Public opinion surveys indicate that the local property tax is the least popular of all taxes paid by Americans, yet in almost every state such a tax is levied for the support of local government and/or public schools. The major economic argument against the property tax is its inequities — both vertical and horizontal. Several studies have focused on the vertical equity of property taxes in Oklahoma, but the question of horizontal equity remains unexplored. The research reported in this paper deals with the nature of horizontal inequities in the taxation of rural land in Oklahoma and with the impact of state-wide equalization on rural land values.

Economists have shown an increasing interest in systems theory and simulation. The recent reviews by Anderson and LaDue and Vincent indicate the literature is repleat with models of business and farm firms developed by researchers from several disciplines. A smaller but no less sophisticated group of models is focused on simulated physical or biological processes. An even smaller segment of the literature deals with economic applications of models which simulate physical and biological phenomena.

Economists have become interested in models simulating physical and biological phenomena because of their experimental value. When a satisfactory approximation of reality can be created within the context of the model, experiments can then be conducted to determine the effects of changes in exogeneous factors on outcomes predicted by the model.

In recent years, several studies have examined acreage response of major crops to various economic, technical, and institutional stimuli. These studies focused primarily upon the influence of government farm programs on producers' production decisions. While the influence of government programs has recently diminished and market forces are more direct determinants, this less stable situation has likely increased informational needs on potential production response. Previously developed response models require updating, additional refinement, or reformulation for continued usefulness in the current situation.

During the first 4 months of 1975, Congress considered a number of amendments to the Agricultural and Consumer Protection Act of 1973. The amendments were principally directed toward raising loan rates and target prices for major U.S. crops and support rates for dairy. Pressure for raising target prices and loan rates was largely due to substantial increases in input prices occurring since the enactment of the August, 1973 Act. Between July of 1973 and December of 1974, the index of prices paid for production items, interest, taxes and wage rates increased by 22 percent. Farmers and farm leaders expressed fear that high yields, coupled with the full production stance of the Administration,, could throw the crop sector into a cost-price squeeze, depressing farm income. Given these circumstances, proponents of the amendments argued that target prices and loan rates under the Act of 1973 gave farmers inadequate protection from low prices.

Enterprise competition among beef, hog and crop alternatives in the South has been recognized by a number of analysts; Potential enterprise adjustments in this region must be evaluated before reliable decisions affecting the beef industry can be made. This paper is concerned with an appraisal of normative adjustments in southern beef production and related enterprises over an intermediate period of time.

Commercial agriculture is undergoing a major structural change in the form of decreasing numbers and increasing sizes of farm units. This structural change results in farm firms constantly experiencing expansion and survival problems. In some cases, expansion and survival are related: growth in size is necessary to incorporate cost-reducing technological improvements to maintain income levels. In others, these problems are separated: expansion is desired to increase income-earning capacity, or survival may be a primary objective for the firm when expansion is unlikely. This paper develops an analytical framework, incorporating the dynamics of expansion and survival, and explores their interrelationships. Stochastic relationships are incorporated for use in conceptualizing simulation studies of firm growth. Its empirical relevance is demonstrated with an analysis of the interaction between managerial ability and leverage in the process of expansion and survival of a representative farm firm in South Central Georgia.

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.

The impact of rapidly escalating input prices of farm income, agricultural production, production adjustments, the general price level, the cost of living and capital requirements in the agricultural sector is a source of increasing concern to farmers, suppliers of capital to agriculture, and consumers of agricultural products. Record prices for agricultural commodities, such as feed grains and soybeans, partially masked the effects of a 52 percent increase in the index of prices paid for production items on net farm income during the period 1971–74. As agricultural machinery and farm buildings are replaced, world stocks of agricultural commodities are replenished, and domestic prices begin to decline, the magnitude of these cost increases will become more apparent.

During the last three years agriculture has exhibited characteristics that parallel those of a manic depressive. The livestock sector was flying high during 1973 and in the depths of despair in 1974. The crop sector was elevated from two decades of despondent but stable economic health to a state of price elation in 1973 and 1974. Over the last couple of years consumers, who enjoyed excellent food budget health for years, have slipped into a state of belligerent depression. Each group views the future with anxious dismay. Livestock producers fear that the feed prices will remain high, crop producers fear they will not. Neither livestock nor crop producers have a sound basis for making short or longer term production plans.

With current high food prices and increasing talk about a world food crisis, there is renewed interest in production agriculture and in the allocation of resources to agriculture. It would seem, therefore, that estimates of agricultural production functions and their associated marginal products would be useful to those responsible for resource allocation to the agricultural sector. This paper intended to give policymakers information on which to base decisions relative to the impact of investments in agricultural research and extension activities. The level of appropriations to such activities can be considered a proxy measure of technology. Most researchers familiar with this area feel that the total effect of new technology on production does not occur at one momemt in time, but may be spread over a number or years. Considering this, a distributed lag on research and extension expenditures was incorporated into the production function estimated in this paper.

Management of agricultural business firms, such as grain and supply cooperatives, is becoming increasingly complex. Such complexity is a result of growth in size and intricacy of cooperatives over the last decade or more, and of processes of expansion of traditional functions and adoption of new ones. Currently, there is little research information available about the management function, and even less which is specific to agricultural business firms. Several studies have shown that the most important reason a cooperative fails is probably management. Yet, there is seldom any testing of senior management performance.

Economists have demonstrated considerable concern with the appropriateness of profit maximization as a sole firm objective. Agricultural economists have adopted suggestions of economic theorists in writings on production economics; for example, Heady relaxed the objective of profit maximization to incorporate preferences for family consumption and risk aversion. Production economics research has supported the theoretical reasoning for multiple firm objectives; in a recent article, Lin, Dean, and Moore state “… empirical studies explicitly employing the profit maximization hypothesis … have generally provided results inconsistent with observed or plausible behavior”. Previous studies incorporating multiple objectives in analysis of agricultural production have largely been concerned with the general theoretical categories suggested by Heady. Lin, Dean, and Moore considered profit maximization and risk aversion. Patrick and Eisgruber considered accumulation of net worth, annual net income for consumption, leisure, and risk-taking; Hatch, Harmon, and Eidman included eight similar goals in their analysis. These studies have followed the tradition in micro-economic theory of separate production and consumption decision-making. While previous analyses have departed from the perfect knowledge, static basis of conventional micro-economics, the major interaction between production and consumption decisions concerns the level and variability of income available for consumption.

In assessing the prospective utility or value of a research program there are three important considerations: (1) potential impact the research will have on the scientific field involved, (2) probable benefits to industry or the public sector and (3) probability of success of projects in achieving these goals. Various studies have been made that emphasize the first and second objectives, i.e., trying to determine both scientific merit and economic value or return on investment in research projects and programs. This paper will be concerned with the latter objective; estimating the probable success of projects which were part of an organized agricultural research program conducted by USDA over a 25 year period.

Planning a season's planting is a complex problem facing Florida's chrysanthemum producers. Planting must be carefully timed to assure adequate supplies of flowers during peak marketing periods. Also, widely varying labor requirements of the crop should be considered. Finally, even the best-laid plans may be ruined by crops coming in too soon or too late due to unexpected weather variations. In this paper, a dynamic linear program is developed as a planning aid for chrysantheum production. The model parameters are then estimated with sufficient accuracy to demonstrate the model's workability, and an application of the model is suggested.

Chrysanthemums (pompons) may be grown as either a single-stem or pinched crop. In single-stem production, a cutting is planted and harvested as a single stem of flowers that is sold in a bunch of six or seven stems.

To fill domestic and foreign demand requirements in 1985, the U.S. is expected to produce 17% more wheat than it did in the 1970–72 period; also 30% more corn, 42% more sorghum, 20% more citrus, 32% more vegetables, 73% more soybeans, and 26% more cattle. These are a few of the baseline projections recently developed by ERS. The purpose of this report is to make available recent ERS projections of U.S. production and acreage needs with special emphasis on four Southern regions and the part they will play in producing the expected increase.

The Economic Projections Program Area was established under a recent reorganization in ERS, USDA, and given responsibility for coordinating all ERS projections of commodity production. The program area is now preparing projections through the year 2000 in a set of publications titled “Agriculture—The Third Century.”

Within spatially complex economic systems, it is given that change in a commodity's production in one region engaged in interregional competition will influence the price of that commodity in all trading regions. Mathematical programming models provide useful tools to predict such price alterations for specified production changes. Unfortunately, only running and analyzing many alternative formulations of such a model can generate an understanding of the relationships among regions involved in interregional competition. Specifically, this paper addresses itself to formalizing this process and providing quantitative measures summarizing the impact of regional changes in production upon prices in all regions. This paper is concerned with quantitatively estimating the influence of a change in fed beef production for given regions upon prices of fed beef for all regions of the United States. From estimates of these relationships, economic measures of isolation of regions and the impact of changes in import levels upon regional prices will be developed. Thus, unlike much previous research in the area of interregional competition in the beef industry, focused upon finding an “optimum” solution to a mathematical programming model, this research examines the basic economic relationships among regional production and regional prices implied by an interregional competition model.

Texas Gulf Coast areas near Houston have been affected to an increasing degree by land subsidence in recent years. Sinking of the surface has reached critical proportions in many areas, and subsidence of as much as nine feet has occurred since 1943. Physical effects have been extensive, affecting over 3,000 square miles, and economic effects have been aggravated by the approximity of much of the area to bay waters. Subsidence has resulted in significant damage and property loss, from both permanent salt water inundation and temporary flooding due to storm-related tides and rains.

Industrial, municipal and agricultural demands for water have increased sharply in recent years. Engineers.have linked subsidence to the decline of subsurface water levels due to heavy groundwater withdrawals. An alternative water source, the importation and treatment of surface water, has been introduced, but relatively high prices have slowed its acceptance.

An important function of agricultural economics is to determine the competitive potential for beginning or expanding production of a commodity in a specified area. This problem is approached through budgeting techniques and/or more sophisticated models such as linear or reactive programming. Many examples using LP or reactive programming algorithms are available. In two recent studies, reactive models were used to examine the market for potatoes and sweet cherries. These studies provided an insight into the relative competitive position among producing areas and among consuming centers. To reach a solution, the competitive assumption of LP or reactive models requires independence of supply functions for producing regions and demand functions for consuming markets. Thus, frequently the demand price for a given commodity in a market is estimated as a function of volume in that market and perhaps time, income or other variables. The resulting equation is used by inserting the mean value of all explanatory variables except volume, resulting in an equation that has price as a function of volume, plus a constant, and is compatible reactive programming.

Congress and the majority of coastal states have recognized the complexity of public decisions concerning growth in coastal areas. The preponderance of common pool resources and regional goods in coastal areas has prompted lawmarkers to pass coastal zone management legislation prior to a national land use bill. New state level institutions have been fostered by the Office of Coastal Zone Management. However, it is at the local level where resulting institutional rules represent self-imposed natural resource barriers to growth. Communities face the task of improving income streams from expansion of existing business activity or opting for new industries. Local governments have scurried to consultants and universities for solutions of community development and natural resource problems. The study described here represents one type of response. Although an Oregon county was the researcher's focus, it involved the pith of local economy growth—income generation and natural or self-imposed resource barriers.

Proteins are one of the basic and essential nutrients consumed by man. Both animal and vegetable sources provide proteins in the human diet. Many proteins derived from animal sources are nutritionally adequate because all essential amino acids are present. However, proteins from vegetable sources are often deficient in one or more essential amino acids. Therefore, vegetable protein must generally be supplemented with other proteins in order to provide good nutition. However, vegetable proteins can provide a satisfactory diet if the individual is judicious in selecting foods.

A study of 1955 data indicated that approximately 55 percent of the protein component of the American diet came from animal sources. A recent analysis indicated that red meats contributed approximately 30 percent of the animal source to total protein. Dairy products, poultry, and fish contributed the balance. Similarly, wheat flour provided approximately 15 percent of total vegetable protein intake with other cereals (rice, corn, barley and rye), legume seeds (beans, peas and soybeans), and nuts constituting the balance.