Most political analysts failed to predict that the election of 1980 would be close; few foresaw the landslide that would bring major changes in the policy-making machinery. The results surprised almost everyone. Ronald Reagan carried all but 6 states, and the Republicans won the Senate for the first time in a quarter century. The balance of power in the House of Representatives also shifted toward the conservatives—Republicans gained 33 seats.

Two questions commonly raised by cow-calf producers are, “What type of beef animal is most profitable?” and “Can profits be increased by maintaining ownership of calves through the stocker and feeding stages?”

These two questions are highly interrelated as performance in cow-calf stage carries over into the Dostweanine staees.

The agricultural and food policy future now offers more than usual excitement—and also uncertainty. As the calendar turned, it ushered in a year of decision about the future of this nation's public policy concerning its agriculture production, farm family and rural community welfare, consumers' food supply, and agricultural trade. It also signaled the changing of the leading actors who will perform yet unwritten roles in a yet-to-be-titled drama of policy development. All of this will unfold both within an international and national environment of volatile economic forces. It offers all the challenge that a student of policy could expect.

Much of the early 1860s discontent with railroads was centered in agricultural regions, particularly the new regions of the West, where monopolistic price discrimination was most easily practiced by railroads. Because of unavailable or inaccessible forms of competing transportation and numerous small shippers, railroads were able to exploit their monopolistic position (Meyer et al.). Agrarian political action in the 1860s resulted in unsuccessful regulatory efforts by states, but laid the base for the cornerstone of federal transportation regulation, the Act to Regulate Commerce, which was passed in 1887. The Act requires that all rates be “just and reasonable” and provides that “every unjust and unreasonable charge” is unlawful.

The present legal authority for the Food Stamp Program (FSP) is the Food and Agriculture Act of 1977. As adopted, the legislation includes a thorough overhaul of the FSP enacted into law in 1964. The FSP provides direct subsidies in the form of additional food dollars to low-income households to enhance the purchasing of nutritionally adequate diets. The most significant effect both on participating households and the food industry is the elimination of the purchase requirement whereby participants pay for food stamps. Under the new legislation, participants receive food stamps free of charge. The benefits received are roughly equivalent to the value of bonus stamps under the old program (Stucker and Boehm).

Boehm and Spitze approach the assigned topic from quite different perspectives. Boehm's principal point of departure is his belief that the policy-making process has now changed to one of crisis reaction. That is, if a problem is not at the crisis stage, it is not acted on. From this premise, he moves on to identify several potential crises that he thinks will develop over the next several years.

This paper examines the issues surrounding the patenting of life forms, specifically the social and private costs and benefits of the Plant Variety Protection Act (PVPA) (Plant Variety Protection Act, 1970). The PVPA is a current issue, encompassing all the elements of the economic, social, and moral controversy aroused by the broader issue of patenting life forms generally.

The subsequent sections of the paper outline the specific issues surrounding the PVPA, discuss the issue of plant patenting, present the arguments favoring and opposing plant patenting, and, finally, present an analysis of the major issues of the PVPA.

The papers by Boehm and Spitze provide contrasts in approach, content, and conclusions. The Spitze paper reflects the issues as seen through the eyes of an observant professor located in a major Corn Belt university. Its ideas reflect sensitivity to articulation of policy problems confronting producers in the region. Boehm's paper is particularly strong in that it reflects the day-to-day sensitivity to the contemporary economic and political forces that currently affect the policy process. Both papers lack a clear sensitivity to the policy position and problems of southern agriculture.

From the early 1600s, when tobacco exports literally saved the struggling Jamestown settlement, to the January 4, 1980, embargo of grain to the Soviet Union, food and agriculture have played varied roles in international affairs of the U.S., that is, in the political, military, economic, and cultural exchanges that affect the power of the U.S. relative to other sovereign nations. Food donations have been used as a humanitarian gesture to avert starvation. Food export embargoes have been used as weapons against foreign adversaries and domestic scarcities. Food pledges have been used to promote international food aid conventions. Food import quotas have been reallocated to reward friendly nations and penalize unfriendly ones. U.S. food shipments have been used to feed Allied soldiers and to barter for strategic materials. Food exports have been used to bolster the domestic economy and strengthen the dollar.

Market hog prices historically have shown great variation and have often followed a cyclical pattern. Franzmann (1979) finds evidence of a four-year and a twenty-eight-year cycle in hog prices. Price cycles imply the possibility of forecasting long-range prices. In turn, forecasting suggests the opportunity to vary the production or marketing process in order to maximize profits.

The role of food and agriculture in world affairs is an extremely broad and multifaceted subject. Attempts to understand it require the contributions of a number of disciplines, such as agricultural economics, international trade and finance, history, and international politics. Therefore, it is virtually impossible to do it justice in a twelve-page manuscript or in a forty-minute presentation.

A long-season (160–180 days) cotton variety with a conventional production system was formerly grown in the Texas Coastal Bend Region. Cotton producers in the region used intensive insecticide applications throughout the growing season and harvested in August or September, and occasionally in October. In general, intensive insecticide applications for boll weevil and fleahopper control destroyed the beneficial insects and spiders. Late-season tobacco budworm infestations were thereby aggravated. These late-season insect infestations were a result of the relatively high rainfall during August and September. Moreover, high rainfall during this time not only interfered with harvest, but also reduced both the yield and quality of cotton (Lacewell et al.).

Food processing accounts for a large part of the total energy consumed in the food and fiber system, second only to household preparation. Havlicek and Capps emphasized that processing and distribution of food and fiber require 12 to 17 percent of the total U.S. energy budget. Thus far, research on energy use by agriculture in the southern region has concentrated on production of raw products at the farm level (Debertin and Pagoulatos) and consumption of food in the home (Lovingood and Goss; Rhee and Drew). The large processing and distribution network has been generally excluded from analysis because of a lack of information on energy used in these industries. Comprehensive data bases on energy use in food processing have been relatively limited because of the imperfectly competitive nature of food processing industries and because of unfavorable costs and benefits of compiling such information. Because of a lack of accurate and reliable data, little is known about the behavioral relationship of energy use in food processing and distribution.

For a long time, the consensus of old farmers sitting around crossroads stores has been that, sooner or later, America is going to run out of agricultural land because of all the houses, shopping centers, and highways that are spreading out onto the nation's cropland. And for years, such observations have been summarily dismissed as the ravings of ignorant men with too much time on their hands. Yet in the last half of the 1970s, a significant part of the educated elite in the United States began to suspect that those old farmers just might be correct. The farm press began to run articles concerning the loss of prime agricultural land to urban sprawl (Johnson); some of the more prestigious national journals appealing to educated laymen began to publish articles on the subject (Blundell); and even general circulation newspapers that seldom deign to print anything other than stories on political corruption or murder and mayhem devoted space to feature-length articles warning of the loss of cropland to non-agricultural uses (Burnside).

Hite and Dillman have addressed an issue important to this country in their paper. This issue, our changing prime farmland resource base, has received much attention recently and is likely to receive more in the future. Although the views expressed in the Hite and Dillman article are both original and stimulating, they deserve further discussion. Following are comments on the basic premise of their paper, the role of positive economics in this issue, and potential implications for agricultural land retention in the South.

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.

This paper identifies current and developing issues in interregional competition and agricultural transportation. These topics are related to the extent that the cost and quality of transportation services is one major determinant of the economic distance between regions.

Interregional competition analysis was introduced to agricultural economics in the late 1930s, with the stimulus of agricultural research funds authorized by the Bankhead-Jones Act of 1935, under the leadership of Sherman E. Johnson and John D. Black. Interregional competition developed as a synonym for regional comparative advantage. Interregional competition analysis is a general set of tools designed to measure regional comparative advantage.

Each year many agricultural commodity groups spend millions of dollars advertising and promoting generic products. Generic advertising of a number of farm commodities occurs under federal authorization, under separate legislation or under marketing orders, or it is funded by producers on a voluntary contribution or mandatory basis.

More than three-fourths of the advertising programs operating under separate federal legislation or marketing order authority have been initiated during the past ten years (Armbruster). In addition to existing advertising programs, several advertising programs authorized under federal legislation were voted down by producers in a referendum: the most recent case was a beef referendum.

Integrated pest management (IPM) programs vary from employing field scouts to planting trap crops, as inputs in production, to control crop losses. Scouts provide pest information, helping to determine the need for pesticide applications. This increased information may indicate a reduction of periodic application, which would diminish the negative external effects that such treatments have on environmental quality.

Recent research in this area has determined the need for pest information (Regev et al.) and the rationale for established information markets (Feder). Currently, such sources exist throughout the United States, and both public and private consultants supply information to agricultural producers.

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.