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.

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.

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.

Using the case of chronic wasting disease (CWD) in white-tailed deer, we estimated hunters’ willingness-to-pay (WTP) for testing their game and determined how their perception of disease risk, trust, and confidence in wildlife agency affected hunter participation in ongoing disease surveillance. The average WTP for testing was $23.75 per deer, and it was positively related to trust and confidence in the wildlife agency and the perception of risk about deer populations in the declining area and the pathogen spreading to other areas. These findings imply that implementing active outreach programs can improve hunter participation in user-paid systems for CWD surveillance.

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.

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.

Profitability, yield, and fertilizer use are compared across three different potassium (K) fertilizer rate recommendation ideologies. Existing agronomic, “build and maintain” rate recommendations (KE) are compared to profit-maximizing rates with and without taking long-run soil-test K (STK) implications into account. Regardless of starting STK, K use equilibrated over the course of 3 years irrespective of ideology. Since taking long-run STK into account did not alter ending STK and only led to a miniscule yield effect, we encourage producers to use annual profit-maximizing K rates that were 3–11% lower than KE rates and generated more profit with minimal yield loss.

We investigate the role of optimism bias in bull price expectations using incentivized lab-in-the-field experiments with Alabama and Tennessee cattle producers. We develop bull price prediction tasks and reward accurate predictions. We find that the EPD information provision prevents optimism bias from contaminating price expectations in the whole sample. However, we also document that, unlike buyers, sellers are prone to unrealistic optimistic expectations, and our results reveal that optimism bias can be moderated by the type of expected progeny difference information utilized, breed characteristics, and regional differences in cattle operations. We contribute to the literature by documenting the role of behavioral biases.

Agricultural transportation is often characterized by seasonal and cyclical traffic flows that unfavorably affect the logistical efficiency of the marketing system. Congestion problems arise in the truck-to-ship intermodal grain transfer system at the Port of Houston. Seasonal peaks in truck-delivered grain receipts create problems with efficient interfacing of the port elevators' grain-receiving capacity and truck arrival patterns. During peak volume periods, the elevators' receiving capacity is inadequate; long truck queues develop and congestion or waiting occurs. Queues of 3-4 miles are common during the peak receipt periods, whereas the facility may be idle for extended periods of off-peak time.

In the last decade, vegetarianism has become more prevalent in the United States, although by no means dominant (Adrian and Daniel). Even households which have not become vegetarian have considered decreasing their consumption of meat. This trend has been due to several factors. First, meat is relatively more expensive than other sources of protein. Second, inflation has diminished consumer purchasing power. Third, recent health reports have focused on carcinogenic agents in meat and the dangers of too much cholesterol. Fourth, concern with ecology and world food supplies has increased. Meat is thought to be less efficient in feeding the masses than grains and other nonmeat protein sources.

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.

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].

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.

Dairy producers operating in the U.S. have been protected against market price variability by the federal price support program for over 35 years. During the late 1970s tax outlays to operate this program grew at a rapid rate. While many authors have addressed the economic implications of the existing dairy price support program, few have explicitly considered the relationship between risk aversion, capital investment, milk production, and support price policy in this process. This paper considers the role of uncertainty and risk-averse behavior and suggests that these elements are crucial to an economic analysis of the current program and future dairy policy issues.

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 study evaluates the economic survivability of rice farms in the Delta area of Mississippi. A general whole-farm simulation model, FLIPSIM V, is used to simulate the operations of representative rice farms over a 10-year period. Although farm size did not change for any of the representative farms considered, the financial structure of these farms changed considerably. Crop mix was found to cause significant differences in the economic growth and financial viability of rice farms in the region.

A topic of considerable recent discussion is the use of high return per acre crops such as vegetables as a possible means of improving income levels on small, limited-resource farms. Though production economic analyses (those using conventional techniques such as budgeting and linear programming) indicate that farmers with small acreage might increase their income substantially by selecting vegetable enterprises, very few farmers are selecting vegetables over field crops. One possible explanation for their failure to do so is that the income from vegetable crops is more variable than that from field crops, and owners of small farms are more inclined to produce crops that will yield a lower but more stable level of income.

A Barro-type economic growth model is estimated for the 50 states in the U.S. using data for three decades beginning in 1960. Frontier estimation techniques are used to test for the presence of state-specific shocks to economic growth that are independent of the usual, normally-distributed random errors. We find that large, positive shocks to growth occurred during the period 1960-90. Our results indicate that the error term structure assumed under OLS may not be appropriate for modeling economic growth.