A logistic growth equation with time and location varying parameters was used to model corn response to applied nitrogen. A nonlinear dummy-variable regression model provided a parsimonious representation of site and time effects on parameter values. The model was used to test for the equality of the mean marginal product of nitrogen fertilizer between locations on the coastal plain of North Carolina. Monte Carlo simulation and bootstrap simulation were used to construct finite sample covariance estimates. Results support rejection of the hypothesis that mean marginal products are equal when nitrogen is applied at 168 kg/ac. A comparison of bootstrapped errors and asymptotic errors suggests that results based on asymptotic theory are fairly reliable in this case.

A procedure is described for evaluating poultry and egg research projects. A peer review questionnaire and benefit-cost analysis are utilized incorporating elasticities from an econometric model for poultry and eggs. Production, cost, and price changes are used to calculate changes in producer surplus and net economic surplus for a set of privately funded publicly conducted research projects.

Regulatory activity to maintain the status of the independent milk company as a viable competitive force in the milk industry has been a central focus of regulatory policy since the 1930's. Some authorities question the degree of emphasis on preservation under the law, but most feel that there is an important element of protection embodied in regulatory activity affecting the industry. We feel that this aspect of the law is important and is the focus of this article.

Legal protection of the independent dairy is afforded from three sources. The Robinson-Patman Act, which prohibits firms from discriminating in price where the effect may be to substantially lessen competition, has been enforced extensively by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on behalf of independent milk companies. For example, of 53 complaints filed by the FTC from June 1950 to June 1964, nine were against dairy companies. Independent firms have protected their own position under the law in treble damage private litigation. As a group, the national and regional dairy concerns have been involved in almost continuous treble damage litigation on charges of discriminatory pricing in recent years.

Two years ago, in his presidential address, Dr. C. E. Bishop told members of the American Agricultural Economics Association that “… our preoccupation with the problems of the farm firm has resulted in little or no attention to problems that are much more important to the majority of the rural population”.

Preoccupation with the farm firm is evident in our traditional approach to the study of incomes of farm people. There is still a tendency to look at the incomes of farm firms rather than at the incomes of people who farm. Present income statistics are oriented to the farm firm in a way that makes it fairly difficult to study the economic well-being of people involved in farming.

All those who have worked closely with farmers know that uncertainties in farming are great. They stem from many sources — natural forces such as weather, disease, variation in market prices, etc. Some uncertainties, e.g., weather hazards such as hail, can be insured against; others can be reduced by increased wealth. Farmers can also reduce uncertainty through contracting, as these may specify price and quantity.

Most crops grown in the U.S. Central Cornbelt are sold on highly developed public markets with daily prices and offerings. While target prices for soybeans and corn exist, price uncertainty still remains at the time farmers make decisions. Futures markets have long been available. However, few farmers use futures markets to predetermine prices in their crop planning process. One reason for this is that while use of futures markets can remove price risks, biological weather risks remain.

Money and capital markets exist to provide an exchange system for debt and equity instruments-money substitutes with time dimensions. This financial intermediation process is a two-way flow. The funds-flow originates with savers and terminates with the ultimate borrowers or users of the saved funds. The securities flow originates with ultimate borrowers and ends with primary savers. In addition to savers and borrowers, the principal participants are the financial intermediaries: those firms in which (a) claims on and to others dominate among assets and liabilities and (b) economic activities center upon the purchase and sale of such claims.

The Florida tomato industry produces about 90 percent of the domestic fresh tomato supplies during the November to mid-June season (Brooker and Pearson). Most of this supply is produced in an area under the authority of Federal Marketing Order 966 for fresh tomatoes. Federal marketing orders have been scrutinized in recent government studies and the USDA has been under pressure to justify the existence of these orders (USDA, AMS). Federal Marketing Order 966 uses quality restrictions to provide orderly market conditions for producers and consumers. This study measures the gains that producers could realize with quality restrictions and assesses the process for implementing these restrictions.

Public expenditures for research and development have increased very rapidly in the last two decades. Despite the apparent high payoff from this research, there is an increasingly greater reluctance on the part of legislative groups and the general public to support such research. This problem revolves around the question of social priorities, but it also involves an assessment of the value of the research investment.

The soybean economy experienced balanced growth in both total demand and total supply since the early 1940's, but in recent years encountered excess production. Since the soybean economy is effectively interdependent with that of corn, cotton, and rice, programs for these commodities must be tailored to current and potential conditions relating to soybeans. Detailed analyses of sources of increased production, of associated inter-regional effects, and of production alternatives in the soybean area are needed to provide basic information for formulation of new programs. My primary purpose is to discuss the need for expanded research on soybean production patterns. However, most of the emphasis, herein is on developing a comprehensive information framework as an initial step to accomplish the research task.

In many regions, irrigation water is pumped from an underground aquifer that receives little or no recharge. With an exhaustible water supply, water available in year t + 1 depends on quantity of water available in year t − 1 and the quantity withdrawn in year t. As the water supply decreases, pumping costs increase and returns to water and management decline.

The exhaustible nature of the water supply causes an especially difficult problem for the farm operator in that he must allocate water within and among years. In addition, the farm operator is faced with irrigation investment decisions; e.g., type of irrigation distribution system to use. He must consider simultaneously, labor intensive versus capital intensive systems and effect of each system on present value and economic life of his specific water supply. To manually evaluate the alternatives, making the necessary calculations would be prohibitive in terms of both cost and time.

Selected problems and opportunities inherent in educational work with large Agricultural and Agribusiness firms are examined in this paper. The problems arise largely because of the increasing size and complexity of today's large firms; the nature of their requests for assistance; and existing means of teaching the personnel of those firms. The opportunities lie in helping solve their problems in a manner which retains University contact with this important audience without disrupting academic budgets and faculty relationships.

Perhaps the first important question is, “Will the next few years be significantly different from those of the past decade”? Assuming that the world is not again engulfed in a war of major magnitude, it is probably safe to conclude that many of the agricultural problems of the 1960's will continue to be of importance well into the 1970's. The problems associated with a highly competitive industry in which output per man-hour of labor is increasing rapidly while the demand for its output is both inelastic and expanding slowly are not likely to disappear at an early date.

First let us focus attention on problem areas which may not be “new” in any basic sense of that word, but which are likely to be of increasing importance in the years immediately ahead.

I applaud Quentin West for what he said in his paper and commend him for the directions he had outlined for the Economic Research Service. If there was a time when economists could ignore the equity dimension in their analysis, it is no more. The agricultural establishment, largely uncritical lovers of traditional agricultural research and education, and the young radicals, largely unloving critics exemplified by Hard Tomatoes -- Hard Times, hold very different images of who pays for and who benefits from publicly supported agricultural research and education. Differences will not be resolved without better information in the hands of both groups.

It would be hard to quarrel with the thrust of ERS analysis reported by West for Tobacco and other programs. So I will deal with his shortcomings of omission rather than commission. Specifically, I will quantify the distribution of costs and benefits from agricultural research and education.

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.

A growing awareness of the need for a comprehensive approach to regional and local planning for studying urban and rural areas as parts of an interrelated socio-economic system has stimulated interest in the problem of delineating economic regions, areas, and sub-areas. The Office of Business Economics, U. S. Department of Commerce, has designated 173 economic sub-areas in the U. S. for purposes of planning by federal agencies. State governments are also busy delineating planning areas for state and local agencies. Ten such planning areas were designated in South Carolina by executive order of the Governor in March 1969. Presumably, future public policies and programs in such fields as natural resource management, industrial development, housing, and highway construction, etc., will be designed and implemented on the basis of these spatial delineations.

The three articles presented at this invited session examine the evolution of water policy planning and the implementation of regulatory tools to achieve water conservation objectives. Two articles focus on Texas water issues and the third focuses on the Georgia planning experience. Each article clearly illustrates the value of sharing advances in hydrologic and economic modeling with local community stakeholder groups to facilitate the credible development of regional water management plans. Moreover, each article hints that stronger regulatory tools may be needed to achieve long-run policy objectives.

Commercial farmers remain a primary political force in support of publicly-supported research and educational programs to create productivity gains in crop and livestock production. Have the technical productivity gains brought about by both public and private sector research and educational efforts improved the well being of American farmers? A great number of agricultural scientists believe that they have. Studies have attempted to provide estimates of the internal rate of return and benefit/cost ratios for agricultural research and education. The vast majority of these studies estimate a quite favorable internal rate of return and a high productivity for public-sector agricultural research (Huffman and Just, p. 828). But these studies have focused on rates of return to agricultural research and education for society as a whole, without attempting to determine if these gains accrued to farmers, consumers, or perhaps the agribusiness firms who purchase raw farm commodities from farmers or sell them inputs.