Systems analysis would be a useful tool for certain kinds of pesticide research, particularly that involving decisions affecting the environment or the ecosystem. A well-designed systems analysis would permit researchers and policymakers to learn more about the complete effects of their decisions relating to pesticides. It is doubtful whether any one person or group of persons can mentally formulate all the complex effects of a pesticide on the environment, on optimum farm organization and practices, on human welfare, and on the myriad of other interrelated factors.

Groundwater is the predominant source of water for the 7,969 thousand acres of irrigated agriculture in Texas [5, p. 4.5]. Over 65 percent of Texas' irrigated acreage is watered from the Ogallala formation of the Texas High Plains. As opposed to conditions in other aquifers, the Ogallala does not receive appreciable recharge. Although the aquifer underlies virtually all of the 28,125 square mile High Plains land area, in many areas the aquifer is relatively thin (less than 100 feet) and in all areas the underlying water supply is expected to be exhausted in the foreseeable future. The average annual decline of the water table underlying irrigated acres of the High Plains has been approximately 3.5 feet.

A closed underground water supply whose annual recharge is insignificant relative to its annual withdrawal is a stock resource subject to eventual economic exhaustion. Furthermore, it is a common property resource because its users tap the same reservoir. Economists have expressed their concern over the intertemporal misallocation of such fugitive resources, arising from a possible divergence between social and private costs [5, 6, 7, 8, 9]. While the practical determination of the marginal social cost of a ground water stock at different points in time is a formidable task, economists have suggested methods of evaluating ground water as a stock resource [5,7,9].

The stimulus for this article was an observation that resource development in the United States is of a lumpy or whole project-by-project character. We seem to have looked at resource development proposals in isolation from other worthwhile activities and to have been preoccupied with the magnitude of “benefit-cost ratios” in evaluating and comparing individual resource development activities, projects, or programs. Unless properly interpreted, however, such ratios can mislead planners and legislators to invest capital and other inputs in a way that leads to a less than fully efficient pattern of resource development, even where the objective is only to maximize quantifiable monetary benefits. Accordingly, this analysis examines the “benefit-cost ratio” in the context of an income-producing efficiency objective and elementary production theory. Such other currently emphasized objectives as environmental quality improvement are treated implicitly, though not within a multiobjective framework. For a more complete treatment of these see Miller and Holloway [9] who have illustrated an application of multiobjective resource planning principles recently issued by the Water Resources Council [15]. Other particular papers and reports dealing with multiobjective resource development planning are [3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 13 and 14].

The Wall Street Journal, the Great Plainsman and other publications tell us that there is a rail car shortage. The dual purpose of this article is to demonstrate that the shortage is one of rail service rather than rolling stock and to examine several of the mechanisms available to increase the quantity of rail service.

Variations in price occur frequently in the U. S. shell egg industry and, consequently, interest has been widespread among the traders and the producers with regard to such price variations. Quantitative models for the specific purpose of predicting shortrun egg price have so far been conspicuously absent. The basic objectives of this discussion are first, to present an econometric model to predict quarterly shell egg price and, second, to explain the casual factors which appear to affect price in the immediate future. Finally, alternative methods of estimating the predictive model have been compared with regard to their relative predictive ability.