A philosopher once said that history should be studied because the past repeats itself, but I prefer the statement that those who do not sudy history are condemned to repeating it. I also like the quote at the National Archives: The past is “prologue.” When a tourist asked what this meant, a Washington taxi driver said, “It means you ain't seen nothing yet.” That was in 1950. He was right. Who in 1950 expected to see sputniks, satellites, and men walking on the moon?

We entered the 1950–1975 era thinking that agricultural economics consisted of: (1) production economics, (2) marketing, (3) price analysis, (4) agricultural policy, and (5) land economics. We are leaving it thinking that it covers: (1) commercial agriculture, (2) natural resources development, and (3) human and community development.

Increased attention is being directed to electronic markets in the major agricultural commodities. Electronic markets are characterized by a trading arena that has been centralized via some electronic medium. The medium used may be a conference telephone, teletype, computer system, or some combination of these or other mechanisms. All make possible the sale of a commodity by description without requiring the physical proximity of buyer, seller, and product. In theory, this capability can eliminate or reduce the spatial imperfections and pricing problems now present in many “thin” markets, a topic of increasing concern throughout the food industry (Hayenga).

In the 1980s, few agricultural economists, particularly from the Southern Region, published works on international trade or the globalization of the world economy. The initiation of the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1986 stimulated such writings as the Southern Agriculture in a World Economy series by the Southern Region Extension International Trade Task Force (Rosson et al.). An even smaller number of agricultural economists were writing on policy linkages between trade and the environment. An early effort to remedy this situation was the Workshop on Linkages between Natural Resources and International Trade in Agricultural Commodities (Sutton).

The term LISA was coined in 1988 as an acronym to identify a federally funded research and education program designed to address the public issue of agriculture and the environment (USDA-CSRS, p. 2). LISA is made up of two related, but different, concepts: low input and sustainable agriculture. This combination reflects a compromise between two different perspectives of the environmental issues confronting agriculture.

The low input perspective is that farmers must reduce their use of commercial chemical inputs as a means of reducing environmental and ecological risks. The sustainable agriculture perspective is that long-run productivity and utility of agriculture depend ultimately on our ability to keep farms both ecologically sound and economically viable. Reduced reliance on commercial inputs is seen as one means of addressing the ecological risks that could threaten long-run sustainability.

The technological revolution in agriculture has produced a structural transformation in fanning that has changed the face of rural America. With improved technology and long-term U.S. economic growth, one major adjustment has been a reallocation of labor between farm and non-farm labor markets. After 1948, long-term economic forces created prospects of higher incomes in the non-farm sector. As a result, a large proportion of both white and black families ceased farming and took non-farm jobs. However, a number of other farm families have continued to work their farms, but have also taken off-farm jobs to supplement their income. Krasovec describes part-time farming as a regular two-fold occupation of the head of the family. That person may, on the one hand, be working permanently in non-agricultural industries either as an employee or as an independent craftsman, merchant or member of a profession, and on the other, in agriculture on a holding not large enough to justify a full-time occupation.

The free market-based policies of the corporate community model have skewed economic development across the South. For many small, rural communities, the consequences of global capitalism have resulted in declining real wages, high underemployment, and increasing rates of income inequality. Backed by recent scholarship and grassroots movements that suggest that both civic engagement and the presence of smaller-scale, locally controlled enterprises can help determine whether communities prosper or decline, this paper explores the links between social structure and rural development in the South. The goal is to expand our understanding of civic community theory as an alternative to the neoclassical economic model of development. Using a local problem-solving framework, we suggest that a departure from the traditional, neoclassical path of development is in order. We conclude that rural policy makers must establish a role for civic community in the rural development process if they wish to protect the welfare of workers and communities, while increasing the prospects of economic growth with prosperity.

This study examines the effect of a meal planner's nutritional awareness, exercise habits, and household socioeconomic characteristics on market participation and frequency of purchase of snack peanuts. Data are from a household survey of 2880 U.S. households collected by Gallup in 1997. Statistical tests showed that a double-hurdle or Cragg model best represented consumers' participation and purchase level decisions in the snack peanut market. The results indicated that meal planner's nutritional considerations while making food purchase decisions had little effect on the participation level decisions, but did affect purchase frequency of snack peanuts. Those household meal planners who were overly concerned about undesirable nutritional factors tended to decrease their purchase of snack peanuts. Promotion of snack peanuts on the basis of nutritional benefits through health professional and media is a useful tool to increase purchase frequency.

Ordinary least squares and seemingly unrelated regression procedures were used to analyze the impacts of changes in rice prices and production costs on U.S. rice planted acreage. National and regional response models were estimated over the 1970-92 period. Supply-inducing prices of rice were estimated as a function of effective rice support prices and seasonal average market prices. Expected production costs per acre were estimated using lagged actual total variable cash production expenses per acre adjusted by the previous 3-year average annual change in variable expenses. Estimated short-run price and production cost elasticities were found to be inelastic at the national level. However, the magnitude of the production cost elasticities were found to be greater than the price elasticities. Estimated long-run elasticities at the U.S. level were inelastic for changes in price but elastic for changes in production costs. Although acreage response varied across regions, similar relationships were found between price and production cost elasticities.

Numerous studies have analyzed annual crop mix decisions in light of producer risk preferences. Few studies have focused on perennial crop mix decisions. This study attempts to identify not only the optimal mix of grapefruit and oranges for various riskaversion levels, but also optimal planting densities within each species. Experimental plot data from a grapefruit and orange spacing trial over the 1970-82 period were used in a MOTAD formulation to address optimal perennial crop mix and planting density decisions under different capital constraints. An examination of results suggests crop mix and planting density diversification within and across species of citrus as a means of reducing income variability.

Soybeans occupy the unique position of common denominator in crop production for much of the Eastern half of the U.S. The interdependence between the soybean economy and those of corn, cotton, and rice means that policy changes directed toward one crop can have very decided effects upon the others.

Effective policy and program decisions need continuing research as input in formulating and evaluating these decisions. Detailed analyses of inter- and intraregional interdependence among crops, and of production alternatives involving soybeans, are especially needed because it is no longer certain that an expanding demand will provide a safety valve for soybean and related commodity programs [4,9].

The growing movement of people and goods that started in the closing years of the twentieth century has increased the possibility of the accidental or intentional introduction of biohazards that can affect agricultural production in the United States. This study examines the ex ante decision between the deployment of monitoring devices (traps) versus the use of countermeasures to control Mediterranean fruit flies in Florida. To examine this tradeoff, this study outlines a mathematical model to study the effectiveness of traps and the cost of treatment. The empirical results presented in this study indicate that additional parameterization efforts are needed.

Naive and adaptive schemes have been used as proxies for price expectations in previous studies of supply response. Those studies contain mixed formulas of futures, support, and lagged prices as alternative formulations for price expectations. This study uses a conditional expected price which combines both market and support prices into one price expectations measure. It defines the total effect of available information on supply response. The results indicate the potential usefulness of formulating expected prices as conditional price expectations in supply response analysis, with support prices being the conditional set. Under the provisions of the 1985 Farm Bill, significant reductions in corn and soybean acreages are in prospect for 1987-90.

This paper determines the effects of cattle feeders' risk aversion on feeder cattle prices using pen data of Kansas feedlots. Higher profit risk results in lower feeder cattle prices. The elasticity of feeder cattle price with respect to profit risk was small (-0.013). The risk elasticity estimated here is similar to risk elasticities in previous studies and thus, the use of pen-level data does not seem to add much to the study of risk.

Recreation demand studies have traditionally utilized a two-step valuation method, estimating conditional recreation participation probabilities and then intensity of use decisions. These two steps of analysis are combined to estimate the use value of natural resource recreation sites. The purpose of this paper is to provide a method by which use value can be estimated solely from the participation decision. The one-step resource valuation method allows estimation of use values from coefficients of the logistic regression recreation participation equation. The benefits of the method are the reduced data and effort required to value natural resource areas.

This article uses meta-regression analysis to examine variation in willingness to pay (WTP) for farm-raised seafood and aquaculture products. We measure the WTP premiums that consumers have for common product attributes and examine how WTP varies systematically across study design elements, populations of interest, and sample characteristics. Based on metadata from 45 studies, the meta-regression analysis indicates that WTP estimates differ significantly with the availability of attributes such as domestic and environmental certification, but also with sample income and gender representation.

Motivated by disease outbreaks and trade shocks, a dynamic equilibrium displacement model is calibrated for the U.S. pear industry to simulate welfare from various shocks compared to a baseline. Our contribution is assessing the impact to intermediary packers for fresh fruit and processors for processed fruit in addition to growers and consumers. The processed market is more sensitive than the fresh market generally, and supply shocks induce larger impacts on both markets than trade sanctions. Impacts to intermediaries are on par with growers, indicating that not considering them misstates the distribution of damages to the industry from a shock.

Net present value analysis is used to derive the marginal bid price for a beef herd sire from after-tax net revenues and cash flow influenced by genetic improvements. Marginal bid price represents the additional amount a producer could pay, above the present value of the current beef herd sire, for a sire expected to exhibit superior performance as reflected by increased average weaning weights of offspring.

An analysis of the profitability of purchasing a breeding bull for a commercial beef cow herd is presented as an application. Several alternative scenarios illustrate the impact of selected determinants on the marginal bid price of a bull.

The pricing behavior of the Florida celery industry under the current federal marketing order was examined by analyzing the implied market structure of the industry using a model proposed by Appelbaum. Point estimates of the oligopoly power index suggest that some degree of price enhancement above that which would be characterized by a perfectly competitive market may have occurred. However, the bulk of statistical evidence suggests that the departure from marginal cost pricing implied by the industry's pricing behavior is not statistically significant.

The beef industry in the United States consists of several distinct production levels ranging from the cow-calf producer at the lowest level to the final consumer. These sectors face varying levels of profitability, degrees of market power, conflicting goals, and price signals. Environmental regulations involve questions of what costs are involved, who is in a position to pay these costs, and whether market prices are capable of signaling different environmental practices. Understanding the relationships within the beef industry may allow researchers to fine-tune analyses of environmental issues in the beef industry.