When talking about the ownership of land, one deals with property law. Property law is concerned with questions such as how you describe a boundary, what's the scope of a particular easement, and does a mechanic's lien gain priority over an unrecorded mortgage? There are rules here which haven't changed much since Blackstone wrote them down. Thus law can be a set of rules that resemble the axioms of geometry and, often enough, the image of the lawyer as pettifogging nitpicker is an apt one.

This paper examines the potential that exists for energy conservation in feeding livestock and poultry in the Northeast by analyzing the “What if” question: “What if national policy dictates using imputed energy “costs” to minimize energy use in feed rations?” Current feed rations contain large amounts of embodied energy reflecting the quantity of fossil fuel energy required to produce, process and transport the various ingredients included in the feed rations. By changing the mix of ingredients in feed rations, perhaps considerable energy could be saved in the Northeast.

Mechanical fruit harvesters have been commercially available to New York growers for ten years. However, adoption of mechanical apple harvesters has been relatively slow because of (l) the availability of relatively inexpensive hand labor, (2) the lack of a suitable fresh fruit harvester, and (3) the wide variation in tree size, apple varieties, farm size and production practices which make operation of a mechanical harvester physically and/or economically infeasible.

As outgoing President of the AAEA I hold two somewhat contradictory emotions concerning my year in office. The first can be stated simply—thank God it is about to end ! The other is a sense of excitement deriving from opportunities of the Association to better serve its members and society. On the assumption that you are not particularly interested in my frustrations in operating a volunteer organization and coping with the insidious nature of the U.S. Postal Service I shall limit my remarks to what I perceive as opportunities of the AAEA and regional associations to better serve their members and society.

Economic theory generally involves choice between real-valued criterion vectors x = (xi, …, xn) ε X, where X is the feasible set of such vectors. For example, in the theory of consumer demand, the criterion xi can be interpreted as the quantity demanded of the ith good. Under certainty, a rational consumer would choose a value of x that would maximize the ordinal utility u(x) subject to x ε X. If a function u(x) does not exist, in the paradigm of Marschak [1976], he is not national, his choices are not consistent, and some of them will be regretted. Even greater focus is placed on the multidimensional nature of the criterion function by the alternative approach suggested by Lancaster [1966]. His approach views goods or services as being demanded because they yield want-satisfying characteristics to consumers. In general, a good or service has multiple characteristics, any one of which may be shared by more than one good or service (the traditional consumer model is a special case which views the number of characteristics as equal to the number of goods or services). Further, goods or services in combination may possess characteristics (attributes) different from those pertaining to the items separately.

Most members of the agricultural economics profession are aware of the changes that are taking place in society and the impact of these changes on our programs, particularly graduate and undergraduate training programs. Certainly the journals of our profession have included many articles relating to our changing mission and the changes that are occurring or should occur in our programs. The next section of this paper contains a brief review of some of these trends in order to establish the need for a new degree, which is described and discussed in the final two sections of the paper.

Public programs of agricultural preservation continue to be of interest in many states of the urbanized Northeast. Farmers themselves, of course, have always been concerned with this issue, and in recent years they have found effective allies among public planners, for whom the agricultural sector has become a chief source of scenic and cultural amenities as well as insurance against unforeseen disruptions in future supplies of food and fiber. Programs of use-value assessment have been enacted by almost all of the northeastern states, as well as by those in many other parts of the country. Partly as a result of the fact that the effectiveness of this approach has been in doubt, attention in some states is turning to programs in which the development rights are purchased from agricultural land in order to alleviate development pressure on these areas. New Jersey has recently undertaken a program of development rights purchase, Massachusetts is currently shaping legislation for such a program, and many other states have shown interest.

Institutions of higher education span as great a range of size, illustrating as great a variation in fixed and variable inputs, as most of the firms that economists have occasion to study: farms, marketing concerns, recreation businesses, and the like. In the educational field, professionals at the smaller schools frequently look to their counterparts at larger institutions for innovation and leadership. This is, perhaps, a natural outgrowth of the age, prestige, and scope of academic enterprise which typify most of the larger universities.

Most discussions of community planning and development have described it as a result (e.g., an increased level of economic activity which leads to a higher social welfare function and standard of living) or as a process (the way decisions should be made to achieve the result). The literature is, therefore, somewhat confusing since subsumed under the overall subject matter heading are such diverse topics as the economic feasibility of a manufacturing plant or social psychology applied to the power structure of the community recreation committee.

Many University and College faculties throughout the Northeast and nation have addressed, debated, accepted or rejected unionization. Within the past year numerous faculties or state universities that are represented by the Northeast Agricultural Economics Council have voted yea or nay on the issue of union representation.

Not too long ago, most decisions were made by men. Using the brain was considered “unfeminine,” and it was a rare woman who was acquainted with the intricacies of financial planning. Today, things are changing as more and more women realize that prudent action in money matters can mean the difference between a comfortable future and “just getting by.”

Insurance is generally found whenever uncertainty presents itself in economic activity. Adaptation to the existence of uncertainty of treatment and incidence of illness had by 1970 produced 77 percent and 57 percent of the individuals in the United States purchasing hospital and doctor visit insurance, respectively. Corresponding figures for the rural farm population were approximately 10 percent lower in each category. The recognition that a substantial proportion of individuals have failed to protect themselves voluntarily from the financial consequences of illness has lead researchers to develop models of decision-making which explain individual reluctance to protect from adverse consequences in the event of illness.

The elderly in the Northeast are increasing in both relative and absolute numbers. Research on the delivery of services to rural people in the Northeast and their satisfaction with services has been given a high priority. Among community services, research on services for the elderly has been given the highest priority. This article documents the opinions about community services of non-institutionalized, nonmetropolitan people 60 years of age and over.

The purposes of this paper are: (1) to outline some of the reasons for the energy problem and to discuss current philosophies for solving it, (2) to evaluate energy use in Northeastern agriculture, particularly in production, (3) to suggest some possibilities for conserving energy, and (4) to delineate some areas for future extension and research activities.

Public concern with decisions about the use of land, particularly if it is undeveloped, is an increasing phenomenon in our society. This is especially true in the coastal zone, where land and water resources are extremely limited in quantity and subject to strong and growing demand, and where there are not only direct interrelationships among the ways adjacent parcels of shoreland and water are used, but also indirect interrelationships among various land and water uses that are effected through complex coastal ecosystems. Since the coastal waters are largely common property resources, there is a particularly strong rationale for concern about the impact of human activities upon their availability, quality, and viability within the ecosystem.

The cost and availability of conventional energy sources currently used as inputs for agricultural production continue to be a very important concern in planning and decision making. Interest in solar energy for use in space and water heating, grain drying, and other areas, has been stimulated because it is technically feasible, abundant, renewable, and nonpolluting. Although it is reasonably reliable and can provide a large portion of the total heat need for many situations, it does require an auxiliary source of energy.

In 1974 the price level for food as measured by the Consumer Price Index increased by 14.4 percent. During this period supermarkets received wholesale price increases on up to 800 individual lines of merchandise per week. In keeping with traditional practices the industry would pass the wholesale price increases to the consumer by pricing the new merchandise and existing shelf inventory to reflect higher wholesale costs. It was not uncommon during this period for consumers to find two, three, or more old price markings on an item replaced by a higher price.

While there has been some irrigated agriculture in each of the 11 States in the Northeast farm production region for a number of years, irrigation has never been widely practiced in this region. The latest available data indicate that only about 2 percent of the cropland in the Northeast is irrigated, while 12 percent of the cropland in the nation is under irrigation, largely in the more arid West. During the past year, ERS has investigated why supplemental irrigation is not practiced by more farmers in the East. The one example of extensive supplemental irrigation in a humid State is Florida, which contains over half of the irrigated acreage in the 26 States east of the Mississippi River although it has the second highest average annual rainfall in the nation. Although discussed in the last section, the main purpose here is not the potential for expanding supplemental irrigation, but to discuss ways of conserving energy with the irrigation already practiced in the Northeast.

There are a number of lessons to be learned from the Title V Extension and Research activities recently completed throughout the U.S. Several aspects of the Delaware project are discussed in this paper. Some of the detail of our project is not presented because a fifteen minute documentary video-tape of the project was viewed at the time the paper was presented.