Each generation believes it has a monopoly on crises. Its spokesmen declare how exceptional are the perils of its day. Crossroads are invariably said to loom ahead.

It is, therefore, with diffidence that I declare my uneasy feeling that our nation is approaching a crisis decision as to the kind of economy and kind of government that are to prevail through ending years of our century. I am not timid to the point of silence because I have not customarily played a Cassandra role. My direst warnings have been of prospective demise of central markets for setting cattle prices.

The image of concern portrayed here regarding the future structure of agriculture is done in livid rhetoric and with a very broad brush. I share the concern of Breimyer and others regarding this issue. But, I do not think it necessary to engage in the inferential stretch required to forecast a cataclysmic set of national circumstances in order to justify considering it. I do not believe that we have devastated the continent. I do not foresee economic stagnation of the national economy, or unmanageable power accruing from an alarming skewness in private wealth distribution. I believe that we have the inventiveness to cope with the emerging energy crisis and with the depletion that is occurring in some of our key resources. I do not believe that our collective moral values will erode until we worship almost totally at the altar of science and materialism. And most important of all, I have an abiding faith that our system of government has the resiliance to adjust to the requirements of the future regardless of what these may be.

U.S. agricultural economic research has traditionally focused on farm production and marketing efficiency. In the future it must give more attention to equity.

Americans will certainly maintain their interest in producing things more efficiently. But, it is a healthy sign that they are also becoming more interested in making sure that changes are made fairly, justly, and impartially.

While there has been an increasing amount of agricultural economic research directed toward the problems of equity, there has not been enough. While I could present a paper documenting this research, I think it more useful at this point to consider seriously our overall research policy and try to reach some conclusion about whether it has adequately come to grips with the economic and social issues pressing upon us today.

I applaud Quentin West for what he said in his paper and commend him for the directions he had outlined for the Economic Research Service. If there was a time when economists could ignore the equity dimension in their analysis, it is no more. The agricultural establishment, largely uncritical lovers of traditional agricultural research and education, and the young radicals, largely unloving critics exemplified by Hard Tomatoes -- Hard Times, hold very different images of who pays for and who benefits from publicly supported agricultural research and education. Differences will not be resolved without better information in the hands of both groups.

It would be hard to quarrel with the thrust of ERS analysis reported by West for Tobacco and other programs. So I will deal with his shortcomings of omission rather than commission. Specifically, I will quantify the distribution of costs and benefits from agricultural research and education.

I shall treat my subject, not as a Government official, which I am, but as a university professor, which I also am, on leave from Purdue University. I begin, like a professor, by defining terms.

For about forty years farm policy people have considered the term “agricultural programs” to mean programs for controlling production and price and increasing the income from our major crops. This ignores other agricultural programs like rural development, research and education, regulatory activities, environmental programs, and food distribution. In dollars spent and numbers of persons affected, these other programs bulk larger than the commodity programs. But I interpret my assignment as relating to the commodity programs.

The recent emphasis in farm management research has centered on issues of financial management and firm growth. Consequently, a number of studies have identified and evaluated alternative production, financial and marketing strategies that result in growth or expansion of the farm firm. These studies have explicitly or implicitly assumed that the firm is a viable economic unit and the ownership structure will not change during the growth process. Thus, the life cycle of the firm has been severed from the typical life cycle of the enterpreneur, and the financial, economic and human problems of entry and exit of farm entrepreneurs into and out of the agricultural production sector have not been confronted. The following discussion will briefly review the characteristics of the life cycle of the family firm and indicate why entry-exit problems are particularly acute in the agricultural production sector. Then, specific micro and macro issues that merit empirical investigation, including the firm and industry implications of coordination (or the lack thereof) of the entry and exit processes, will be identified and discussed.

These observations by Machiavelli on the nature of human behavior seem most appropriate when reviewing the current status and distribution of benefits of producer bargaining. While the concept of bargaining by farmers is not new, it has experienced a resurgence of interest of unprecedented magnitude in recent years. This increased emphasis has led some to refer to agricultural bargaining as a “concept whose time has arrived.” Also, this development suggests the possibility-if not the promise-of the initiation of a “new order of things” to many of those who have observed it.

We should be indebted to Dr. Berry for his cogent observations on some key aspects of the producer bargaining issue. At the same time, however, I would be remiss in my role as discussant if I failed to point out two major shortcomings of his paper. First, the current status of producer bargaining is treated incompletely. Second, and more glaring, is the complete omission of any discussion of the distribution of benefits of agricultural bargaining.

It should be mentioned that both these shortcomings could be remedied simply by changing the title of the paper. For example, if the address was entitled, “Producer Bargaining: Its Present Status in the Dairy Industry,” these two criticisms would be largely unwarranted. I must also confess that if the assigned roles of Professor Berry and myself were reversed, he would very likely be levying the same comments about my presentation. For a complete analysis of the assigned topic involves a Herculean task – but a task with which we must come to grips in the near future.

Selected problems and opportunities inherent in educational work with large Agricultural and Agribusiness firms are examined in this paper. The problems arise largely because of the increasing size and complexity of today's large firms; the nature of their requests for assistance; and existing means of teaching the personnel of those firms. The opportunities lie in helping solve their problems in a manner which retains University contact with this important audience without disrupting academic budgets and faculty relationships.

The authors of this paper are to be congratulated for the comprehensiveness and clarity which they were able to obtain throughout the paper. Their major contribution is the listing of the strengths and weaknesses of selected educational and/or consulting delivery systems, as in Table 1. They farsightedly point out that the major decision at this juncture is whether to deliver assistance to the large agriculture clientele, rather than which vehicle is selected for delivery.

This discussant was intrigued with the justification put forth for our working with the large commercial farmer. Indeed, to work with this group seems to offer a panacea, one which none of us would demean.

The nation's housing needs are a subject of major public concern – and rightfully so. The 1970 Census revealed 2.5 million substandard houses in nonmetropolitan areas inhabited by almost 13 million people. Two earlier major government reports presented a picture of unfulfilled housing needs, and the pervasive social, economic, political and institutional obstacles to meeting these needs.

Unfortunately, despite the pressing nature of substandard housing illuminated in these reports, few researchers have responded with serious analysis of the problem. Only passing attention to housing needs was given by the President's Poverty Commission, even though the quality of housing is widely recognized as a key indicator of economic development and the quality of living.

Deaton and Hanrahan provided an excellent report on the situation of housing in Central Appalachia. Their arguments concerning the implications to be drawn from the situation are that Central Appalachia had a disproportionate share of substandard housing in 1960 and 1970, examination of some barriers to increase housing construction indicates that public policy has not been effective in reaching the very poor, and therefore, public housing policy should be altered.

Three questions may be raised that need to be answered before implementing new public housing policy for Central Appalachia.

Arthur Okun recently observed that even in economics the times are changing. Whereas the focus of the profession in the early 1960's was on the aggregative issues – mainly lagging economic growth – it has now shifted to a considerable degree to the distributive issues. Particular attention is being given to the problems of the low end of the distribution – “the poverty problem.” In agricultural economics we are witnessing a somewhat similar trend with increasing interest and professional time being allocated to rural poverty and rural development.

One of the manifestations of the trend in both general and agricultural economics to examine distributional questions has been a substantial increase in studies of the distributional impact of various public programs [cf. 6, 7, 23, 24]. Both because of the magnitude of expenditure involved and its presumed role in providing equality of opportunity, education has received particular attention. Consequently substantial literature has now been accumulated on the distributive impact of public schooling.

David Holland has provided a basic contribution to the expanding literature concerned with the distributional effects of expenditures on education. He has ventured into the relatively untouched realm of measuring the distrubutional impact of tax costs and expenditure benefits of public elementary, secondary and higher education. Our fundamental ignorance of the equity issues involved in public education, coupled with the economic and social importance of its eventual product, provide ample justification for continued research in this field.

Even though a valuable literature review occupies a significant proportion of Holland's paper, I will limit my comments to that portion of the paper that is original. Reviewing briefly, Holland's goal is to determine the distribution by income class of net benefits resulting from education. To do this, he compares the average per family tax costs for the provision of education with the average per family expenditures made. The difference between the two is the net subsidy received. Holland's basic conclusion is that the net subsidies from lower (as opposed to higher) education are regressive.

If we could get a nickel for every time the demise of the property tax has been predicted in this century, we probably could invest the proceeds and use the interest to finance a program of property tax reform. In a sense, this subject is old.

In another sense, however, there is something very new about discussing alternative ways of raising money for local governments. In August 1971, the California Supreme Court issued its decision in the now well-known case of Serrano v. Priest; in March 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a similar ruling by a lower court in Texas. The Court ruled that the present system of financing local schools in California, which relies heavily on the property tax, unconstitutionally “conditions the full entitlement to such interest on wealth, classifies its recipients on the basis of their collective affluence and makes the quality of a child's education depend upon the resources of his school district and ultimately upon the pocketbook of his parents.” Since that time, more than 50 similar suits have been filed in some 31 states, and the U.S. Supreme Court is reviewing an appeal from Texas in a case similar to Serrano.

Dr. Hady's paper begins by noting why some practical alternatives to the local property tax may soon become very urgent in all parts of the United States. The California Supreme Court decision in the case of Serrano v. Priest, which Hady cites, constituted the first ruling by a major appellate court that disparities in the property tax bases of school districts render that tax invalid as a basis for financing public schools. The applicable constitutional provision is the “equal protection” clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution, and similar provisions of State constitutions. The fact that the United States Supreme Court is reviewing a decision of a three-judge Federal court of appeals in a Texas case, Rodriquez v. San Antonio Independent School District, rather than the California case may be of considerable importance to possible future changes in educational finance.

Considerable use has been made of per capita (or per unit of income) expenditures of various community or local government services to indicate size economies and inter-community service quality and fiscal effort differentials. Indiscriminate use of these per capita measures (particularly those including only operating expenditures) may lead to very questionable policy recommendations on local government consolidation, state and federal grant-in-aid formulas, etc. Many related public and private costs are not included in most per capita expenditure data. In addition, expenditure figures are seldom adjusted for price or service “quality” differentials between governmental units.

“Rural Development” is a phrase much in the news and literature. Both the terms rural and development are used somewhat ambiguously, though the niceties of having quantitative measures for each term are readily recognized by researchers. Although what constitutes development and how it should be measured is a very important question, the focus of this paper is on the term rural.

Nationally, expenditures for solid waste collection and disposal are exceeded only by spending on schools and roads [3, p. 1]. In Texas, recent legislation which establishes minimum acceptable standards for disposal of municipal solid wastes materially affects the future costs of operating solid Waste management systems for smaller rural communities.

The 1969 amendment to the Texas Solid Waste Disposal Act establishes the minimum legal standards for disposal operations in rural communities. The State Department of Health was given the responsibility for enforcement of regulations involving the collection, handling, storage and disposal of municipal solid wastes. After January 1, 1973, data presented in support of the disposal operations in Texas communities larger than fifteen hundred people must be prepared by a registered professional engineer and submitted to the State Department of Health for approval. Under the auspices of this act all towns with a population of between three thousand and five thousand are required to operate a sanitary landfill with compaction and cover at least twice per week.

Administrators of the public junior colleges in Missouri are faced with two major problems. First, there is an increasing number of students demanding post-secondary education. Second, apathy of voters and legislators toward financial support of our educational institutions is increasing. A study entitled Missouri Public Junior Colleges: A Report to the People revealed that in 1960 there were approximately 600,000 students enrolled in two-year institutions of higher education in the United States. The report further stated that in 1971 the enrollments would climb to 2,000,000 and that by 1980 the projected enrollments would approximate 4.4 million. This predicted growth pattern has been observed in Missouri with the enrollments increasing by approximately 20 percent per year.

The report cited above also confirms the second major problem as state aid for Missouri junior colleges has been decreasing over the past few years. Voter apathy, although more evident in secondary schools, is a force that can affect the junior college as programs are expanded to meet the increasing student demand.