This article evaluates the performance of expected value and expected value-variance criteria in achieving risk efficiency in crop selection. Results indicate that the expected returns criterion achieves risk efficiency in many situations because of constraints. However, in the absence of many constraints the expected returns criterion performs poorly except when highly mean-dominant activities are present. The expected value-variance criterion achieves a high degree of risk efficiency for all situations examined. This result implies that criteria more complex than expected value-variance are not necessary for crop selection analysis, given empirical returns distributions.

Imports of milk protein concentrates (MPCs) are increasingly entering the United States with minimal trade restrictions. MPC is a general reference to a dried protein product derived from milk using a technology known as “ultra filtration.” Two questions are addressed in this article. First, did the combination of relaxed import restrictions, low world prices for protein, and relatively high domestic support levels for nonfat dry milk encourage imports of MPCs? Second, did increased imports of MPC displace domestic use of nonfat dry milk and thereby increase government purchases under the dairy price support program? This study has implications for U.S. trade policy.

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.

The assumption of independence of irrelevant alternatives in a sequential contingent valuation format should be questioned. Statistically, most valuation studies treat nonindependence as a consequence of unobserved individual effects. Another approach is to consider an inferential process in which any particular choice is part of a general choosing strategy of a survey respondent. A stochastic model is suggested, consistent with the reflexivity, transitivity, and continuity axioms of utility analysis. An application of this theoretical model to the valuation of watershed ecosystem restoration demonstrates that an empirical model recognizing reflexivity and transitivity, and also allowing for continuity, shows the highest in-sample predictive ability.

In the Northeast, major problems relating to natural resource use, particularly agriculture, can be attributable in large part to outgrowths of the rural-urban interface. As communities (cities, towns, boroughs, townships, and counties) strive to fulfill their basic needs for health, education, police protection, recreation, housing, highways, and productive open space, new and more sophisticated methods of implementing land-use controls are needed. Experience indicates that in rapidly urbanizing areas traditional land-use mechanisms for directing growth do not guarantee the degree of permanence that is required to preserve productive open space. An alternative land-use control mechanism to ensure open space preservation explored in this paper is the transfer of development rights and the purchase of development easements.

This study quantifies how spending changes induced by the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) affects production and employment in rural and urban areas. A general equilibrium simulation model with an estimated demand system is first used to project how SNAP affects spending on different goods and services. These impacts are then linked to the expansion and contraction of different economic sectors that differ in importance across rural and urban Oregon. In urban areas, a number of service sectors linked to higher-income households shrink slightly in response to SNAP, while food-related sectors expand; the net effect on jobs is slightly negative. Production changes in rural areas are generally smaller, while having a slightly positive net effect on jobs. Overall, SNAP makes a positive difference for low- or no-income households without strong effects elsewhere in the economy.

Federal administrative data present a valuable opportunity for food and agricultural industry locational outcome research. We review issues with aggregated U.S. public data and summarize current methods. An example empirical approach combines federal administrative and secondary data. We compare results with differing levels of industrial aggregation. Results indicate locational determinants vary in magnitude, sign, and significance across industries and their sub-industries, as well as between employers and non-employers – nuances commonly missed with public data. We conclude by emphasizing that studies relying on public (more-aggregated) data may miss locational outcome relationships or inappropriately generalize to sub-industries and suggest data access changes.

Public interest in food systems has grown dramatically, and agricultural economists have important roles to play in contributing to and leading large-scale interdisciplinary studies of the subject. Key topics include understanding food system participants' behaviors and incentives and determining what food systems can and cannot achieve. I review a global food-security project funded by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture that illustrates the interactions between production, distribution, and consumption of food and regional self-reliance, as well as other important areas in which agricultural and regional economists can gainfully apply their tools and methods, including studies of the impacts of local food and network analyses.

We disentangle the effects of biodiesel incentives and shale oil expansion on the long-run equilibrium price relationships among biodiesel feedstocks and crude oil in the United States (US) and European Union (EU). We find that the 2005 Energy Policy Act in the US substantially increased the responsiveness of soy oil, canola oil, and corn oil prices to crude oil price movements. However, in recent years, expansion in the global supply of crude oil from shale oil extraction has offset the effects of US biodiesel incentives and blending mandates. In the EU, the Indirect Land Use Change Directive of 2015 substantially reduced the responsiveness of biodiesel feedstock prices to crude oil price movements.

Research on ecosystem services (ES) is heavily concentrated on ecological and economic indicators and values, with a much more limited understanding of communities’ dependence on cultural ES. That body of research is also typically focused on current generations and generates limited insights into the intergenerational dynamics of ES dependence. We use a survey of six palm harvesting communities in coastal western Ecuador to assess the livelihood dependence of four generations on 17 ES provided by the ivory palm, a near-threatened keystone species in Ecuador, Colombia, and Panama. Despite the historical prominence of the use of the ivory palm’s nut, we find that dependence is highest for regulating, supporting, and cultural ES, a result that holds across generations. We find a negative association between the current generation’s dependence on the ivory palm’s provisioning ES and that of their grandparents, who experienced the historical boom of the ivory palm’s nut exports. In contrast, respondents expect the future generation’s dependence to be positively associated with that of the grandparents’ generation. We find that provisioning ES have a complementary relationship with cultural ES and a substitutive relationship with supporting ES. Relationships across ES categories can be reversed from one generation to the next.

Zero runoff subirrigation (ZRS) technology can effectively manage fertilizer input while improving greenhouse production efficiency. However, high capital investment costs and inadequate technical information to growers are impediments for adoption. A Monte Carlo simulation was used to compare the profitability and risks of alternative ZRS system investments for greenhouse operations in the northeastern and north central United States. Results showed that the Dutch movable tray system and the flood floor system were most profitable and least risky for small potted plant and bedding crop flat production, respectively. The trough bench system was least favorable because its profitability was low and highly volatile.

While many people would argue that absolute deprivation has been eliminated from this country, poverty, or relative deprivation, still exists. Recognition of this problem is not new Despite public policies to redistribute income, the public's demand for lessened personal income inequality has never been completely satisfied.

A dynamic model of the U.S. apple industry, including relationships for bearing acres, production, utilization, and allocation to the fresh, canned, frozen, juice, dried and other markets, is specified. Demands for each of these markets are modeled. Model coefficients are obtained using Zellner's seemingly unrelated regression procedure and data from 1971 through 1990. Elasticities and flexibilities are compared with other studies. Projections indicate that price fluctuations will continue in the industry when acreage is held at 1990 levels. A ten percent increase in fresh exports strengthens all apple prices. However, a ten percent decrease in the price of juice imports mitigates some of this effect.

One of the factors contributing to the substantial increases in crop yields experienced during the last fifty years was the development and use of synthetic chemical pesticides. In the past decade, however, increasing evidence has shown that use of these materials poses significant negative external effects on human health, wildlife, and the environment. Hall has stated the economic trade-off problem as follows:

USDA uses the concept of “publish-ability” rather than statistical reliability of an estimate for quality validation of USDA estimates, which is solely based on the sample size and the coefficient of variation (CV). We demonstrate conceptually how the reliability of the sample mean can be tested by estimating the upper and lower bounds of the confidence interval for an unknown population mean using the CV. However, the reliability test for the sample mean can be made only under the normality assumption. USDA multiple-way Agricultural Resource Management Survey (ARMS) estimates are used to illustrate the relative measure of precision for sample-based estimators.

Already we have felt the crunch of the energy shortage in many ways. However, you and I have not felt that impact equally. Just as we can expect to feel the effects of continued shortages, so, too, can we expect the pressure of that burden to bear unequally upon different segments of our population. It is this unequal impact that is the thrust of this paper.

Competition from new store formats including supercenters, warehouse clubs, and mass merchandisers has emerged as a major threat to traditional grocery chains. A primary objective of this paper is to understand how the store-level performance is related to the workforce composition of full-time and part-time employees chosen by the food retailer along with benefits and incentives provided to employees. The elasticity of complementarity for food retailers measures how changes in store size affect use of full-time and part-time employees. Larger store size increases the marginal value of labor, and firm hiring decisions shift to expanded use of part-time employees.

This study develops a simple model to forecast the basis for corn in a specific region. Improved forecasts can improve hedging decisions. Basis behavior, however, depends on explanatory variables that are themselves difficult to forecast with precision. This limits the usefulness of the basis model, but it does offer some benefit over naive forecasts.

We utilize the outbreak surveillance data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to examine whether consumer demand is impacted by the outbreak of food-borne disease. An additional person sickened due to the ingestion of tainted cheese products at home is found to decrease per capita milk demand in New York State by 0.13 percent (or 0.07 pound), while milk-and ice cream-borne disease outbreaks, occurring at home or in public places, are found to have no impact on fluid milk demand. Our results imply the existence of word-of-mouth effects, which cannot be tested by the popular information/media index approach used to measure food-borne disease outbreaks. We also find that a 7 percent increase in generic advertising expenditures or a 10 percent increase in expenditures on non-advertising marketing activities can offset the negative influence of one ill person in cheese-borne disease outbreaks at home, while holding other demand factors constant.