There is apparently a growing awareness of the role of non-structural measures as an important part of an overall flood damage reduction program. This awareness has come in part with the realization that structural measures often provide a false sense of security to floodplain occupants and can, then, result in increased food damages — contrary to their intended purpose. To be sure, restrictions prohibiting all development in flood prone areas is a polar case (which will eliminate all damages). There are no a priori reasons to believe that all uses should be prohibited from all floodplain areas. Some of these areas can, in fact, be put to economic use by land use management such that benefits derived outweigh costs associated with such development.

The objectives underlying this investigation, then, are (i) to develop a methodology useful to planners at several levels for efficient floodplain management, considering both structural and non-structural measures and (ii) to demonstrate the usefulness of the methodology by applying it to a selected floodplain in the Connecticut River Basin.

The historical development of Agricultural Economics as a field of applied economics has been well-documented in books and journals by scholars within the profession. The relationship of Agricultural Economics to other social, biological and natural sciences has changed as the discipline has emerged and as forces of science and technology have been brought to bear on problems of our society.

The objective of this paper is to define or establish the parameters of Agricultural Economics but offer personal views on how economic forces within our economy have influenced program development in research involving many disciplines. In this process I will emphasize some of the areas where Agricultural Economics has made a major contribution and, in my judgement, can play an important role in the future.

The quantity of solid waste arising from household consumption activities commands considerable public concern. Information about the level and composition of consumption residuals and their relationship to household consumption activities is scarce. Such information is quite basic to a better understanding of solid waste problems and to formulating policies aimed at coping with them.

This paper focuses on linking solid waste from food consumption activities to consumer behavior. The theoretical framework used in conceptualizing the solid waste generation process and its relationship to household consumption behavior is presented in Section II. A four - equation model involving relationships for total household food expenditure, value of food consumed at home, value of meals eaten away-from-home and total household solid waste generated by food consumption activities is set forth in Section III. Data and estimation are discussed in Section IV. The quantities of glass, metal, plastic and paper associated with selected food consumption activities and selected food expenditures, and the statistical estimates of the four-equation model, are analyzed in Section V. Some concluding remarks are given in Section VI.

In September 1974, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that it planned to make major changes in its grading of beef. The changes would redefine criteria for eating quality, particularly requiring less marbling for each grade.

The announcement was strategically timely: consumers had been restive over what they regarded as high prices for beef, while the poor 1974 corn crop made it economical to produce less fat in the beef carcass. Moreover, meat, packers and many cattle feeders had been demanding a grade revision which would permit shorter feeding, less waste fat and lower prodduction costs.

In the past 25 years, agricultural economists have made significant progress, but have experienced substantial turmoil and great anxiety. These years have been a period of great introspection during which we have asked: “What are the fundamental purposes of our profession?” During this quarter century, rural America's practical problems important to our profession have changed rapidly. This rate will likely quicken in the future. Increasingly, we and our institutions will be challenged to “keep up” and to adjust. How well we respond and serve society will depend greatly on (1) our ability to preceive and to anticipate important issues, and (2) the flexibility of ourselves, our discipline, institutions and funds to accommodate to continual and increasing change.

Economic entomologists have historically concerned themselves with reducing or preventing insect damage. These goals have led to the “economic threshold” concept used by entomologists to define a pest population level at which controls should be initiated (National Research Council, pp. 240). Stern (1966) defined it as “… the pest population density at which control measures should be determined to prevent an increasing population from reaching the economic injury level.” A serious attempt was made by J.C. Headley to define the economic threshold as the “ … population (of pests) that produces incremental damage equal to the cost of preventing that damage” (Headley, p. 105). Although logically sound, Headley's model, designed to quantify its definition, fails to treat the time dimension properly as shown in Hall and Norgaard's two-variable model (Hall and Norgaard, pp. 199-201). This two-variable model holds only under rather strong assumptions (Borosh and Talpaz, pp. 642-643), and a priori considers only a situation with a single pesticide treatment policy. A multiple treatment case was developed (Talpaz and Borosh, pp. 769-775) with equal physiological time intervals between treatments, which may apply to some special cases. An interesting effort to introduce increasing pest resistance was made by Hueth and Regev (pp. 543-555).

Shellfish harvesting, processing and marketing are components of an old, established industry in southeastern coastal areas. This traditional industry, with proven production records and established markets for its high-quality shrimp, is being subjected to difficult circumstances which could result in a significant restructuring of various segments of it. Processors are faced with very expensive control outlays required to reduce pollution levels in coastal waters. These pollution control problems are particularly perplexing for both old and new firms, since solutions lead only to higher processing costs in a competitive market, heavily influenced by international conditions.

Financial effects of effluent discharge guidelines are already being felt by processors in those states where early compliance dates are being specified by State environmental protection agencies. In many instances State standards are more stringent than those of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In addition, alternative waste treatment methods have been rejected by some State agencies, resulting in higher costs for meeting specified effluent discharge guidelines.

A philosopher once said that history should be studied because the past repeats itself, but I prefer the statement that those who do not sudy history are condemned to repeating it. I also like the quote at the National Archives: The past is “prologue.” When a tourist asked what this meant, a Washington taxi driver said, “It means you ain't seen nothing yet.” That was in 1950. He was right. Who in 1950 expected to see sputniks, satellites, and men walking on the moon?

We entered the 1950–1975 era thinking that agricultural economics consisted of: (1) production economics, (2) marketing, (3) price analysis, (4) agricultural policy, and (5) land economics. We are leaving it thinking that it covers: (1) commercial agriculture, (2) natural resources development, and (3) human and community development.

Entomologists and other pest control specialists recognize that pest mobility creates difficulties when control is left to individual property owners. Control of mobile weeds, insects or contagious diseases has characteristics of a public good with high exclusion costs and near equal availability to all people in the affected area. If abatement benefits for areas to which the pest is spreading are not considered, there will be under production of abatement. Cooperatives, county abatement districts or state and federal agencies are often set up to administer area-wide abatement efforts. Economies of scale in pesticide treatments, coordination of efforts to limit spatial spread of the pest (quarantine activities) and scale economies in technology to reduce adverse side effects of pesticides are given as justifications for public or large-scale pest control programs.

In recent history, many agricultural economists have tended to view work on cost and return budgets as a pretty dull thing. They gave it very low priority. However, the attention given to production costs by the 1973 farm legislation, together with recent acceleration in cost of farm inputs, have somewhat reversed the significance attached to this subject. A casual review of articles in the AAEA Journal over the past three years shows little attention to cost of production per se, but I predict that in the next two years there will be a big increase.

About two years ago, the term “cost of production” was just coming into use as a rallying cry by farm organizations, prior to the big jump in farm prices. This concern probably was a prime reason for the focus on costs in 1973 legislation. However, the issue was temporarily forgotten when farm prices increased sharply during the 1972–73 period.

This study estimates the economic impact of outdoor recreation as a contributor to total value of forest resources in an area which has been heavily infested by Mountain Pine Beetle. The area of study was the Island Park are in eastern Idaho's Targhee National Forest. Targhee is a popular recreation area west of Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. Recreationists use the area for both destination and non-destination purposes. The recreation opportunities of this area include water sports, hiking and related outdoor activities. It is classed as one of Idaho's major recreation areas.

The Economic Research Service of USDA has initiated a systematic approach to the development and maintenance of farm enterprise budgets. This paper will describe this system, our expectations for it, and planned uses of the data.

Many are familiar with regional adjustment studies such as S-42 or GP-5, where the objective was to estimate supply functions using linear programming on representative farms. Those who worked on these projects recall the tremendous effort needed to develop enterprise budget data.

Many are also familiar with the National Model work during the 1960s in ERS. In that project, estimates were made of year to year changes in crop production, using an LP model.

In context of the phrase “Rural Development”, so much a part of the current vocabulary of social scientists, the term ‘rural’ is often poorly defined and loosely used. Partly because of the great diversity in definitions of rural, both expressed and implied, a coherent and comprehensive rural development literature has not emerged. Obviously, rural development refers to the development of whatever is rural. The aim of this paper is to deal only with the question of what is rural, leaving the matter of what consitutes development to other writers.

Regional analysis has been accepted as a subdiscipline of economics. The signal importance and outlines of the discipline were perhaps most clearly stated in a survey by Meyer in 1965: He asserted that the most characteristic feature of regional analysis was its pragmatic origin. Regional analytic models seem to have grown out of needs to understand and analyze regional problems, despite significant conceptual and data problems. Conceptually, all classical economic theory is involved. In addition, more modern dimensions of location and equilibrium of multiple economies must be confronted. Data problems are magnified by the spatial dimension, since the accounting series implied for most aggregate analysis is available only on a national basis.

Our colleagues have presented three useful papers. Lampher points out that farm enterprise budgets have been an essential component in the Extension Agricultural Economist's kit of tools for a long time. Researchers have tended to blow hot and cold in development of enterprise budgets. During the heyday of the regional adjustment studies, we had them coming out our ears. Most Extension Economists found this flurry of budget building to be of little value. As I look back, I think the main value that accrued was the number of my friends and colleagues who earned Ph.D.'s working on these projects.

These remarks relate to papers presented by Lampher, Krenz and Kletke. Budget development, distribution and use has always been a perennial concern of farm management personnel. However, as Lampher pointed out, many agricultural economists gave low priority to cost and return budgets in recent years. This is clearly a case of professionals abandoning one of the basic tools of their trade, thereby shortchanging agriculture and the profession. Fortunately, a return to the fold is in evidence with all the interest in cost of production.

The three papers indicated that there are major problems associated with developing cost and return budgets. Data input will always be a problem but it is not insurmountable. The problem, then, really involves defining procedures and techniques that minimize difficulties associated with data input.

To understand the sources of change in productivity, that appropriate public policy and programs can be developed to increase productivity growth, a reliable and updated measure is needed. The term “productivity” discussed here refers to total factor productivity, or the ratio of value of total agricultural output to that of all inputs used in agricultural production.

The first comprehensive work on the measurement of productivity change in U.S. agriculture was done by Loomis and Barton in 1961. Since then, this index has been updated annually as an offical USDA agricultural productivity index. The weakness of using index numbers lies in the arithmetic formula used. It implies a specific functional form of the production function that may not accurately describe the data. Thus, a need arises to consider an alternative estimate of productivity.