The Northeast region with nearly 25 percent of the U.S. population and purchasing power in 1983 is a deficit region in both processing and fresh market vegetable crops. This study explores the underlying factors in the long post-World War II decline in Northeastern vegetable production. It evaluates the economic viability of small-scale, family operated vegetable farms with emphasis on Maryland and the Baltimore-Washington Wholesale Market outlet near Jessup, Maryland.

Preliminary results of our study indicate that, under certain conditions, small-scale family farms can grow and commercially market fresh-market vegetables at competitive prices, and generate healthy cash flows. The optimum mix of crops would include up to three, non-competing crop sequences, with four different vegetable crops including spinach, snap beans, tomatoes and broccoli. Family (owner-operator) labor was found to be a major resource constraint on volume of vegetables marketed, especially tomatoes. Potentials for future expansion in selected crops seem to exist with improved technology and better management.

This study shows that the price-yield correlation is a major influence in determining the skewness of revenue. Therefore, normality for revenue may not be rejected even if the price and/or yield distributions are significantly skewed. Analysis of cotton revenue for Mississippi shows that this can be the case empirically when the correlation between price and yield is moderately negative and the relative variability of yield and price is not too high. Hence, for crops produced in their major production regions where negative correlations between prices and yields are the greatest, revenue distributions may have a greater tendency toward normal.

Expenditure patterns for whole milk and lowfat milk in the Northeast region were examined by applying the Tobit maximum likelihood procedure to the 1977–78 USDA NFCS data.

Results suggest that differing expenditure patterns exist between whole milk and lowfat milk. Household income estimates indicate significant positive effects on expenditure for lowfat milk but negative on expenditure for whole milk. Whole milk expenditure was estimated to be strongly related to the family life cycle stages through the child-raising years.

Logit regression models are estimated to identify factors affecting decisions to enroll farmland in New York's agricultural districts program and participate in the use-value assessment program. The results suggest that the districts law is consistent with preserving the best farmland at the rural-urban fringe and that the decision to enroll in agricultural districts affects in a recursive fashion the decision to participate in the use-value assessment program. Short-term monetary gains are the overriding considerations in applying for use-value exemptions. This may lead to additional erosion of the tax base via tax preferences for agricultural land.

The objective of this paper is to compare alternative ways of reducing the input of biologically available phosphorus to Cayuga Lake from the Fall Creek watershed. This watershed covers 125 square miles, contains 130 dairy farms, has a population of 12,000, and is one of the major tributaries of the lake. Comparisons are made on the basis of the cost per pound of biologically available phosphorus prevented from entering the lake. Four sources of phosphorus, three of them farm-related, are considered: (1) land runoff as related to soil erosion; (2) land runoff as related to manure applications; (3) barnyard runoff; and (4) municipal sewage.

Various methods have been used to estimate risk indices with historical data. An industry perception of increasing milk price risk over time provides a standard for evaluating several techniques used to measure historical risk. Risk measures from a regression model and an ARIMA model were consistent with the perception of increasing risk.

This article examines farmers’ preferences for various risk management information sources. Our results suggest that information from risk management experts, in-depth materials studied on their own, and popular press outlets tend to be preferred and are ranked highly by producers. Using a regression model to investigate farmer/farm attributes that affect preference for a particular risk management information source, we find that younger farmers with college education, higher leverage, assets greater than $1 million, risk-loving attitudes, and who have used professional services (marketing consultants) tend to prefer information from risk management experts, the Internet, and marketing clubs/other producers. On the other hand, producers who prefer self-study of educational materials and popular press information sources tend to be younger, with lower leverage levels, and have used fewer professional services.

Recent survey data are examined to improve current understanding of the factors that help to determine the value of information reported on a website that serves as the centerpiece of the USDA's “Soybean Rust Integrated Pest Management—Pest Information Platform for Extension and Education.” Respondents’ initial beliefs about their chances of experiencing a rust outbreak are shown to affect the likelihood that soybean producers will visit the website and change their management of fungicide use as a result.

The motivation of this study is to provide and solve a decision model for land use planning for an existing regional situation. The chosen framework views the task of floodplain management as a constrained optimization problem capable of solution by standard mathematical programming techniques. The framework is sufficiently flexible to permit incorporation of, in addition to floodplain zoning, such non-structural flood control measures as flood proofing, insurance, and flood warning systems. Further, the framework can be modeled so as to include political restraints and a broad range of socially desirable goals. In a larger regional context, the framework permits the internalization of the value of the externality commonly associated with development of floodplain lands.

Economists since Pigou have advocated the use of economic incentives for controlling environmental degradation. In a similar vein, environmental economists have long lamented a near unanimous reliance of environmental policy on the use of direct regulation. However, several pieces of legislation, as well as common law doctrine, provide strict liability for damages from a variety of pollution incidents. The term strict liability means that a polluter is liable for the penalty imposed for a pollution incident irrespective of intent, fault, or even knowledge of the pollution incident. Negligence need not be proved, thus strict liability allows for no defense of due care or conformance with common practice.

We examine the causal relationships between ethanol production and the agricultural economy and rural incomes in the United States for 1981 through 2010. We use bivariate cointegration and Granger causality procedures and account for two structural breaks in ethanol production in the analysis, which shows that ethanol production Granger-caused agricultural net value added, agriculture's share of U.S. employment, net returns to operators, and rural income per capita in the short run. These causal relationships generally persisted in the long run. However, the causality between ethanol and rural incomes diminished in the long run.

Seasonal incentive plans, such as the base-excess plan, have been initiated to encourage producers to shift their production to be more similar to seasonal consumption patterns. The effectiveness of the seasonal incentive plan was evaluated by examining Maryland milk production data for the period 1966–78. The analysis indicated that month-to-month variation in milk production has increased in recent years, and suggests that current seasonal incentive plans be evaluated to encourage dairy producers to shift their production schedules.

Consumers in the United States fall short of meeting the recommended guideline for dietary fiber intake. Using a quarterly panel of households from Nielsen for the years 2004 through 2014, we employ a Heckman two-step approach to estimate nine panel regressions concerning per person fiber intakes derived from various food categories to uncover the importance of prices as well as socioeconomic and demographic factors. Prices play a prominent role in the per person intake of dietary fiber derived from the respective food products considered. Households below poverty thresholds had lower intakes of fiber relative to households above poverty thresholds. Ethnicity, race, age of the household head, region, and the presence of children also had significant effects on dietary fiber derived from the respective food categories. A proposed 20 percent subsidy applied to fruits and vegetables would increase per person intake of fiber by 9.4 percent. Therefore, if one were to consider meeting the dietary fiber requirement only through the provision of a subsidy, a large subsidy applied to fruits and vegetables would be required. Therefore, given the complex nature of the various factors affecting the intake of dietary fiber, the feasibility of using subsidies alone to increase the intake of dietary fiber is called into question.

We estimate the ecosystem service value of water supplied by the San Bernardino National Forest in Southern California under climate change projections through the 21st century. We couple water flow projections from a dynamic vegetation model with an economic demand model for residential water originating from the San Bernardino National Forest. Application of the method demonstrates how estimates of consumer welfare changes due to variation in water supply from public lands in Southern California can inform policy and land management decisions. Results suggest variations in welfare changes over time due to alterations in the projected water supply surpluses, shifting demand limited by water supply shortages or surpluses, and price increases. Results are sensitive to future climate projections—in some cases large decreases in welfare due to supply shortages—and to assumptions about the demand model.

The use of stated preference methods with monetary payments in developing countries can be problematic as barter and paying with labor are common in rural areas. In response, a growing number of stated preference studies explore using monetary and nonmonetary payment options. We contribute to this literature by exploring the impact of monetary vs. labor payment options on values elicited from choice experiment studies conducted in rural developing country settings. We also contribute to the literature by comparing data-gathering methods, specifically individual surveys vs. group information sessions. Our application is the restoration of an ancient irrigation system known as cascading tank systems in Sri Lanka. We conduct a choice experiment to understand the willingness to pay/willingness to contribute of rural households to restore these irrigation systems. We find that in the individual survey setting, there are no significant differences between monetary and labor payments. We also find that there is no difference between the group and individual survey settings for the monetary payment treatment. For the labor payment treatment, the group setting results in a positive payment coefficient for the labor payment attribute. This highlights that labor payments should be used cautiously in group evaluation settings.

In this paper, I have explored the link between grazing and water resource scarcity and per capita food consumption expenditure as a proxy for welfare and food security using distance and shadow price as a resource scarcity indicator in Northern Ethiopia based on a unique data set for 518 sample farmers. To address my objectives, I employed an IV 2SLS model for estimating welfare and probit for analyzing food security, drawing on a separable farm household model. My results confirmed the theoretical prediction that grazing and water affect households’ welfare and food security adversely, as predicted by the downward spiral hypothesis.

There are two basic underlying premises for this paper. The first one is that economics is still a useful discipline. That is, an understanding of economic concepts can contribute to a diagnostic analysis of socio-economic change in the Northeast (among other things), identification of policy options, and even choice. Economic paradigms are versatile and mobile. They help people decide how to deal with all difficult social problems. This assertion is certainly not a foregone conclusion and has in fact been contested rather vigorously. In some circles, clearly those less informed, economics as a discipline has been labeled the villain, the cause for social ills from poor roads to dirty air and water. I would not suggest that all economic advice is good, but that is the fault of the practitioner, not the discipline. Economics, like any other social science, can generate apparent scientific objectivity to support just about any motive of the user. There are virtually no sterile concepts in the discipline. When used to guide choice, all economic principles acquire a normative flavor, inevitably benefiting some interests more than others. Scarcity, the beginning of economics, means interdependence and choice based normative judgments. The challenge for economists as social scientists and particularly as policy analysts is to employ the robustness for the discipline for useful purpose, to provide insights helpful to policy and avoid being intimidated by our own discipline. This leads me to my second premise, that judgments, prescriptions and analyses by economists are probably as good as or better than those offered by anyone else. We owe it to ourselves to be involved.

Bolivia has disseminated several improved technologies in the rice sector, but the average rice productivity in the country is far below the average trend in Latin America in recent years. Although the economic literature has highlighted the role of agricultural technology adoption in increasing agricultural productivity, gaps remain in understanding how rice growers are deciding to adopt and benefit from available improved rice technologies. Most previous adoption studies have evaluated the uptake of individual technologies without paying attention to the complementarities that alternative improved rice technologies may offer to farmers who face multiple marketing and production needs. This study uses data from a nationally representative sample of Bolivian rice growers to analyze farmers' joint decisions in adopting complementary agricultural technologies controlling for potential correlations across these decisions, as well as the extent of adoption of these practices. Evidence suggests that the decisions on multiple technology adoption are closely related, with common factors affecting both adoption and the extent of adoption. Furthermore, there is a need to better target resource-poor farmers, improve information-diffusion channels on agricultural practices, and better use existing farmers' organizations to enhance rice technology adoption.

This paper analyzes in three contexts the effects of changing economic conditions and varying economic perspectives on the way land is considered in economic doctrine. The first considers agricultural land use where agriculture is connected to the rest of the economy exclusively through input and commodity markets, and when all other parts of the economy are assumed to remain constant. The second connects agriculture to the remainder of the economy by virtue of a shared natural environment, facilitating a discussion of natural resource and environmental economics in relation to agricultural, institutional, and land economics. The third context permits economic change in the entire economy with particular attention given to population density, space, and distance. Private and public decision making are discussed with attention to federal, state, and local division of powers.

About 15 years ago a national effort was mounted to provide equal employment opportunity to any person based on the individual's qualifications without regard to race, color, creed, religion, sex, age or national origin. This effort included executive orders which contained guidelines for hiring, promotions, transfers and discharges. The orders specified that additional job opportunities would be made available to persons who had not previously been given adequate opportunities.