The world was astonished in 1989 by the initial collapse of socialist institutions and subsequently by the pace at which change swept across the Eastern European region. For a time, even the Soviet Union seemed to be moving toward greater political pluralism, market orientation and the effective end of the Cold War. It is now approaching two years since this political convulsion began (in Poland). This is sufficient time to enable the transition programs to take form, and to permit informed speculation about the potential for their success and, ultimately, how the Eastern European and Soviet situations could affect the farming and food sectors of our economy.

Since the early 1970s, the increasingly tight energy situation has introduced a new emphasis, if not a wholly new concern, into the economics of agriculture. Assuming the tight energy situation continues, or even intensifies in the future, it is likely to require economic adjustment in U.S. agriculture—an agriculture heavily dependent on fossil fuels.

Dvoskin and Heady have shown that when maximizing farm profits is the primary goal, energy price levels have a minimal impact on acres of crops produced under reduced tillage methods in the U.S.. However, when energy minimization was the primary goal, there was a substantial shift from conventional to reduced tillage. An ERS study proposes that forms of reduced tillage can be a major means of achieving fuel savings. Reduced tillage methods do reduce fuel requirements, but these are accompanied by higher chemical requirements. Eidman, Dobbins and Mapp found that with current energy prices, a form of reduced tillage for corn production was preferable to conventional tillage methods. In a recent study, Musser and Marable concluded that with respect to machinery purchases, energy cost increases are providing incentives for substitution of labor for capital.

This paper employed a variety of sources of data and a number of methods to describe rural lending markets. Over the sample period, 1992 through 1998, there was a pronounced trend towards affiliation of banks, both urban and rural, with holding companies, although over this period there was little change in the concentration of banking offices in rural areas. Using data from the 1993 National Survey of Small Business Finances, the study found some evidence that rural small businesses were less likely to apply for a loan than urban small firms although those rural firms that did apply were more likely to have their application accepted.

The commercial farm problem is often defined as a disequilibrium condition in which agriculture's productive capacity exceeds utilization at socially acceptable prices. However, commodity supplies are determined by the level and composition of resources committed to their production. While the commercial farm problem surfaces as a production-utilization disequilibrium, basically it is a resource imbalance problem.

Resource imbalances in agriculture result in an inefficient organization of the industry. To be efficient, resource use in the farm industry must satisfy three conditions:

1. the allocation of resources among agricultural and non-agricultural products must result in output and price levels that reward identical resources equally,

2. the use of resources in agriculture must result in a product mix geared to the relative demands for different products, and

3. each farm product must be produced at minimum factor cost.

The research reported in this paper focuses on the last efficiency condition. More specifically, we estimate the level and combination of resources for historical production levels of feed grains, wheat, soybeans, cotton and tobacco that minimize factor cost.

The goal of this study, based on data collected through community surveys and visitors' surveys, is to determine and analyze factors impacting returns from rural tourism. Our first model shows that age of event, median family income, and hired labor have a significant impact on the revenues collected from tourism events. Furthermore, it shows brochures and flyers to be the most effective form of advertisement. The second multivariate regression model proves that traveling greater distances, staying overnight at a hotel, and plans for visiting surrounding areas contribute positively and significantly to higher individual expenditures by tourists.

The study reported was motivated by a USDA study to develop complete quarterly models of supply and demand for a selected set of fresh salad vegetables. The acreage planted component enters recursively into both the acreage harvested and yield relations used in many of these models. Consequently, predictions of acreage planted are instrumental in predicting total supply and resulting market equilibrium solutions.

In modeling acreage planted over relevant seasons within four regions, various sources of information can be brought to bear. Obviously, data series on past plantings, costs, and prices provide the foundation of statistical estimation of an acreage response model. However, additional information from previous studies, economic theory, and subjective judgment on the part of the researcher also can be incorporated into the model through the use of the mixed estimation technique developed by Theil and Goldberger [8].

The imputed pig death loss contained in the reported monthly U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) pig crop data over the December 1995-June 2006 period ranged from —4.93% to 12.75%. Clearly, there are substantial measurement errors in the USDA monthly pig crop data. In this paper, we present alternative monthly U.S. pig crop data using the biological production process, which is compatible with prior knowledge of the U.S. hog industry. Alternative pig crop data are applied to a slaughter hog model and tested comparatively to USDA pig crop. Test results reject the validity of USDA pig crop data in favor of the alternative data.

The debate over privatizing and water markets has moved back and forth for decades between the “I” and the “We” perspectives. Rather than either/or, a balanced “I&We” view of water institutions is needed. West is meeting east in water law. Public interest needs must be satisfied in appropriate decision forums, but marketing may prove a social improvement when used as a supplement. Balancing an “I&We” institution involves establishing an acceptable or tolerable level of interference through judicious mixing of state, common and private property regimes. Third-party effects are eliminated as mutual gain arises in a variety of decision forums.

The effectiveness of the Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program in achieving its goals at the national, regional, and state level is unknown. Using US Department of Agriculture (USDA) data from all states and territories for the years 2000-2006, the impact of program and participant characteristics and returns to scale on the three outcome indicators used by the USDA are estimated. Program and participant characteristics do not seem to be as important as the amount of money spent on the program. Generally speaking, there are constant and increasing returns to scale for two of the three federal outcome indices for most states but not all.

New revenue-based support programs in the 2008 Farm Bill represent a fundamental shift in farm programs and risk management decision-making. However, complexity, uncertainty, economics, and, arguably, an incomplete analysis of the new Average Crop Revenue Election (ACRE) program all contributed to low enrollment in the new program in 2009. An effective analysis of ACRE should consider farm programs as part of an integrated risk management portfolio, including crop insurance, marketing, and other risk management tools as opposed to a separate lottery program. Improving this integration could be one of the most significant consequences of the 2008 Farm Bill.

The South plays an important role in American agriculture in that it is a major supplier of several commodities. However, due to relatively low yields, the region is a marginal producer of some important farm commodities grown in the United States. Given this constraint, the South still offers the greatest potential for expansion of agricultural output of any region in the country. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate this assertion. A rather broad perspective with implications for future research is provided.

Much effort is devoted to explaining and forecasting changes in marketings of agricultural commodities. The usual procedure involves formulating hypotheses about behavior of individual producers, then testing them and quantifying relationships by using aggregate data. The purpose of this paper is to suggest and illustrate a procedure that may provide a foundation for improved explanation and prediction of period-to-period changes in marketings.

The procedure uses data obtained from individual producers to test hypotheses about period-to-period changes. Results obtained from an application of this procedure (to analysis of year-to-year changes in hog marketings) suggest that expected profitability alone is unlikely to provide either a very complete explanation or accurate predictions of year-to-year changes.

Considerable research has been conducted over the years to determine optimal rations for dairy cattle. Dean et al. extended earlier work through a comprehensive examination of milk production functions, isoquant shapes, and feed systems to maximize income over feed cost (IOFC) for a given point in time.

A significant component of risk in agricultural production systems is yield variability. The ability to predict yield and thus reduce risk would have many potential benefits to both individual decision makers and society. For example, in farm planning, quality crop yield forecasts could be crucial in making decisions on optimal crop combinations. At the aggregate level, an example where a yield forecast would have obvious benefits would be cases in which government manages a grain buffer stock.

Several recent papers have used annual changes and monthly data to estimate demand systems. Such use of overlapping data introduces a moving average error term. This paper shows how to obtain consistent and asymptotically efficient estimates of a demand system using seasonally differenced data. Monte Carlo simulations and an empirical application to the estimation of the U.S. meat demand are used to compare the proposed estimator with alternative estimators. Once the correct estimator is used, there is no advantage to using overlapping data in estimating a demand system.

The provision for producers to update base acres and payment yields in the 2002 farm bill afforded an opportunity to test whether it was feasible to deliver a complex simulation model directly to producers. A Monte Carlo simulation model for assessing the economic impacts of the alternative base and yield options on individual farms was developed and made available to producers via the World Wide Web. The experiences and challenges from this collaborative extension and research effort are described, as well as the issues educators might consider before delivering complex software to a national audience via the Web.

Implicit in the subject of regional markets is the inference that they deserve more attention in research than they have been given in recent years. Based in large part on cheap energy for transportation and production, the economy has reflected increased regional specialization in production for a national (or international) market. Concurrently, there has been a disinter-mediation of many of the regional differences in consumer wants and preferences because of the increased mobility of the population and the exposure of all persons to the same mass communications material. These factors have contributed to an emphasis on the national market, in contrast to the regional market in both research and the popular press.