Agronomists consider the continuity and nutrient capturing properties of cover crops as important determinants of nutrient cycling in agricultural systems. Managing for these biotic control functions can help limit nutrient loss and groundwater contamination between main crop harvests. This simulation study highlights the potential role of cover crop management in a welfare economics framework. The objective is to find the optimal combination of nutrient input to the main crop, the extent of off-season cover crops, and crop functional diversity to maximize the sum of benefits from agricultural production and groundwater protection.

There is a substantial controversy in the economics literature over the magnitude of the expenditure elasticity for food grain in China that is caused, to a large extent, by whether time-series or cross-section data are used in the analysis. A set of reasonable elasticities for a complete demand system is estimated by using a panel of county level data in Guangdong Province for the last ten years. The results show that food grain has a small positive income elasticity, implying that food grain is not an inferior good in China. The reason that consumption per capita has not increased during a period of rapid economic growth in income is that the relative prices of the food and non-food substitutes for food grain have decreased.

The role of health knowledge in consumer use of nutritional labels on food packages is explored using data from the 1995 Diet and Health Knowledge Survey. Two types of label use models, a binary choice label use model and a level of label use model, are employed with particular attention given to the endogeneity of health knowledge. The binary choice model is concerned with factors affecting the probability of label use. The level of label use model deals with factors affecting the number of food products in which label use occurred. The results show that health knowledge has a significant role in increasing label use.

A voluntary program is developed to achieve environmental goals through the self-interested choices of farmers under environmental risk and asymmetric information. Farmers behave to maximize expected net returns, and environmental quality standards are formulated through chance constraints. Because the government may not know each farmer's soil type, policy options must be self-selecting. The model is applied empirically to nitrate leaching and runoff from corn production in three New York regions. Asymmetric information between producers and the government would impose additional cost burdens on society, but these costs are modest in the context of other farm programs.

The Wisconsin Economic Impact Modeling System, a conjoined input-output/econometric model of Wisconsin counties, is used to simulate the economic and fiscal impact of two alternative residential development patterns. Under the first scenario, the impact of migrating retirees on a small tri-county region in northern Wisconsin is examined. Under the second scenario, the impact of the migration of younger families with children is examined. A comparison-contrast between the two scenarios demonstrates that the characteristics of the migrating household can have a significant impact on the nature of the impacts.

A group incentive program to encourage farmer adoption of best management practices is simulated for a typical watershed in central Illinois. The incentive payments, program costs and environmental impacts of the program are simulated. The results show that the best management practices may not actually reduce farm profits but may increase farm profits and reduce environmental pollution. The sponsor in most cases may not have to pay anything under the incentive contract. This may bring about a win-win situation for the sponsor, the farmer participating in the program, and society as a whole. The program could be implemented as an educational effort to demonstrate the benefits of sound management practices.

Pesticide residue has repeatedly been documented as a leading source of food safety concern among consumers. While many studies have presented aggregate, descriptive illustrations of consumer response to Integrated Pest Management (IPM), consumer willingness-to-pay a premium for IPM produce and the factors that determine such willingness have received relatively little research attention. Such information is critical in the marketing of IPM produce.

This study empirically evaluates the demographic characteristics that influence consumers to pay a premium for IPM grown produce. Results indicate that females, those with higher annual incomes, younger individuals, and those who frequently purchase organic produce are all more likely to pay a premium for IPM produce.

Most agricultural output in the northeastern United States comes from counties that have experienced significant development. A mail survey, with 300 responses, was conducted in southeastern Pennsylvania to determine farmer adaptation to urbanization in this region. Despite development, traditional agriculture still predominates. Changes in land use were examined using multinomial logit models. Results show that changes in population density and farm preservation policies have an influence, as increased population density reduced total land operated and having land in an agricultural security area increased it. Both differential assessment and agricultural security areas increased the cultivation of traditional, land extensive crops.

Seafood futures contracts are a novelty in the derivative markets, having shrimp as their only exponent. Unfortunately, shrimp futures contracts have suffered a disappointing start. The analyses focus on testing whether premiums/discounts for non-par deliverable shrimp size categories can eliminate cash price differentials, and whether the shrimp futures market can predict cash prices without bias. Results indicate ineffective premiums/discounts and predictive bias. These results and the momentous changes taking place in the seafood industry are contrasted to discuss the viability of seafood futures contracts.

Wildlife managers must consider the public's preferences for wildlife population levels when determining management policies. In 1996, Maryland farmers, hunters and the general public were surveyed to determine their preferences for increasing, maintaining, or decreasing deer population numbers. Using a random utility theoretic framework with an ordered response probit model, the factors that explain preferences such as residential location, socioeconomic characteristics, landscape damage, agricultural yield loss and vehicle accidents were analyzed.

We explore the transfer of poultry litter among watersheds incorporating both economic characteristics (litter demand and supply) and environmental characteristics (vulnerability to phosphorus runoff, a major pollutant). A combination of techniques was employed: the Lemunyon-Gilbert P-Index model to determine watershed environmental vulnerability, GIS for land use coverages, and a goal focusing model (incorporating Saaty's eigen-value approach for penalty weight estimation) to identify optimal litter shipments among watersheds. Both primary and secondary data were used. The results should be useful to producers and policy makers in the study area and in other areas where poultry production is linked to water quality, and contribute to a more sustainable poultry sector.

This paper provides a decomposition of output growth among olive-growing farms in Greece during the period 1987–1993 by integrating Bauer's (1990) and Bravo-Ureta and Rieger's (1991) approaches. The proposed methodology is based on the use of self-dual production frontier functions. Output growth is attributed to the size effect, technical change, changes in technical and input allocative inefficiency, and the scale effect. Empirical results indicate that the scale and the input allocative inefficiency effects, which were not taken into account in previous studies on output growth decomposition analysis, have caused a 7.3% slowdown and a 11.0% increase in output growth, respectively. Technical change was found to be the main source of TFP growth while both technical and input allocative inefficiency decreased over time. Still though, a 56.5% of output growth is attributed to input growth.

There is increasing recognition that farmers face constraints on their farming decisions depending on the their resources, stage in life, and lifestyle choices. These factors are captured in a new farm typology developed by the Economic Research Service. The farm typology's definition of small and large farms is used to test the commonly stated hypothesis that small farmers practice better land husbandry than do large farmers. The adoption of eleven different soil and nutrient management practices used by U.S. corn producers is analyzed with a bivariate logit model for each practice. The farm typology is found to be significantly associated with two of the practices—rotation with legumes and conservation tillage.

This paper is a theoretical and empirical investigation into the impact of the structural adjustment program (SAP) on forest loss in Ghana between the period 1965–95. An optimal control model is used to derive estimable reduced form equations for forest loss, cocoa land, maize land and timber production, which are in turn functions of mainly input and output prices. Piecewise linear and switching regression approaches are used to distinguish between the influence of the post from the pre-adjustment policy impacts on forest land use. The overall results show that cocoa land expansion and timber production, but not maize land expansion, are significant causes of forest loss in Ghana. However, the impact on forest loss in the post-adjustment period was reduced. Changes in the relative output and input prices due to the SAP may have played a significant role in the reduced impact of agricultural and timber related deforestation in the post-adjustment period.

The dichotomous choice contingent valuation survey format collects inexact information on willingness to pay (WTP), that is, whether WTP is greater or less than the bid price. Sometimes researchers make the precise conjecture that certain respondents have zero WTP using information from follow-up motive questions. But follow-up questions are designed to provide information on respondents’ motives, not refined information on the magnitude of WTP. Assuming that certain respondents have WTP = $0.00 is beyond the design of follow-up questions. The paper's results show that unless information from follow-up questions is utilized within the limitations of survey design, welfare and model parameter estimates are likely to have high standard errors leading to inappropriate policy prescriptions.

The Northeast Interstate Dairy Compact (Compact), the first regional dairy compact in the U.S., has been the focus of a great deal of attention and speculation during the past several years. The Compact was authorized under the Federal Agriculture Improvement and Reform act of 1996 and was enacted into law by each of the six New England states, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont (U.S. Government). The Compact explicitly recognizes dairy farming as an important component of the New England landscape that provides both cultural and economic benefits to the region. The Compact's stated purposes are to assure the continued viability of dairy farming in the Northeast, as well as its associated support industries, and to provide consumers with an adequate local supply of pure and wholesome milk. The Compact provides a measure of farm fluid milk price control in the New England states in order to help satisfy these goals.

Purchasable development rights (PDR) programs are generally considered to provide permanent protection of farmland because development rights are separated from the land in perpetuity. However, the programs do not require that farming activities be maintained in the future. Farming may be discontinued on PDR parcels due to changes in economic conditions or if the parcels are converted to non-farm, rural estates. Such changes may reduce the flow of public goods that citizens seek to obtain by implementing PDR programs. We examine changes in land use on PDR parcels to determine if current activities are consistent with program goals. While changes have occurred in the crops and livestock produced on Rhode Island farms, over time, all of the farms on which development rights were purchased during 1985 through 1999 are currently being farmed by the original owners or by new operators who have either purchased or leased the land.

Northeast Dairy Compact impacts were estimated for Boston and Hartford retail prices using an econometric model. Asymmetric speeds of adjustment to farm price increases and decreases were found; however, tests indicated that retail prices do return to the same level following equal farm price increases and decreases. Model forecasts suggested no structural changes occurred during the out-of-sample period, July 1996 through June 1998. Simulations with and without the Compact predicted lower retail fluid milk price impacts than actual July 1997 changes. These predicted impacts separate the effects of farm price changes on retail prices from possibly confounding effects.

A two-equation random coefficients model and two estimates of milk prices in the absence of the Northeast Interstate Dairy Compact (Compact) are used to estimate the impact of minimum price regulation for fluid milk products on milk production in the New England states. Estimated responses to price enhancement differed by state for cow numbers, but parameters for milk per cow were not significantly different among states. The amount of increase in milk production attributed to the Compact is estimated at 45 million pounds (about 1% of production) during the first year of minimum price regulation, primarily due to increased milk per cow.

Land ownership characteristics such as the quantity of land owned, quality of land parcels, and location of land describe important dimensions of landed wealth. Landed wealth is expected to be an important factor influencing support for rural land use control. This factor was not discussed in the April (1999) article by McLeod, Woirhaye, and Menkhaus (1999).

We suggest that this factor contributes to understanding variation in support for rural land use control.