The eleven state area of Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont comprises the Northeast agricultural area. According to the latest farm number estimates in 1980, there are over 159,000 farms in the Northeast with the largest number of farms concentrated in Pennsylvania, New York and Maryland, respectively. Given the large number of farms and the diverse topography of the region, farmers in the Northeast produce a wide variety of agricultural commodities. In 1980, farm cash receipts in the Northeast were estimated at $8.2 billion with livestock and products accounting for about two thirds of the total and crops (including specialty crops) accounting for the balance. In terms of cash receipts, Pennsylvania is the largest agricultural production state in the Northeast followed by New York and Maryland.

A mixed-integer linear programming model was formulated to minimize the cost of transport and processing of excess manure in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. The results showed that primarily poultry manure was moved out of surplus counties for land application or processing. In the base model, annual cost was more than $350 million, with the bulk of the cost arising from construction of energy facilities for poultry manure. Forestland application of poultry manure had the lowest average cost, and more forestland than agricultural land was used for manure application. The lowest cost scenario was $127 million annually when constraints were removed to expand manure application on agricultural land and allow unlimited construction of composting facilities. Such a low-cost solution could not realistically be implemented without further development of markets for compost.

Data from a sample of Rhode Island households indicate that firewood use along with wood stove use is increasing in response to increases in conventional heating fuel costs. More than half the sample of households reported the intention to reduce their heating fuel costs as their primary reason for burning wood. For nearly 20 percent of the households, the 1977–78 study season was the first heating season that these households had burned firewood. Among wood stove users, 50 percent began using a wood stove for the first season, the 1977–78 study season. Regression results indicate that the variables price, income and primary reason firewood is burned are important in the household's decision on the quantity of firewood burned.

Ice-nucleating bacteria, which are known to occur naturally on many crops and have been associated with frost damage, may be subject to control with genetically engineered bacteria, dubbed “ice-minus” bacteria. Ice-minus technology is designed to depress the critical temperature at which frost damage begins by displacing the natural population of ice-nucleating organisms. A trial product has been tested in the field with strawberries. Although tests with bacteriacidal compounds have suggested other mechanisms for controlling the critical temperature in deciduous fruit crops, ice-minus may prove to be effective. This analysis examines the possibility of ice-minus being adopted by New York tree-fruit growers and the likelihood of it causing a major economic impact on the state's fruit industry. Based on the climatology, phenology of fruit trees, and the record of actual frost damage in New York, the need for ice-minus is apparently not great enough to conclude that its adoption would cause a significant impact on New York fruit production.

The objective of this article is to estimate historical economic surpluses for the subsectors involved in the U.S. sugar market. Annual producer and consumer surpluses were computed based on a five-equation model and 1958–87 data. In the last decade, the welfare position of cane- and beet-sugar producers has been roughly maintained, the domestic consumer surplus and the export quasi-rents to foreign countries have both declined, and quasi-rents of the corn-sweetener industry now surpass those that accrue to the cane industry and are about the same as those of the beet-sugar industry. Some policy implications are discussed.

This paper develops a stochastic model for comparing payments to U.S. corn producers under the U.S. Senate's Average Crop Revenue Program (ACR) versus payments under the price-based marketing loan benefit and countercyclical payment programs. Using this model, the paper examines the sensitivity of the density function for payments to changes in expected price levels. We also assess the impact of the choice of yield aggregation used in the ACR payment rate on the mean and variance of farm returns. We find that ACR payments lower the producer's coefficient of variation of total revenue more than does the price-based support, although ACR may not raise mean revenue as much. While corn farmers in the heartland states might still prefer to receive the traditional forms of support when prices are low relative to statutory loan rates and target prices, this outcome is not necessarily the case for farmers in peripheral production regions.

Demand for selected nursery plants sold in North Carolina (i.e., begonia, dianthus, geranium, impatiens, marigold, petunia, and vinca) was found to be affected more by prices than by income, demographic, and other variables. By using cross-sectional data, a modified AIDS model, incorporating demographic variables and quadratic income response, was estimated. Inverse Mills's ratios were also included in the model to correct for selectivity bias, resulting from zero purchases. Significant own-price elasticities ranged from − 0.71 to − 1.65, and income elasticities ranged from − 0.78 to 0.41.

Trade theorists have demonstrated that different trade policy instruments have different effects on the quality and source of imports. Countervailing duties (CVDs), like specific tariffs, should induce quality upgrading. However, the magnitude and timing of the quality adjustments are influenced by the credibility of the duties that can be legally contested and modified after annual administrative reviews. Index numbers are used to assess the timing and magnitude of the product mix and country mix substitution effects in U.S. pork imports in response to the U.S. CVDs on Canadian exports of live hogs and fresh, chilled, and frozen pork.

Climate change will increase variability in temperature and precipitation on rangelands, impacting ecosystem services including livestock grazing. Facing uncertainty about future climate, managers must know if current practices will maintain rangeland sustainability. Herein, the future density of an invasive species, broom snakeweed, is estimated using a long-term ecological dataset and climate projections. We find that livestock stocking rates determined using a current method result in lower forage production, allowable stocking rate, and grazing value than an economically efficient stocking rate. Results indicate that using ecology and adaptive methods in management are critical to the sustainability of rangelands.

Evaluations of generic advertising programs by commodity check-off programs involve analyses of counterfactual scenarios in which advertising and promotion expenditures are set to zero over the program's history. In actual practice, the counterfactual is rarely realized. We present a case in which such a natural experiment occurred when generic advertising and promotion expenditures for U.S. orange juice were cut nearly to zero. Using structural econometric and autoregression models, we estimate losses in consumption and sales revenue and examine the time required for the market for orange juice to recover from the check-off's strategy of going nearly dark.

We use a stated choice experiment to estimate household willingness-to-pay for a program providing incentives to private forest land owners in the Red Hills region of southwest Georgia and northwest Florida. The estimated values of various program attributes inform a landscape analysis that identifies high-priority private forest land that could be targeted for conservation incentives. Households report an increase in utility from the program when it explicitly identifies a target ecosystem-service priority. Also, inclusion of stated preference values in the prioritization plan highlights a potential scarcity effect that has important implications for conservation targeting.

Sensitivity of the general public to pollution of air, water and land has been rapidly increasing as urban development spreads into rural areas of Maryland, the Northeast and the nation. Among the rural groups who have become vitally concerned with this situation are dairy farmers. They are especially concerned over impending regulations for handling animal wastes and the possible effect on the economics of dairy operations.

The signing of the Uruguay Round agreement on agriculture (URAA) in 1994 was a significant step towards the liberalization of world agricultural trade. A new round of negotiations on agriculture is scheduled to begin under the auspices of the World Trade Organization (WTO) at the end of 1999. This paper discusses the likely agenda of those negotiations and their implications for agriculture in the northeastern United States.

Since 1980, incremental state and national policy decisions concerning public higher education have had a variety of effects on students and institutions. Although there has been very little research, most of these effects appear to be detrimental to the health of the system of public higher education and to the nation's stock of human capital. A thorough economic analysis of the effects of policy changes on public higher education is needed to guide the system into the 21st century.

This paper provides the model, analysis, and results of the investigative research by the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) staff on the U.S. lamb market impacts from the countervailing duty (CVD) order imposed on certain U.S. imports of New Zealand lamb meat during 1985–90. Presented here are the monthly three-stage least squares model of the U.S. lamb meat industry at the wholesale or meat-packing level, along with the econometric results and analyses obtained from the USITC investigation. Analysis of model results quantifies average estimated CVD-attributed effects on U.S. lamb price, demand and supply of domestically produced lamb, and U.S. lamb import levels. A number of economic parameter estimates and inference results concerning U.S. wholesale lamb market relationships are reported and are of interest, given the scarce published research on the U.S. lamb industry.

Major changes in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) food packages that were implemented in 2009 included reductions in the amount of milk and 100% juices, as well as the removal of whole milk from food packages. In analyzing the effect of these changes on the beverage consumption of Texas WIC children ages two to four, we found a significant decrease in the amount of whole milk consumed, and this decrease was partially offset by the increase in the amount of lower-fat milks consumed. Intakes of both desirable and undesirable nutrients from milk were decreased.

It was an unexpected pleasure to be invited to speak before the opening session of the Northeast Agricultural Economics Council. I assume that I am not here on the strength of my earlier writings on “American Triracial Isolates” or “The Increase in Divorce Among Separated Persons as a Factor in Divorce Since 1940”. Clearly it is the perceived significance of shifts in the distribution of population in this decade that brings a demographer — and a noneconomic one at that — to occupy this place on your program.

Land-use conflicts highlight several myths about property rights. The central myth is that property rights are linked to natural rights, that property rights are durable and unchanging, and that any interference with these property rights requires public compensation. However, particular settings and circumstances lead to conflicting rights claims which the courts must sort through to determine where the more compelling rights claim resides. Situations are not protected because they have property rights. Rather, those situations found worthy of protection by the courts acquire the status of a property right. Property rights are not discovered, but are created by the courts. Applied economists must build models of property rights conflicts predicated upon an epistemology of volitional pragmatism.

Social critics have taken aim at modern production agriculture using a common theme: many food, health, and environmental problems are explained by corporate farms, agribusinesses, and fast-food restaurants failing to account for the full costs of their actions. How accurate is this diagnosis? How feasible is the assumption that these externalities are most effectively mitigated via Pigovian taxes and subsidies? Drawing on my experiences at a National Institute of Medicine meeting on the subject, I seek to clarify the definition and nature of externalities and discuss situations in which public policy is most and least effective in efficiently making “hidden” costs of food visible.