A five-year, 0-1, mixed integer programming model was developed to analyze the effects of 1990 Farm Bill legislation on the crop-mix decisions made on cotton farms. Results showed that, when compared to the 1985 Farm Bill, the 1990 Farm Bill can result in higher whole-farm income despite new "triple base" provisions limiting payment acres. The increase in income results from elimination of limited cross-compliance provisions and the change to a three-year base calculation. The model was also used to assess the likely impact of possible changes in the current legislation.

Unilateral liberalization of U.S. peanut policy was evaluated using a model of U.S. and world peanut supply and demand. Under the proposed policy, world peanut price would rise slightly to $.20 per pound at the U.S. farm level. U.S. production would decline by 578 million pounds per year and would be offset by imports of 582 million pounds. U.S. net farm income would fall by $405 million per year. Lost income per farm would be $21,000 per year while the average outlay of consumers would decrease by $.84 per person at farm level price. Government expenditures would be virtually unchanged because of the market orientation of current policy.

In their paper, “Small Farms and Sustainable Development: Is Small More Sustainable?” D'Souza and Ikerd examine the potential linkages between two streams of analysis—“sustainable development” and “small farms.” This is a worthwhile objective, as there has been little effort to link the two together. This is—as the authors note—a surprising gap in the thinking about forces that might lead to long-term sustainability in agricultural production. The authors are right to bring the issue to our attention.

This article analyzes the impact of removing the U.S. tobacco program inboth a partial and general welfare economics framework. In apartial-equilibrium framework, a consumer tax-funded quota buyout can resultin producer gains, consumer losses, net losses resulting from higher prices,and deadweight losses. In a general-equilibrium framework, society can gainfrom the buyout resulting from considerable potential savings from reducedhealthcare costs attributable to a reduction in smoking. Additionally, wepresent a model that addresses the addictive qualities of tobacco whileconsidering the effects of the quota buyout. We also conclude that anotherpossible effect of the buyout is an increase in worker productivity becauseemployees who are able to quit smoking reduce the amount of smoking-relatedsick days taken.

Agricultural sales cooperative unions (ASCUs) in Turkey are heavily influenced by both domestic and international government policies. Both export taxes and import tariffs are used as policy tools to regulate cotton markets. Domestic price support programs, water subsidies, fertilizer subsidies, and credit subsidies have also been used as domestic policy tools. These types of subsidies are not uncommon among developing countries. This paper provides empirical estimates of the degree of economic inefficiency associated with government intervention in Turkish cotton markets. A two-region partial equilibrium model of cotton exports and imports is developed under the “small country assumption” to obtain empirical estimates of the deadweight welfare loss associated with these government subsidies. Although government intervention results in significant income distribution among the various cotton sectors within Turkey, the overall economic inefficiency of the redistribution is very low.

A conceptual link among mean-variance (EV), stochastic dominance (SD), mean-risk (ET), and Gini mean difference (EG) is established for determining risk efficient decision sets. The theoretical relations among the various efficiency criteria are then empirically demonstrated with a soybean and wheat double-crop simulation model. Empirical results associated with extended Gini mean difference (EEG) and extended mean-absolute Gini (EEΓ) for risk analysis are encouraging.

This paper develops and illustrates the application of a procedure to evaluate and compare the cost effectiveness of alternative crop insurance products for cotton in terms of their effect on expected producer net returns and the variation of net returns. Farm unit-level cotton yields and state-level price distributions are estimated by a multivariate nonnormal parametric modeling procedure and used to simulate the net returns to alternative crop insurance products over a 10-year planning horizon. The ranking of alternative insurance products using third-degree stochastic dominance is presented for Texas cotton producers.

As a result of the increase in the real cost of fossil fuel-based energy in recent years, federal and state governments have taken a more active role in energy policy by creating incentives to develop alternative sources of energy, including biofuels. However, policymakers often become focused on the specific type of energy and not the energy services consumers ultimately value. The lack of recognition of energy as a commodity results in policies that ignore the characteristics of the associated markets: easy entry and exit, no barriers to entry, and sensitivity to changes in supply and demand. Consequently, energy industries may fail to arise because entrepreneurs must be able to account for all costs and earn—at a minimum—a competitive return on the investment. This article evaluates the options available to policymakers related to biofuels, which are of particular concern to the South, and includes an assessment of the knowledge base on which policy decisions are made.

Recent developments in the U.S. pecan industry appear to limit the utility of past research. The importance of pecan variety has emerged as an issue which could alter past results. The linear and double-log models previously fitted to all-pecans (averaged) data may be too restrictive and hence, are less useful for variety-specific analysis. Past research also analyzed price turning points using nominal data. This study investigated functional form and data-averaging problems by fitting separate flexible Box-Cox price-dependent models for all-pecans and each variety of pecans (1970/71-1988/89 deflated data). Results indicate: other nuts substitute for different pecan varieties, estimated all-pecans price flexibility is biased and clouds variety-specific flexibilities, and restrictive functional forms are inappropriate.

Planning for regional growth and development must necessarily be contingent upon population growth or decline expected for the region in question. Ultimately, all decisions regarding allocation of resources to the process of developing the infrastructure of fixed capital assets to serve a region's population depends upon the number of people to be served. The purpose of this article is to present employment multipliers calculated by regression analysis and to describe their usage for planning in nonmetropolitan counties of the Ozarks region. Many technical questions concerning the statistical procedure have been discussed elsewhere. Thus, these questions will be only briefly reviewed herein.

The relationship between the degree of competitive market pressure and the rate of productivity growth is empirically investigated with a case study of the Florida fresh winter vegetable industry. The results indicate that crops which faced considerable competitive pressure exhibited significant productivity growth while the crops that faced minimal competitive pressure generally exhibited little growth in productivity. Thus, the hypothesis that competitive pressure is positively related to productivity growth is supported.

Firm characteristics and managers' attitudes and opinions about pesticide safety were used to classify lawn care and landscape management firms into four categories and compare them using the logit procedure. Survey data obtained from 223 firms was used in the empirical investigation of the adoption of the IPM techniques. Results showed the need for continued transfer of new technology to independently owned firms, multidisciplinary assessment of IPM methods before their transfer to ascertain the economic viability of proposed methods, public investment in programs training workers in knowledge-based pesticide applications, possible assistance in obtaining capital, and investment in consumer education.

Farm planning and enterprise selection have been studied by agricultural economists for many years. Detailed methodology has been developed to analyze the economic situation of farm firms and to project optimum combinations of resources used in producing selected enterprise activities. Programming techniques have been used extensively. They provided planning guidelines, with quality dependent on availability of data and completeness of the programming format.

One area of concern arising from many programming efforts is that resource utilization and, ultimately, enterprise selection do not accurately project the general patterns of production observed in a specific area. Furthermore, there is little observable indication that farmers tend to move toward the programming solution. This problem is apparent when more variable enterprises are programmed with traditionally less variable enterprises. The more variable enterprises are frequently indicated to be profitable in the programming solutions, but farmers are not very interested in growing them.

A Cox nonnested test is conducted using a fast double bootstrap (FDB) methodto select among three competing functional forms (linear response plateau,quadratic, and Mitscherlich-Baule) to model forage yield response tonitrogen applied with swine effluent. The quadratic is rejected in favor ofone of the other functional forms in all cases. The FDB pvalues differed slightly from the single bootstrap pvalues. Buffalograss was slightly more profitable than bermudagrass and hasthe ability to use almost as much nitrogen as bermudagrass.

This study evaluates optimal investment decision rules for an energy beet ethanol firm to exercise the option to invest, mothball, reactivate, and exit the ethanol market, considering uncertainty and volatility in the market price of ethanol, feedstock, and irreversible investment. A real options framework is used to compute gross margins of ethanol that trigger entry into and exit from the ethanol market. Results show that volatility in ethanol gross margins has much greater effects on exit and entry decisions than investment costs, and it also causes firms to wait longer before entering the ethanol market and, once active, to wait longer before exiting.