the assimilation of wastes. Wetlands, when filled or otherwise altered, also provide valuable sites for residences, marinas, or ports. Because well defined and vendable property rights are lacking for natural unaltered wetland services but are available for development services, the unregulated market will tend to reflect only the benefits of development. The result has been a rate of conversion of tidal wetlands that has been unsatisfactory to many individuals.