A stochastic budget simulator and generalized stochastic dominance are used to compare the risk management properties of grazing contracts to futures and option contracts. The results show that the risks of backgrounding feeder cattle are reduced significantly for pasture owners in a grazing contract. However, the risks of the cattle owner in a grazing contract are not significantly reduced. The results also show that generally risk averse pasture owners prefer grazing contracts to integrated production when traditional hedging is used to manage price risks. In addition, grazing contracts compare favorably with put option contracts for some pasture owners.

In August 1994, the Secretary of Agriculture announced the termination of the marketing order and the associated flow-to-market, or prorate, controls for fresh California and Arizona (CA/AZ) lemons. Lemon growers and handlers have expressed concern over the impact of this decision on retail-FOB margins. This study presents an econometric model of fresh lemon marketing margins that tests for the presence of buyer and seller market power during previous periods of marketing order suspension. The results show that buyer and, to a lesser extent, seller market power cause retail-FOB margins to widen during periods of prorate suspension.

As a preface to my comments today, I challenge you to consider the following questions. Do the information age technological changes now taking place have the potential to disrupt, or even destroy, the university as we know it? Do these changes have the potential to force restructuring of the land-grant system? My comments today will address these questions. In doing so, however, I will not address problems facing the land-grant system or the agricultural economics profession per se, other than those we face as a part of the overall system of higher education. Others are doing that or have addressed those more unique problems elsewhere. A major National Research Council (NRC) initiative is now examining the relevancy of the land-grant system in the context of today's society; the W. K. Kellogg Foundation has funded an initiative to facilitate positive change within the land-grant system (Warner); and Eidman, in his 1995 American Agricultural Economics Association presidential address, summarized key concerns and issues facing the agricultural economics profession and how we are responding to them. I contend that overlaying the NRC and Eidman concerns is a series of fundamental changes taking place that has the potential to drastically modify the higher education model as we presently know and understand it.

This study presents a testing methodology to analyze potential price asymmetries among the farm, wholesale, and retail levels of the U.S. broiler industry. Lag length, direction of causality, and asymmetric relationships are empirically determined. Results suggest that concentration and power of the integrators in the industry have allowed the wholesale price to become the center, causal price in the market. Asymmetric price transmissions, however, are limited. While downward movements in the wholesale price are passed on more fully to growers than increases in the wholesale price, only consumers in the North Central region of the U.S. share a larger portion of wholesalers’ price increases than price decreases.

Product placement survey data for 192 Asian-American households in Houston were used to analyze the value of rice quality attributes via the Consumer Goods Characteristics Model (CGCM). Five rice varieties were used for this study: domestic Lemont, Jasmine 85, Toro II, and two different Thai import varieties. For each variety, marginal implicit prices were calculated at the means for seven characteristics: color, texture, aroma, stickiness, flavor, aftertaste, and moisture.

The 1995 Farm Bill debate proved different than many economists expected. It was overwhelmingly budget-driven. Few early concerns about the role of government, efficiency, equity, competitiveness, environment, rural development, and food were addressed. Economic analysis played a different role than anticipated. Models of who and how farm policy is made proved misleading; the debate circumvented the traditional process. Economic models were used more to perform budget accounting than substantive analysis. And their substantive analyses often failed to capture the attention of policymakers. Hence, while a reformist economist's dream, the bill leaves as many issues unanswered as it addresses.

The use of national aggregate measures for the purpose of analyzing the impacts of agricultural policies often hides the impact of national policies on the distribution of benefits and costs between and within regions, size, and types of businesses. While economists can use national aggregate measures to indicate changes in overall efficiency due to policies, the tradeoff between efficiency and equity should be measured and the results provided to policymakers. These tradeoffs were not presented during the 1995–96 Farm Bill debate.

This study examines how sociodemographic characteristics of a household's main meal planner affect use of nutritional information concerning ingredients, health benefits, calories, sodium, vitamins/minerals, fiber, fat, cholesterol, and sugar content on food packages. Results generally suggest that well-educated, female main meal planners are more likely to use various types of nutritional information than others. Main meal planners who place more importance on nutrition but less importance on taste and those who have a higher perception of the healthfulness of their diet are more likely to use nutritional information on packages than others. Household size, race, employment status, urbanization, region, age, and income are also significant factors.

An ordered probit model is used to investigate the factors that determine post-choice satisfaction of southeastern U.S. dairy farmers with their milk handlers. The impact on farmer satisfaction of milk handler attributes, farm/farmer characteristics, and farm location is tested. Results support the hypothesis that mailbox price and the quality of service provided by milk handlers have a positive effect on satisfaction levels. Bargaining-operating cooperatives are negatively associated with farmer satisfaction when contrasted against independently owned milk handlers and bargaining-only cooperatives. Choice and the ability to switch milk handlers are also important determinants of farmer satisfaction.

The 1994 congressional elections brought expectations of policy reform that extended to agriculture. This paper examines the role of economic analysis and how policymakers made use of it in developing the policies of the Agricultural Reconciliation Act, also known as the Freedom to Farm Act. Budget reduction pressures, other/secondary policy objectives, and a closed debate led to the system of fixed, declining payments to farmers that characterize an economist's solution, without the direct participation of economists, to interventionist government policy. Left unanswered are questions of political stability of the policy and whether the direct payments themselves are adequate or excessive.

In 1995, for the first time since the 1930s, the United States failed to pass new farm program legislation. The inability to pass farm legislation occurred despite bipartisan agreement that farm programs should continue the trend over the past decade of less government intervention. This paper discusses the sequence of events, the role of agricultural economists, the major issues, and the lessons learned from the 1995 Farm Bill debate. The trend toward declining government intervention in agriculture will require that the profession look increasingly to the private sector for solutions to the problems facing agriculture in the twenty-first century.

This study provides an analysis of nonindustrial private forest (NIPF) landowners' participation in forestry assistance programs. A probit model was used for data collected from a random sample of 329 Indiana landowners. The analysis revealed that total land owned, commercial reasons for ownership, government sources of information, and membership in forestry organizations influenced NIPF landowners' program participation. Age, fear of loss of property rights, and duration since the first wooded tract was acquired also influenced program participation. Location of landowners' residence on their wooded land and landowners' knowledge of and willingness to participate in a conservation easement influenced the participation in cost-share programs.

Agricultural economists are appropriately concerned about their profession's contributions to policy decisions. An examination of alternative approaches to transforming policy analyses is in order. There are opportunities to (a) focus on income and wealth distribution, (b) give attention to the public as a primary client, (c) avoid advocacy, and (d) adjust institutions in ways that encourage participation in policy analyses including the development of data systems.

An interregional input-output model of the Monroe, Louisiana, Functional Economic Area constructed with IMPLAN is used to assess economic linkages between a small urban core and a surrounding rural periphery. The contribution of agriculture, especially in the rural periphery, to the urban core (Ouachita Parish) economy is demonstrated. Also assessed is the possibility of using the core's food processing sector to facilitate periphery economic growth. While results demonstrated stronger rural-urban linkages than have been found in other regions, growth in the urban food processing industry, as currently structured, did not imply rapid growth in the periphery.

Efforts to stabilize employment and output in the agricultural sector of Yugoslavia through monetization contributed to inflationary pressures. Granger causality tests suggest that increases in the rate of growth in the supply of money to subsidize state-owned agribusinesses were insufficient to maintain purchases of wheat and corn, but did cause purchases of cattle and swine. This result may be explained by producers having more flexibility in grain marketing (i.e., storage options and private buyers) and the perishability issues related to livestock marketing. The policy to maintain employment through monetization is shown to have been ineffective.

A descriptive analysis and a survey of literature were used in this assessment of the transformation of the structure of production agriculture. The changes in production agriculture have important implications for resource use, population distribution in rural communities, and the survival of small farms. The shifting structural change in production agriculture as a response to economic and technological adjustments is not a temporary phenomenon. The economic and natural base of agriculture will change toward greater capital intensity and concentration of ownership, and will raise public policy questions in relation to the survival of a large farm population.

Gebremedhin and Christy focus on agriculture's trend toward concentration and industrialization, and how small farms may be affected by the mostly unintended consequences of government policy. They identify a set of forces that may move smaller farmers out of agriculture, resulting in social costs both to individuals and families forced to change occupations and homes, and to their communities.

An alternative version of decomposition analysis, based on factor cost shares rather than input demand functions, is presented and applied to Greek agriculture. Decomposition analysis shows that most of the changes in factor cost shares during the period from 1973 to 1989 are attributed to technical change and factor substitution, while the role of the scale effect is small, except that of fertilizer. The decomposition analysis results are then used to analyze the implications of Greece's fertilizer and feed subsidy removal, which took place in 1990.