The role of the economist is to identify and solve puzzles. Unsolved puzzles seem to crop up more frequently these days or perhaps my ability to solve them has diminished. The purpose of this paper is to set forth selected enigmas in hope that someone (perhaps a bright, young mind who fails to appreciate the intractability of the problem) will find solutions. I begin with national macroeconomic policy, then turn to international economics. After looking at past trends in supply and demand for farm output, I conclude with sections on farm investment behavior and the role of the agricultural economist in an affluent farming economy.

The eleven state area of Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont comprises the Northeast agricultural area. According to the latest farm number estimates in 1980, there are over 159,000 farms in the Northeast with the largest number of farms concentrated in Pennsylvania, New York and Maryland, respectively. Given the large number of farms and the diverse topography of the region, farmers in the Northeast produce a wide variety of agricultural commodities. In 1980, farm cash receipts in the Northeast were estimated at $8.2 billion with livestock and products accounting for about two thirds of the total and crops (including specialty crops) accounting for the balance. In terms of cash receipts, Pennsylvania is the largest agricultural production state in the Northeast followed by New York and Maryland.

If all the speeches with similar titles, delivered at the beginning of each decade during the twentieth century, were assembled here, they would doubtless fill this room to overflowing. Although each would have its “special touch,” common threads of growth and optimism, appeals to God and Country, as well as self-interest would be woven throughout.

Recently released reports of the 1980 Census of Population has again focussed attention on the relatively poor economic performance of the Northeast region. This paper suggests that the labor costs and market conditions that have allegedly been responsible for the movement of traditional manufacturing out of the Northeast may be changing. Thus, this movement will not be a “drag” on the future economic development of the Northeast. The potential “turnaround” in the Northeast is suggested by the recent economic performance in New England and by Pittsburgh's ability to attract firms in rapidly growing manufacturing sectors.

Part-time farming in Maryland and the Northeast with full-time off-farm employment of one or more of the farm operators is competitive income-wise with many types and sizes of commercial farms. Individuals, families, and society in general will benefit in the future from the encouragement of fuller utilization of underutilized or unemployed rural resources to produce marketable agricultural output and subsistence types of food for household and local charitable purposes. Labor extensive types of crop and animal production activities have increased relatively and absolutely during the past decade on Maryland and Northeastern part-time farms. Average characteristics of a sample of 80 part-time farmers showed 1) age of male operator – 44 years, 2) education of operator − 12 years, 3) number of children on the farm − 3 children, 4) years of experience in farming − 15 years, 5) days of off-farm employment − 225 days, 6) proximity of off-farm job to a major metropolitan center − 20 miles and 7) distance to off-farm job − 29 miles.

Policy-makers need analytical frameworks which aid in evaluating the distribution of impacts of their decisions. The first section of this paper describes an Environment – Behavior – Impact framework for analyzing the impacts on agriculture of government policy changes which favor development in non-urban areas. An illustration of the framework using a hypothetical example follows, and the final section is a discussion of the applicability of empirical methods to the framework.

Affected by industrialization, agriculture in New England adapts to economic changes. Farms have become either large commercial units or small part time farms. Distributions of farm income have changed from an inverted-J distribution to a U-shaped distribution in the past three decades. Farm income grows slower and shows a larger dispersion in urban counties than in rural counties. Analyses of census data support the hypotheses (1) that farm income is lognormally distributed and (2) that industrialization has a complementary effect on agriculture while growth of urbanization essentially reduces farm numbers mostly in middle income classes.

The competitive position of agriculture in a region is determined by a mosaic of interacting forces. The physical, capital, and human resources available to the sector set technical limits to production possibilities. The pressures exerted on the use of these resources by the region's nonfarm sector help establish economic limits. The production characteristics of the agricultural sector of other regions also, of course, impact a region's competitive position.

Permanent conversion of agricultural land to urban uses has concerned both suppliers and demanders of agricultural products in recent years. Although controversy on the importance of the problems associated with this conversion persists among economists (General Accounting Office, Healy, Plaut), policymakers across the nation have accepted the preservation of farmland as a goal requiring government action. All but two States (Georgia and Mississippi) provide some form of preferential property tax assessment for farmland (Davies and Beiden). Most localities with zoning authority attempt to protect farmland, and several less common land use management institutions have been implemented with farmland preservation as a principal goal.

This paper examines the implications of New York's new procedures for determining agricultural values for use-value assessment purposes. It has been argued that use values based on comparable sales, regardless of efforts to confine the data to farm-to-farm sales, still contained some speculative influences, which in turn, inflated use-value estimates in an urban state like New York. Interestingly, this paper shows that the Legislature's remedy – use-value estimates based on capitalized net returns to land – is likely to bring with it rather substantial increases in use values estimated for much of the State's cropland base.

Costs impose restraints upon all activities. Certain costs chargeable to a sector of an industry–as for example, milk assembly and hauling costs–must be broken down from their total into the shares chargeable to individual users. When there is flexibility in this apportionment of cost shares, part of the burden upon the individual shipper becomes an industry-apportioned constraint upon individual firms, in this case dairymen-shippers. An alternative means of apportioning hauling costs is suggested, to retain large shippers in the conventional hauling system, and to sustain that system for the benefit of small dairymen.

According to the 1974 U.S. Census of Agriculture, $31.7 million worth of greenhouse vegetables were produced on a covered area of 37.2 million square feet. Though this represents less than 2 percent of total fresh market vegetable production in the country, traditionally greenhouse vegetables have provided high quality produce during months when field production is at a low level. This has been especially the case in the Northcentral and Northeast regions where a relatively large and affluent population of the metropolitan areas demands a year round supply of fresh vegetables. Much of the greenhouse production relates to the growing of salad items. Tomatoes are the single most important crop accounting for roughly two-thirds of the covered area and value of all greenhouse vegetables. In 1974, 63 percent of the U.S. covered area for tomatoes was located in the Northcentral region, 10 percent in the Northeast and the rest in the South and the West.

Major increases in energy prices since 1973 have raised considerable interest in the effect of a continuation of these increases on interregional competition. There is speculation in the Northeast that a general increase in energy prices will cause agricultural production to shift closer to the consumers. This production shift supposedly will lead to self-sufficiency in many products which were once grown in the Northeast and are now largely imported from other regions. This paper uses a simple interregional trade model to estimate the possible impact of higher energy prices on interregional competition, and on the Northeast in particular. It does this by assuming values for the relevant variables in the model and estimating the changes in the system. A range of values are used to estimate the sensitivity of the conclusions to the assumptions.

Increased bird density on egg production operations has led to high electricity consumption and manure handling problems. Anaerobic digestion offers a source of energy (biogas) and a consistent method of manure management. This paper reports the results of a computer simulation model designed to evaluate the economic viability of biogas-to-electricity systems on four egg farms containing different numbers of hens. These results indicate that the economic viability of the investment analyzed is directly related to the number of hens and projected electricity prices.

In the Northeast, the principal market expansion for its manufactured products is likely to come from outside. Sales to export markets can create jobs and could potentially exacerbate the region's dependence on imported energy. This analysis demonstrates that 26% of the Northeast's manufacturing employment is in sectors which have experienced significant expansion in exports in recent years. For most of the export sectors, the employment contribution is above the average for domestically-oriented industries, and the energy requirement is below the average. By focusing export promotion policies on these sectors, employment objectives need not conflict with energy conservation objectives.

An analysis of all valid single family house sales over a four-year period before the March, 1979, TMI accident and over the 9 months following the accident, and within a 25-mile radius of the plant and in two control areas, disclosed no evidence that the accident had measurable lasting effects on residential property values. Shortly following the accident there was a sharp decline in the volume of residential sales within 10 miles of the plant, but the real estate market returned to normal within a month, considering the financial market conditions at that time.