Like having a child, a book is labor intensive and, if it survives infancy, it takes on a life of its own. People tell you it looks like you, which is no compliment. You can't disown it when it gets into trouble. Admittedly, Agriculture in An Unstable Economy is a good name to have; it got through six printings and, for all I know, because of its name. Now that it looks as old as its parent, I am asked to talk about it with no assurance that what gets said can be erased.

Two general approaches have dominated recent discussions with regard to reducing the incidence of poverty among rural households headed by working age poor. One approach has stressed the need for increasing job opportunities for residents of rural areas. The other has stressed the need for increasing the level of investment in human capital to enhance the productivity and employability of people in rural areas. While these are basically complementary rather than alternative approaches to reducing the incidence of poverty among the working age poor in rural communities, integrative analyses encompassing both of these approaches have been lacking.

Farris and Padberg, Krenz, and Boxley have discussed different ways of projecting the distribution of firm sizes. Farris and Padberg utilize Markov chain analysis where transition probabilities were derived from observed changes in firm size for Florida citrus packing firms over a five-year period. Krenz, recognizing the difficulty of securing data with which to estimate transition probabilities, developed rules which could be used to derive transition probabilities from census data. Krenz applied this technique to the size distributions of North Dakota farms. Finally, Boxley applied a completely different technique to estimating farm size distributions in the United States. Boxley's technique involved fitting negative exponential functions to firm size distributions observed from census data. According to Boxley, these functions were sufficiently stable to permit estimation of future firm size distributions.

When my father was growing up on a farm in Appanoose County, Iowa, his environment, except for a clock made in Connecticut, was largely homegrown. The homegrown even included the hay-burners that pulled the plow and the timothy that they burned. I have brought home to Connecticut the clock that my grandfather bought from a peddlar, but time has changed almost everything else. The Lockwood Farm of the Connecticut Station is the source of some of the changes, and it shows all of them clearly. There is, of course, the hybrid corn that was invented on the Farm, but there is also a tractor made in the Middle West burning oil pumped from the Middle East and pulling a Dutch sprayer full of fungicide from Pennsylvania. The workers were born in other states as I was, and they spread fertilizer from Tennessee and plant seeds from Idaho. To conclude the contrasts between eras, I can say that my father may have gone to the annual fair in a nearby Missouri county, but he had to enlist in the AEF to see Europe, which is a tour my son can now take for a couple of weeks wages.

Recent changes in feed, livestock and fertilizer prices as well as breeding and agronomic practice developments have created substantial interest in their implications on profitable dairy farm cropping programs. The movement in soybean oil meal prices from under $100/ton in early 1972 to over $400/ton in the summer of 1973 increased the interest in alternatives to soybean oil meal. Dairymen searched for feed ingredients which were relatively cheap per unit of protein. As a consequence, interest in the protein content of alfalfa as influenced by variety, harvesting systems, and method of storage has been substantial in the past few months. Although soybean oil meal prices are expected to drop below the peak levels, the issues raised by the high price levels during 1973 need to be examined.

In recent years there has been increased concern over the maintenance of open space by various levels of government. Planning agencies and environmentalists have recognized that the quality of the environment and specifically air quality is in large part dependent upon wise land use planning. However, the role of agriculture in terms of what it can contribute to the maintenance of productive open space has not been fully recognized by the planners. Lands in close proximity to metropolitan centers have been looked upon as a potential supply for the more intensive uses while agriculture has been considered as a residual user.

In 1963 the government of Jamaica, in an effort to reconcile prevailing milk consumption levels with the volume of local production, initiated a Dairy Settlement Project as part of a Dairy Development Program. This project aimed at establishing a corps of new dairymen on 25 acre farms set up on lands acquired by the government under its land reform program. A pre-investment study indicated that the project was viable and a soft loan was obtained from the United States Agency for International Development to finance the project.

Historically, the standard tree set in commercial apple orchards has been 27 trees per acre, planted on 40 foot centers. With this planting system trees tend to become quite large, requiring substantial amounts of labor for pruning, spraying and harvesting. The large amount of vegetative growth on these trees renders much of the innertree fruit bearing surface unproductive due to shading.

Already we have felt the crunch of the energy shortage in many ways. However, you and I have not felt that impact equally. Just as we can expect to feel the effects of continued shortages, so, too, can we expect the pressure of that burden to bear unequally upon different segments of our population. It is this unequal impact that is the thrust of this paper.

The Soviet economic system is based on the principle of public ownership of all means of production. Consequently, private enterprise in Soviet socialist economy as a rule is not tolerated, allegedly to exclude unearned income and to prevent “exploitation of man by man”. From the Soviet point of view, private enterprise is a disturbing and unpredictable element in their system of central planning, command economy and Party control. If it is not considered an outright crime it is characterized in the Soviet Union as a parasitic, socially unnecessary activity undertaken primarily for personal profiteering and for obtaining unearned income – all unacceptable activities in a socialist society.

Historically, farm families relied primarily on income from farming for family living needs. Income from off-farm sources was usually of minor importance to the family. However, as mechanical and technological revolutions reduced total labor requirements needed in farming, many farmers combined farming with a nonfarm job to stabilize or increase their family income and improve their overall economic situation. The purpose of this paper is to examine the importance of off-farm income among people with farm earnings, especially the wage and salary component of off-farm income.

The principal sales outlet for floral products has traditionally been the retail florist shop. Florist shops have performed many market functions including arranging, delivery, information, and credit. The sale of flowers through mass outlets started on a limited scale prior to World War II. Recently, however, supermarkets have demonstrated a greater interest in the floricultural business. Consequently, many chains have included florist shops in their stores or in adjacent areas. Others have become involved, on a smaller scale, by stocking a limited number of plants in the produce departments of the individual stores on a regular or seasonal basis.

During the past decade about 90 percent of the potatoes utilized for human consumption was used in the form of tablestock or fresh potatoes, frozen potato products, and potato chips and shoestring potatoes. Recent trends in the national per capita consumption of these potato products (Table 1) indicate that consumers have substituted processed potato products for fresh potatoes. In addition, the variety of package sizes for potato products, especially the processed products, has increased during this same ten year period.

Potato chips are believed to have been first made in this country about the middle of the last century, and for many years were prepared only in the home kitchen. Commercial production did not develop to any great extent until improved peeling and frying methods became available. In 1939 the U. S. chip industry is estimated to have used only 2.1 million hundredweight of potatoes. Chip production increased rapidly during and immediately following World War II, and annual use of potatoes for chipping grew to 29.0 million hundredweight in 1950. Quantity of potatoes used for chipping reached a peak for the crop year ending June 30, 1972, of 35.1 million hundredweight but dropped about .5 million hundredweight the following year due to the smaller 1972 crop. Use of potatoes for chip production in 1972 amounted to about 11 per cent of the crop and 17 pounds per person. Potato chip markets were first developed in the Northcentral and Northeastern States and processing plants were established close to these major markets.

“Give the government back to the people,” a popular phrase in recent months, exemplifies the concern over the proper role of the federal, state and local units of government in providing and financing public services. Constituents are frustrated by bureaucratic programs, frequently insensitive to local needs, that are initiated at higher levels of government. They are equally frustrated by the inability of units of local government to initiate and finance programs designed to satisfy the needs of the local community.

Each year various agricultural commodity groups spend millions of dollars advertising and promoting their respective products. Typically such “demand creating” attempts have been purported as a panacea for low producer returns despite their unevaluated performance records. Notwithstanding the magnitude of these promotional expenditures, the literature is scarce regarding the effect of advertising on commodity sales. Such knowledge would provide an invaluable input for promotion expenditure decisions and a means to evaluate the effects of advertising and promotion on economic surplus.

At the present time the value of oyster production in Maine is minimal because the native species, Crassostrea virginica, will not survive in economic numbers, through the larval stage in Maine's cold waters. There is some indication that Ostrea edulis (the European oyster) can withstand colder temperatures and may in fact thrive in Maine's cold waters, offering an alternative for coastal economic growth. This species is raised on a scale and under continuous culture from juvenile to marketable size in other parts of the world. These factors all favor the establishment of a fishery for Ostrea edulis in Maine by adapting the proven hatchery, rearing, and mariculture techniques for this species to Maine's cold water environment. As other scientists began looking into the biological and engineering aspects of raising oysters in Maine it became necessary to consider the marketing aspects of such a venture.

The spread of suburbs into previously rural areas has become commonplace in the United States. A rather striking aspect of this phenomenon has been the discontinuity which results. This aspect is often manifest in a haphazard mixture of unused and densely settled areas which has been described as “sprawl”. A more useful definition of suburban sprawl, its causes, and its consequences, is provided below in order to introduce the econometric objectives of this paper.

Since its emergence in the early part of this century, planning in the United States has been predominantly urban. Regional planning of watersheds, has received some attention but planning for rural areas has not been widely practiced, nor has it been taught in planning schools. Support for this generalization may be found in planning texts which consider 50,000 population a “small” municipality. Further evidence is found in town plans prepared through support of federal “701” funds during the past decade. These plans are usually for expansion of urban facilities and services and ignore exclusively rural land uses. Planning in England presents a contrast. It is appropriately referred to as “town and country planning” as it covers the range of land use intensities from agricultural to the highest value urban block as interrelated and interconnected parts of a single fabric.

The disposal of industrial and municipal wastes is a complex and costly problem. The combination of increases in population, affluence, and industrial activity is generating growing volumes of water borne waste that must be disposed of or recycled. In 1972 for example, the estimated volume of wastewater generated in Rhode Island was 179 million gallons per day (MGD). This represented an average of 185 gallons per day for each Rhode Island resident and indications are that this volume is increasing each year.