When talking about the ownership of land, one deals with property law. Property law is concerned with questions such as how you describe a boundary, what's the scope of a particular easement, and does a mechanic's lien gain priority over an unrecorded mortgage? There are rules here which haven't changed much since Blackstone wrote them down. Thus law can be a set of rules that resemble the axioms of geometry and, often enough, the image of the lawyer as pettifogging nitpicker is an apt one.

As outgoing President of the AAEA I hold two somewhat contradictory emotions concerning my year in office. The first can be stated simply—thank God it is about to end ! The other is a sense of excitement deriving from opportunities of the Association to better serve its members and society. On the assumption that you are not particularly interested in my frustrations in operating a volunteer organization and coping with the insidious nature of the U.S. Postal Service I shall limit my remarks to what I perceive as opportunities of the AAEA and regional associations to better serve their members and society.

Most members of the agricultural economics profession are aware of the changes that are taking place in society and the impact of these changes on our programs, particularly graduate and undergraduate training programs. Certainly the journals of our profession have included many articles relating to our changing mission and the changes that are occurring or should occur in our programs. The next section of this paper contains a brief review of some of these trends in order to establish the need for a new degree, which is described and discussed in the final two sections of the paper.

Institutions of higher education span as great a range of size, illustrating as great a variation in fixed and variable inputs, as most of the firms that economists have occasion to study: farms, marketing concerns, recreation businesses, and the like. In the educational field, professionals at the smaller schools frequently look to their counterparts at larger institutions for innovation and leadership. This is, perhaps, a natural outgrowth of the age, prestige, and scope of academic enterprise which typify most of the larger universities.

Many University and College faculties throughout the Northeast and nation have addressed, debated, accepted or rejected unionization. Within the past year numerous faculties or state universities that are represented by the Northeast Agricultural Economics Council have voted yea or nay on the issue of union representation.

Not too long ago, most decisions were made by men. Using the brain was considered “unfeminine,” and it was a rare woman who was acquainted with the intricacies of financial planning. Today, things are changing as more and more women realize that prudent action in money matters can mean the difference between a comfortable future and “just getting by.”

The purposes of this paper are: (1) to outline some of the reasons for the energy problem and to discuss current philosophies for solving it, (2) to evaluate energy use in Northeastern agriculture, particularly in production, (3) to suggest some possibilities for conserving energy, and (4) to delineate some areas for future extension and research activities.

The cost and availability of conventional energy sources currently used as inputs for agricultural production continue to be a very important concern in planning and decision making. Interest in solar energy for use in space and water heating, grain drying, and other areas, has been stimulated because it is technically feasible, abundant, renewable, and nonpolluting. Although it is reasonably reliable and can provide a large portion of the total heat need for many situations, it does require an auxiliary source of energy.

While there has been some irrigated agriculture in each of the 11 States in the Northeast farm production region for a number of years, irrigation has never been widely practiced in this region. The latest available data indicate that only about 2 percent of the cropland in the Northeast is irrigated, while 12 percent of the cropland in the nation is under irrigation, largely in the more arid West. During the past year, ERS has investigated why supplemental irrigation is not practiced by more farmers in the East. The one example of extensive supplemental irrigation in a humid State is Florida, which contains over half of the irrigated acreage in the 26 States east of the Mississippi River although it has the second highest average annual rainfall in the nation. Although discussed in the last section, the main purpose here is not the potential for expanding supplemental irrigation, but to discuss ways of conserving energy with the irrigation already practiced in the Northeast.

There are a number of lessons to be learned from the Title V Extension and Research activities recently completed throughout the U.S. Several aspects of the Delaware project are discussed in this paper. Some of the detail of our project is not presented because a fifteen minute documentary video-tape of the project was viewed at the time the paper was presented.

With the passage of the Rural Development Act of 1972 (Public Law 92–419), every state in the nation was challenged to provide rural development assistance through the land-grant universities. Operating under flexible guidelines, each state has proceeded differently. Comparison of various states’ programs provides some new insights on effective rural development programming.

There is widespread use at this time of various tax incentives (1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 16) to stimulate property owners to maintain agriculture or open space on their land. The success of such programs will depend to a great extent upon the monetary incentives that they provide to property owners. The existence of preferential treatment in the taxing system prior to the implementation of preferential farmland assessment legislation has been proven by several authors (2, 4, 12). Such de facto preferential assessment has been noted in areas other than agricultural land (13, 20). This type of preferential assessment may be innate to the system that assessors use in determining the value of farmland (17, 18), or it may be the result of a conscious effort on the part of the assessing authorities to give preferential assessment to farm land and open space (15). The following quotation is taken from the Lehigh-Northampton County Joint Planning Commission Study, “Act 515 in Lehigh County – A Follow-Up Study”.

Agricultural problems associated with population growth have been analyzed in the Northeast for some time. The loss of cropland and the effect on agricultural output have been documented by Otte and Krause. In addition to the actual loss of agricultural land, changes in land-use, taxation and agricultural input infrastructure continue to be analyzed. Indeed, rural land-use policy researchers in the Northeast have provided national leadership for several institutional innovations, e.g. agricultural districts, transferable development right sales and differential assessments. The Conference on Rural Land-Use Policy in the Northeast held at Atlantic City in 1974 and the on-going regional research project, “Rural Land Use Policy in an Urbanizing Environment” attest to the continued research in this area.

This paper contains new but preliminary agricultural projections to 1985 for the Northeast and for the United States. The projections reflect our best judgement of the future agricultural production and resource use, but these are subject to additional review and revision before becoming official projections of the U. S. Department of Agriculture.

In October 1976, President Ford signed into law PL 94–566 (the “Unemployment Compensation Amendments of 1976,” henceforth the law), which among other items extends unemployment insurance (UI) coverage to agricultural workers in establishments employing 10 or more workers for 20 weeks or more or with a high quarter payroll of at least $20,000, (henceforth the ‘10 in 20 or $20,000’ provision).

Extremely volatile price behavior is characteristic of the markets for apples and cherries. Unstable price behavior makes it particularly difficult for the industry to accurately anticipate future prices. Accordingly, uncertainty regarding the nature of the price determination forces can lead to serious marketing inefficiencies. To enable more effective production and marketing decisions, improved price forecasting methods are needed. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to examine the nature of the price structure within the apple and cherry industries by suggesting an appropriate analytical model and empirically evaluating its performance.

Federal and state laws require all communities to construct and operate facilities to treat domestic sewage. The 1972 Amendments to the Federal Water Pollution Control Act (P.L. 92–500) require that all facilities provide the “best practical treatment” by 1977. They established the goal of “best available treatment” by 1983. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) defines best practical treatment as secondary treatment. It is the premise of this paper that required treatment levels and cost sharing arrangements specified in the current wastewater treatment laws impose relatively greater economic costs on small rural communities than on larger communities.

The development of new food and agricultural legislation in 1977 has been subject to a number of constraints almost from the outset. First, the 95th Congress decided, after earlier trial use, to use the new budget process “in earnest” this session. This mandated that committees have bills reported to their respective bodies by May 15. Second, the President very early issued guidelines as to the levels of acceptable Federal outlays for programs in the bills — more expensive ones faced the strong threat of veto. Third, it was widely recognized that the basic or permanent legislation which comes in force if new legislation is not enacted would be virtually unworkable in today's economy. This provided further incentive for development of legislation acceptable to both branches. The Congress thus had to develop new legislation in a very short period to meet the new budget schedule, avoid writing a bill certain to be vetoed, and rush to complete action on the bill before the month-long August recess to avoid having the permanent legislation become operative.

The interests of American consumers in our food policy can be set forth rather simply. Consumers are concerned about ensuring adequate supplies of safe and nutritious food at reasonable prices. The real problem, of course, is finding policies which can lead toward these goals, and enacting them.

The proposed changes in commodity programs which are now being considered by Congress will not have a major impact on the incomes of farmers in the Northeast nor on sales of firms supplying inputs or services to farmers. This conclusion is based on the assumption that the principal changes finally adopted will be to raise target prices for wheat, and to a lesser degree for corn, and to encourage on-farm storage of these commodities. Neither commodity, of course, is an important source of farm income in most of the states represented at this meeting. One of the consequences of raising target prices, however, will be to increase the cost of farm programs. Substantial government payments are likely to be made once again to producers of wheat and perhaps to those growing corn and cotton as well.