Over the past fifty years, several different types of publicly sponsored programs have been devised by state and local governments for the express purpose of encouraging owners to maintain land in an agricultural use. Although these units of government can, and do, wield considerable police power or regulatory influence, most attention has been given to voluntary, incentive-based approaches. First-generation programs were developed beginning in the mid-1950s, with state legislation centered on the provision of direct cash benefits via reduced property tax levies on farm real estate (Tremblay et al. 1987).

Many observers have suggested that tax policy can be used to change the relative prices of foods in ways that will produce desirable health outcomes. We briefly review the economic evidence regarding such claims, and discuss several conceptual and pragmatic issues surrounding the use of such interventions to achieve public health objectives.

Biofuels such as ethanol and biodiesel are increasingly promoted as green alternatives to petroleum-derived transport fuels. Scaling up feedstock production to produce enough biofuel to displace a significant portion of current petroleum demand will put pressure on land and water resources both domestically and internationally, however, and could potentially be accompanied by unacceptable changes in landscape-level land use patterns and provisioning of ecosystem services. Ensuring that feedstock production is sustainable and that biofuels provide the social and environmental benefits that are often attributed to them will require a carefully designed portfolio of agricultural, forestry, energy, and trade policies related to biofuels and feedstock production. Despite the difficulties associated with development and application of such policies, they should be in place before further policy incentive is provided for expansion of biofuel industries.

A proposed Yield Reserve Program designed to compensate farmers for any reduced yields resulting from nitrogen (N) application rates reduced to below recommended rates is evaluated. Assuming that farmers currently follow Extension recommendations for applying N, Yield Reserve Program participation reduces expected net revenue by $10 to $13/ha. The Yield Reserve Program reduces expected net revenue by $17 to $20/ha for farmers who apply N to maximize expected net revenue. Farmers' costs of participation increase with lower probabilities of inadequate rainfall and higher corn prices and decline with higher N prices. The Yield Reserve Program can significantly reduce N applications to cropland, which may reduce N content of surface waters, but the costs to taxpayers and farmers will depend on how the program is implemented.

Using data from a survey of Pennsylvania food processors, we investigate what firm-level characteristics make a processor more or less likely to buy agricultural inputs and ingredients though contracts. We find that over 20 percent of Pennsylvania processors use contracts, and over 44 percent of agricultural inputs (based on value) are purchased under contract. We also analyze the two related questions of what firm attributes, attitudes, or other factors make a firm more likely to use contracts at all, and what factors lead a processor who does contract to use them more intensively.

This paper focuses on estimating the effects of the real FDI-weighted exchange rate on real U.S. foreign direct investment (FDI) in the global processed food industry. We use a straightforward production possibility framework as our theoretical basis to demonstrate the shift of production between countries on the basis of exchange rate fluctuations. The log-log regression model, derived from the theoretical model, gives statistically robust results to show that for the years 1983 to 2002, the exchange rate fluctuations, the level of fixed capital in the U.S. food industry, and the cost of materials in both the United States and abroad were major determinants of the stock of U.S. FDI in the global processed food industry. As the dollar appreciated, U.S. FDI increased. An overall conclusion is that countries with an undervalued exchange rate will experience increased FDI. Countries with overvalued exchange rates incur costs from lost export opportunities for domestic firms as well as discourage FDI.

Nonparametric techniques are frequently applied in recreation demand studies when researchers are concerned that parametric utility specifications impart bias upon welfare estimates. A goal of this paper is to extend previous work on nonparametric bounds for welfare measures to allow for measurement errors in travel costs. Haab and McConnell (2002) state that issues in travel time valuation continue to be topical in the recreational demand literature. This paper introduces a bootstrap augmented nonparametric procedure to precisely bound welfare when price data contains measurement error. The technique can be extended and becomes more convenient relative to other approaches when more than two site visits are made by a single recreationist. These techniques are demonstrated in a Monte Carlo experiment.

A fixed-effects panel data demand model for five New York State markets is estimated to determine the differential impacts of generic fluid milk advertising by media type. Empirical results indicate that among the four media outlets, television advertising has the largest impact on per capita demand, followed by radio, outdoor, and print. Based on the estimated media-specific elasticities, media reallocation of advertising expenditures suggests that milk sales could increase significantly. The results indicate that cooperative media plan strategies developed between the New York regional advertising program and the national advertising programs would achieve the greatest benefits.

This paper presents the methodology, assumptions, and data used to generate regional and national environmental benefit estimates of the USDA's Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). It's assumed that, without the program, production and conservation practices on CRP lands would be the same as those used on surrounding lands. When range and forest lands are (are not) included as land-use options, 54 (71) percent of the CRP land would be in crop production—which is consistent with past analyses. Soil erosion would be 222 to 248 million tons per year—about 11 percent—higher than the current level. Benefits are estimated by applying environmental benefit models, estimated in previous analyses, to the CRP's estimated effect on erosion and wildlife habitat. Nationally, the CRP is estimated to provide $1.3 billion in annual benefits, which represents 75 to 80 percent of the program's cost. In seven of the 10 USDA Farm Production Regions, the CRP's environmental benefits exceed costs. Thus, reallocating acreage to these regions could increase net program benefits. However, because many benefits could not be estimated, one cannot conclude that regional and national benefits do not exceed costs.

This paper presents a model of economic behavior that explicates the phenomenon known as “orderly marketing,” which was a main objective of the Marketing Orders agricultural program introduced early in the New Deal. Recent analyses of marketing orders start with an implicit assumption that there is no market failure—thus, that price regulation can cause only deviations from the first-best market solution. However, historical evidence suggests that disorderly marketing might refer to a kind of market imperfection. In the model presented here, a monopsonist processor sets a price to be paid, and an aggregate quantity to be purchased. In some states of the world, some farmers are excluded from the market. In other words, nonprice rationing can occur, and changes in consumer expenditure for the final product are absorbed by the processor rather than passed along to the farmer. The classified price and pooling provisions of federal orders can lead to a Pareto improvement in welfare.

As U.S. lamb imports increased relative to domestic production, and the relative share of chilled to frozen lamb imports increased, importers of chilled lamb have become less responsive to domestic and import prices, while the direct opposite is the case for frozen lamb imports. From 1990 to 2003, chilled lamb imports from Australia and New Zealand became less and less responsive to U.S. prices, and frozen imports became more responsive. Unconditional own-price elasticities also show that, over time, imports of chilled lamb became less responsive to import prices while frozen imports became more responsive to import prices.

As demand and supply of organic produce has increased, it has become possible to distinguish between the many individuals that express a preference for organic and the share of their purchases that is organically produced. This study examines the share of a consumer's produce purchases that are organic, and how that is influenced by economic factors, environmental and health motivations, and demographic characteristics. Results from a model of organic preference are compared to those from a model of organic buying proportions. Buying proportion models are also estimated separately for those that preferred organic and those that preferred conventional produce. A limitation in this study is that it evaluates stated buying proportions rather than actual purchases.

When using a willingness-to-pay (WTP) format in contingent valuation (CV) to value watershed restoration, respondents may protest by questioning why they should pay to clean up a pollution problem that someone else created. Using a sample selection interval data model based on Bhat (1994) and Brox, Kumar, and Stollery (2003), we found that the decision to protest and WTP values were correlated. Protest sample selection bias resulted in a 300 percent overestimate of mean WTP per respondent. Using different ad hoc treatments of protesters, protest bias resulted in moderate effects (−10 percent to +14 percent) after controlling for sample selection bias.

Legislative authorization for the Livestock Mandatory Reporting Act of 1999 was renewed in October of 2006. One of the cited justifications for implementing mandatory reporting was that the voluntary reporting system for the slaughter cattle cash market was unable to provide accurate and timely market information. We extend the spatial market analysis literature by developing a methodology for detecting distortions in spatial relationships across related price series. Using spatially linked regional markets, we compare state-level mandatory price-reporting data to the U.S. Department of Agriculture voluntarily reported state data to determine if the spatial relationship between price-reporting mechanisms was disrupted by market distortions prior to implementation of federal mandatory price reporting. We found no empirical evidence of system failure; therefore, we conclude that market thinning or noncompetitive behavior had not reached the level necessary to disrupt the ability of the voluntary price-reporting system to provide timely and accurate price information.