Bovine somatotropin (BST), a new technology capable of enhancing a cow's ability to produce milk by 7-23 percent, is expected to be available for commercial use soon. Ex ante survey procedures are used to determine the potential effect of BST on the size distribution of dairy farms in the Southeast. Results of logit analysis indicate a positive link between farm size and (1) farmers' knowledge of BST and (2) intentions to adopt early, suggesting BST will not be scale neutral. An estimated “price elasticity” of -1.8 to -2.1 indicates an elastic demand for the input Price, therefore, may be an effective instrument for attenuating the scale bias.

The relationship between the degree of competitive market pressure and the rate of productivity growth is empirically investigated with a case study of the Florida fresh winter vegetable industry. The results indicate that crops which faced considerable competitive pressure exhibited significant productivity growth while the crops that faced minimal competitive pressure generally exhibited little growth in productivity. Thus, the hypothesis that competitive pressure is positively related to productivity growth is supported.

Data from Kansas cattle auctions were analyzed to estimate the impact a wide variety of physical characteristics had upon cow prices. Weight, lot size, health, pregnancy, grade, dressing percent, breed, time of sale, and market location were important factors affecting the differences in cow prices across lots on a given day. Results suggest that producers interested in maximizing the price they receive for their cows should market healthy cows in desirable lot sizes at higher dressing percentages.

To analyze fresh vegetable consumption using household survey data, the tobit model and a more flexible parameterization to the tobit model—the “double hurdle” model—were considered. Based on the likelihood ratio test, the tobit model was rejected against the “double hurdle” specification. Moreover, the results suggest that the tobit model underestimated the impact of the explanatory variables on fresh vegetable expenditures. Other results indicate that total food expenditures (proxy for income), age, household composition, sex, race, marital status, urbanization, region, and seasonality are all important determinants of fresh vegetable expenditures.

Vegetable production can offer a high-valued cash crop alternative. While returns may be high, vegetables are perceived to have more risk than conventional row crops. This study used stochastic dominance analysis to evaluate terminal market price risk for four vegetable crops across five market locations. Results from the analysis identify differences in efficient market selection depending on the form which price risk follows. While vegetables as a whole are considered risky, substantial differences in the type of terminal market price variability existed between the commodities.

Use of generalized stochastic dominance (GSD) requires one to place lower and upper bounds on the risk aversion coefficient. This study showed that breakeven risk aversion coefficients found assuming the exponential utility function delineate the places where GSD preferences switch between prospects. However, between these break points, multiple, overlapping GSD intervals can be found. Consequently, when one does not have risk aversion coefficient information, discovery of breakeven coefficients instead of GSD use is recommended. The investigation also showed GSD results are insensitive to wealth and data scaling but are sensitive to rounding.

This study determined the competitive potential of the temperate southeastern U.S. region to produce selected fresh vegetables for the national market. Results indicated that the region may be competitive in the production and marketing of snap beans, cucumbers, bell peppers, and spring tomatoes. The region would also be competitive in the production and marketing of broccoli, summer and fall tomatoes, and spinach, given cost reductions of 10 to 15 percent. Major cost reductions were required for the region to be competitive in the production and interregional marketing of sweet onions in the absence of effective product differentiation.

Agricultural Planning Expert is a software model designed for advising small-scale farmers in southern Maryland. Choosing farm enterprises is modelled as consisting of four activities: suggesting enterprises for consideration, investigating the suitability of enterprises, allocating resources to suitable enterprises, and controlling the overall direction of an advising session.

The economic impacts of recreational visits to state parks on the economies of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee were estimated using the U.S. Forest Service IMPLAN input-output modeling system. Recreational expenditure data associated with state parks were obtained from the Public Area Recreation Visitors Study (PARVS). Results suggest that recreational spending may stimulate a considerable amount of economic activity in the state economies studied. Hence, future research into the economic development potential of outdoor recreation seems warranted.

A vector autoregression (VAR) model of corn, farm egg, and retail egg prices is estimated and shocked with a corn price increase. Impulse responses in egg prices, t-statistics for the impulse responses, and decompositions of forecast error variance are presented. Analyses of results provide insights on the corn/egg price transmission mechanism and on how corn price shocks pulsate through the egg-related economy.

The 50/92 and 0/92reduced planting alternativestives of the 1985 farm bill allow farm program participants more flexibility in making production decisions. Specifically, these provisions relax the incentive to produce inherent in earlier commodity programs that linked deficiency payments directly to harvested acreage. This study examined the value of this additional decision flexibility for crop producers in the Blacklands of Central Texas. The results suggest that the reduced planting alternatives would not be used by, and have no value for risk neutral producers, but have substantial value for risk averse producers who would reduce planted acreage in years when yield expectations are low.

Farm producers attempt to mitigate risk and uncertainty by utilizing accurate and reliable information. This research attempts to identify sources of information used by Ohio fruit producers and then determine which of these sources are best meeting their information needs. Results are based on a logit analysis of Ohio fruit producers and several factors are shown to influence producers' evaluation of the “adequacy” of their marketing information. Among these factors are age, business size, education, type of enterprise, and types of information sources. Reported findings have implications for marketing efficiency, particularly if producers' evaluation of infonnation as adequate is positively related to its efficient use.

Integrated pest management (IPM) initially focused on insect pest control. More recently, IPM encompasses a broader concept of management, one which crosses several disciplinary boundaries. This article reports results of research dealing with four integrated management decisions for alfalfa (cultivar selection, inset control, weed control, and end-of-season harvest options).

Reservations on technical and theoretical grounds in the use of the consumer surplus approach to measure benefits of government programs have often appeared in the literature. Therefore, this paper uses an alternative approach in a case study to estimate the annual economic surplus created in South Carolina from deregulating tobacco production. Impacts of deregulation on cropping patterns and income on representative tobacco farms, and distribution of benefits in the economy are examined. Results of this study indicate that deregulation stimulates the economy and would increase the net value added by $5.8 million in the long run.

A hedonic framework is used to analyze selected attributes of Louisiana deer hunting leases that are hypothesized to be significant contributors to lease value. The flexible Box-Cox functional form is used in contrast to the often utilized linear regression specification. Additionally, the hypothesis of regional differences in slope coefficients of lease attributes is addressed. Results indicate that hunters in the two analyzed regions value lease attributes and services differently.

An eight-equation partially-recursive econometric model is specified to indicate the effects of catfish advertising on product awareness, beliefs, attitude and consumption. Results indicate the ad campaign in its first year (i) increased consumers' awareness of farm-raised catfish 15 percent, (ii) improved consumers' perceptions of and attitude toward catfish 3 to 6 percent, and (iii) increased at-home and restaurant purchases of catfish 12 to 13 percent. The response to the ad campaign is broken down into an “attitude effect” and a “reminder effect” to determine the relative behavioral importance of the affective and cognitive components of the ad copy. Model simulations suggest primacy of the reminder effect, implying the factual content of the ads had less impact on behavior than the mere presence of the ads.

Using a dual economic specification of a multiproduct technology, the structure of agricultural production was tested for five South Central states (Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana). A comprehensive set of output supplies and input demands comprised the estimation equations in each state. Evidence of nonjoint production in a subset of commodities was detected in four of the five states. Several commodities also satisfied sufficient conditions for consistent aggregation. However, the specific outputs satisfying each structural property varied by state. Sufficient conditions for consistent geographic aggregation across the states were not satisfied. These results provide empirical guidance and important cautions for legitimately simplifying state-level model specifications of southern agricultural production.

The importance of timeliness is investigated in the selection of machinery complements for double-crop wheat and soybean production in the southeastern coastal plain. An intertemporal stochastic simulation model was developed to generate probability distributions that were evaluated with stochastic dominance analysis. This research investigated the importance of intertemporal production linkages and inadequate soil moisture on machinery selection. Failure to include these dimensions can result in erroneous machinery choices.

Conservation initiatives in the 1985 Farm Bill affected farmers' decisions regarding soil conservation. A farmer survey was conducted and a multi-period mixed-integer programming model was developed to determine an optimal farm plan with choices of crop-tillage combinations and land retirement Results indicate that farmers' incentives to reduce soil loss in the Sand Mountain region in Alabama are not substantially affected by provisions of the 1985 Farm Bill. The bid price for the Conservation Reserve Program will have to be considerably higher than 1988 levels to provide an incentive to remove land from production.

The marginal benefit and cost of diversification for Florida orange producers is analyzed using certainty equivalents. Results indicate that for moderate and high levels of risk aversion, diversification into strawberry, grapefruit, or additional orange production is not optimal. However, moderately risk averse Florida orange producers can gain by diversifying into grapefruit production if the annual amortized fixed costs can be reduced by as little as 10 percent.