Environmentalists attack agricultural pesticides because of adverse drift effects during application, run-off into streams and persistence in the environment. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has banned DDT and currently is considering cancellation of its registration of mirex, 2,4,5,-T, and dieldrin.

Emotionalism rather than economics appears to be guiding environmental groups in their fight against pesticides. As agriculture's pesticide use comes under more and more pressure from the public, U.S. farm programs are likely to come under attack because they may have encouraged farmers to substitute pesticides for cropland. The “farm program” for the past decade has restricted acres planted and supported prices of agricultural products. Acreage controls encourage farmers to substitute variable inputs for limited cropland to take advantage of support prices.

One of the nation's most serious problems is the lack of uniform access to health and medical care for all members of the population. This problem is most prominent in inner city and rural areas.

The existing inequities in the health care system are often blamed on a national shortage of medical manpower and associated facilities. The distribution of these limited resources intensifies this apparent shortage. For example, the doctor per person ratio is 1:518 in New York, 1:1,340 in Mississippi, and 1:1,448 in Arkansas. Even wider differences exist within some state boundaries. In Virginia, the ratio is 1:558 in metropolitan areas and 1:2,243 in rural areas.

Increased public awareness in recent years regarding environmental pollution has generated concern over the disposal of household, commercial, industrial, animal, and agricultural wastes. In most cases, utilization of these wastes is not feasible because of high recovery costs. The substantial quantities involved often preclude disposal by landfills and their burning contributes to air pollution. One such case is the environmental pollution caused from disposal of grass seed residue by open field burning in Oregon.

This country is currently faced with an ever growing solid waste problem. A significant amount of total solid waste may be traced to origins in the packaging industry. Various policies aimed at rectifying this problem have been proposed. One policy alternative that is currently being given consideration is taxation of a product based upon the amount and type of packaging waste associated with that product. Taxation is believed to be a policy tool that could be used to internalize the cost of collection and disposal of each product's packaging waste. In effect, those that generate solid wastes would pay. The effects of such taxation implementation on various economic phenomena are unknown, but of critical importance to its feasibility.

Estimation of the demand function for area resources is a major concern of many regional economic analyses. Resource demand is dependent upon several variables, including the nature of demand for the products, supply of other inputs, degree of substitutability of inputs, the time period available for adjustment, and market structure. A major problem is how to explicitly consider these important variables in a reasonable manner with limited research means. This paper reports the application of one approach, a regional linear programming allocation model for California, to the derivation of demand for irrigation water as a productive input to agriculture in one developing subregion – the West Side of the San Joaquin Valley.