Recycling can recover the value of solid waste materials. Recycling reduces solid wastes, conserves virgin materials, and preserves and improves environmental quality. Ideally, it has been stated that “what we must aim for essentially is a steady-state world, one in which per capita consumption has virtually leveled off and the goods used are for the most part produced from recycled materials” [6]. Trends in recycling, however, are not encouraging, and, in fact, resource recovery is losing ground [3, 7].

Currently, recycling is largely that of relatively homogeneous waste materials. The Council on Environmental Quality has identified over 50 systems in various stages of development aimed primarily at the technology of recovering materials from mixed wastes [7].

Since spring 1967 when the late Sen. Robert Kennedy and former Sen. Joseph Clark ‘officially” discovered hunger in less-visited areas of the South, hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles, several books, a television documentary and numerous committees conferences, and agencies have focused on the incidence and consequences of inadequate nutrition in America. Several private and public programs have been created to help alleviate food and nutrition problems of the poor. Among the nutrition education programs, the expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program (ENP) is perhaps the most notable. The major aim of ENP is to improve the diets of low-income families by offering homemakers free instruction in food budgeting and shopping, choice and preparation of nutritious meals and in other topics. Instruction is given by aides who personally visit the homes of participating lamilies to discuss these topics with the homemaker.

Recent years have seen a rapid expansion in expenditures for new small town water and sewer systems. Both federal and state governments have increased their aid programs significantly in this field. The primary source of federal funds for new water and sewer facilities in such towns has been the Farmers Home Administration (FmHA), whose loans and grants totaled approximately $1,425 million for water and $629 million for sewer facilities in such places during fiscal years 1966-1973.

Range livestock is important to the economy of the state of Texas. Over 4.2 billion lbs. of beef were produced in Texas with a value of over $1.2 billion in 1971, which was the greatest for any of the 50 states. Sheep and lamb production in Texas for 1971 exceeded 200 million lbs. and was valued at $43.4 million which was the highest of all 50 states. Cash receipts from cattle, calves, sheep, and lambs marketed in Texas in 1971 were estimated at $1.6 billion.

Texas' production of range livestock is limited by the availability of rangeland. In 1967, over 53 percent of the land area in Texas was classified as rangeland. Undesirable woody plants which compete with favorable grasses for moisture and sunlight have infested 82 percent of the grasslands in the state.

Acceptance and increased interest in rural development as a legitimate concern of land grant institutions is well documented. Although rural development research is not “new” for the discipline of agricultural economics, there is little doubt that the area has experienced renewed and greatly expanded interest at both the national and regional levels by the passage of the 1972 Rural Development Act.

While much has been written on the importance and need for a direct frontal attack on this traditionally underfunded and low priority research area, the sad fact is that the profession is still without a clear sense of direction regarding research and extension needs and priorities. The establishment of state and regional rural development centers is a positive step toward directing and coordinating the limited resources available in this area. Many southern states have demonstrated significant leadership roles in this first step, obviously recognizing the massive rural development problems of the region.

A question of particular concern in recent years is: what happens to personal income distribution as the average level of income rises? The purpose of this study was to add knowledge to empirical answers to this question by way of estimates of changes in Florida-both within and between regions with different income levels.

Williamson suggests that as significant economic growth first occurs in one region, the absolute income differentials between rich and poor regions are expected to persist or even to increase; but sometime during the course of development, some or all of the disequilibrating tendencies diminish, and the regional differences in incomes decline. Labor migration, capital movements, government policy, geographic size, and labor participation rate were discussed by Williamson as important elements in the exploration of changes over time in incomes among regions.

In a recent article, Hildreth and Schaller suggest that researchers can make important contributions to community development programs by analyzing the trade-offs resulting from increasing economic activity in rural communities or moving the people to jobs in other communities, and the subsequent effects of these alternatives on the allocation of community services. Although they concentrate on the delivery of public services to rural communities, it is important to note that urban public service costs are a major factor influencing the current emphasis on “place development,” rather than encouraging rural-to-urban migration.

Rural industrial development is advocated as a means of improving the economic status of residents in lagging rural areas. A recent USDA report stated, “One of the main problems in Rural America is the lack of employment opportunities. With advances in agricultural technology, farm-related jobs are decreasing and other forms of employment must be found”.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the economic impact of industrial expansion in rural areas. The specific emphasis will be the potential effect on locally disadvantaged people – the poor and underemployed. The question is not are jobs and income opportunities created, but for whom are they created. Ideally, those who benefit are the underemployed, poor and near poor; but this need not be the case.

A question now being asked in many states is whether the property tax is too burdensome and whether it should be displaced by another tax. Many states have lowered property taxes on specific classes of property, while other states are considering more widespread relief from property taxes. If property taxes are reduced, other taxes will have to be increased in order to offset reductions in government revenues. What is the effect of substituting one tax for another; who will pay more and who will pay less if property taxes are decreased and sales or income taxes increased? Will overall regressiveness of taxes be reduced by substitution? The basic technique of sampling and analysis presented here hopefully will be applicable in many states and will provide important answers to these questions.

Although the importance of multiple goals in the decision-making process has been recognized for years by economists, economic analyses typically are based on the assumption of maximization or minimization of a single goal. Some firm growth analyses have considered two or more goals by maximizing one goal subject to constraints on the remaining goals. In other cases, utility functions that incorporate expected income and income variability have been estimated for individual farm operators. Although these approaches are an effort to incorporate more than one goal in the decision process, firm growth research in general has not been based on multiple-goal decision models.

Rural youth who fail to complete high school often experience a great deal of difficulty when competing for available jobs. All rural youth cannot hope to find employment at satisfactory wage levels in the local community. Many must leave. It has long been known that economic mobility is highly related to the educational level of an individual. Dropping out of school at an early age poses a substantial deterrent to educational attainment and subsequent mobility.

It has been proposed that the number of dropouts can be reduced by pumping more money into the public schools. Educators have contended that inexperienced, poorly trained, and low-paid teachers often found in rural areas can lead to large numbers of dropouts. The analysis that follows was therefore designed to isolate determinants of dropout numbers from public schools. The model construes the formal educative process in a production function context as have other studies. Minimization of the number of dropouts is assumed to be one of the goals of the local school administrator. Hence, the dropout rate is one possible measure of an output. Inputs to the production process consist of characteristics of the school and community believed to have an influence on a student's decision whether or not to stay in school.

Shortages of hydrocarbon-based fuels (petroleum and natural gas) for all uses in the United States have caused concern among agricultural leaders and farmers over their ability to obtain fuel for agricultural production purposes in competition with other users. During the 1973 crop year, for the first time in recent years, farmers were faced with the consequent need to make necessary adjustments in production and harvesting practices to utilize the fuel available. Analyses that have appeared since the recent widespread recognition of the energy crisis conclude that this is not a short-run phenomenon. Rather, farmers are likely to find themselves competing with other major users for limited petroleum supplies for some time to come.

This study grew out of the need for a more realistic notion concerning the investment behavior of the individual farm firm. Once a stable investment behavior function is identified, it can be incorporated into dynamic growth models to describe and predict farm firm growth. Considerable effort has been devoted to estimating the appropriate investment behavior function for industrial corporations; however, a search of the literature revealed no estimates of such a function for individual farm firms.

The purpose of this study was to estimate the investment behavior function for individual farm firms using the concept of rational distributed lag functions developed by Jorgenson to approximate the time structure of the investment process. To do this, a class of rational distributed lag functions was imposed on a multiple regression equation to obtain the lag distribution that best describes the time path of the investment response to changes in desired capital.

The growth in the capital investment in agriculture that occurred during the 1950's and 1960's and the resulting credit demands led to a number of inquiries into the future capital and credit requirements of American agriculture [2, 3, 4]. The results of these studies suggest that the aggregate capital and credit needs of the agricultural sector will increase significantly in the future. However, estimates of future capital and credit requirements of firms that are representative of different sizes and enterprise types of farms are not available. These estimates would be useful to farmers and lending institutions in determining the future amount of capital and credit needed to generate a given level of gross sales or income. Those entering farming could compare the present and future capital needed for different types of operations.

Intermittent periods of excess supply as well as excess demand are likely to characterize American agriculture in the years ahead. Government again may choose to intervene to clear the market at acceptable prices during periods of excess supply. The principal means of removing excess capacity has been to restrain output through voluntary programs which pay farmers to divert cropland to soil-conserving uses and through aid programs which dispose of surpluses in needy countries, presumably in ways that do not interfere with commercial exports. But have these programs provided (a) maximum net farm income, (b) maximum real foreign aid, or (c) minimum U.S. Treasury Cost?

This study reports a model to estimate the most efficient allocation of agricultural capacity with a domestic general land retirement program and food aid to foreign nations.

A systematic approach to projecting supply and demand for agricultural commodities is to: (1) estimate what the demand for agricultural products will be at some date in the future, (2) estimate the capacity of United States farmers to produce that output in terms of cropland availability and projected crop yields, and then (3) distribute estimated United States production requirements to states and regions according to some historical trend or some estimate of comparative advantage. The object of this paper is to relate the expected demand for United States farm products in 1985 to the South and determine its production needs and acreage requirements.

Economic logic and empirical observation suggest that increasing numbers of part-time farms can have important implications for organization of agricultural production and development of rural areas. Production relationships on part-time farms may differ because:

1) Farm operators working off the farm may organize resources and respond to price changes differently than full-time operators;

2) Part-time operators may have different demand functions for production inputs, particularly land and labor, and

3) Part-time operators may achieve different levels of efficiency than their full-time counterparts.

Solid wastes that are residuals of production and consumption have steadily increased in quantity in recent years. Historically, many of these residuals have been discarded into the environment which appeared to have the capacity to handle them. However, now it is widely believed that these residuals are responsible for the degradation of environment quality by increasing air, water, and land pollution. Ecological considerations have increased the complexity of handling solid wastes and have stimulated the need for alternative methods of managing various types of wastes.

Local and municipal authorities and private industry provide waste collection and disposal services. Municipal services are generally financed out of taxation revenues, so it is in the public's interest to have an efficient, cost-minimizing operation at some publicly acceptable standard of quality of service.

The theory of industrial organization provides a conceptual base for investigation of the market structure of specialized industries. A number of measures of concentration exist which have been applied to market structure investigations. These measures are utilized to quantify seller concentration in an effort to classify individual markets with respect to relative competitiveness.