This paper discusses the three invited papers presented in the session titled “New Regulations Require New Solutions: Federal Provisions Governing Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations” (i.e., CAFOs). These papers provide an excellent review of current state and federal laws and an excellent summary of what has been and is currently being done with respect to CAFO regulation. The papers present three different policy approaches: i) alternative performance standards, ii) location-specific regulation, and iii) insurance-based underwriting of CAFO discharges. Each approach has its drawbacks; however, blending these suggested policies into current regulation would result in efficiency gains.

A residual demand model for beef exports to Japan is specified and estimated. The objective is to estimate the extent of market power. It is assumed that each exporting country faces a downward-sloping residual demand curve, which reflects the market demand minus the supplies of competitors, and that exporters maximize profit through their output decisions. The analysis is disaggregated by beef cut and form to capture the variation by beef market segments. The results indicate that the highest markup of price over marginal cost belongs to U.S. frozen ribs, the only indication of market power by U.S. exporters. Canada is found to have limited market power, whereas Australia and New Zealand enjoy some market power, including five chilled beef categories.

Declining fishery stocks, increasing fishing effort, and adverse market conditions have produced difficult financial situations for fishermen worldwide. Several high-valued fisheries are considered to be overcapitalized. The purchase and permanent retirement of fishing vessels and/or permits under a buyback program is one approach for reducing fishing capacity. Evidence from previous programs, however, suggests that buybacks are not a panacea for solving overcapacity problems. Whether such programs can help rebuild stocks and improve the financial condition of fleets in any specific fishery depends on a multitude of factors. We consider the potential of a buyback program for the U.S. Atlantic shark fishery.

A national survey of broiler industry executives is conducted to analyze site-specific factors related to the broiler-complex location problem. Conjoint analysis is used to analyze the broiler complex location decision. Feed costs, community attitude toward the broiler industry, availability of geographically concentrated growers, unemployment rates, and wage rates were found to be the top five factors affecting broiler company location decisions. The quality of roads between feed mill and growers; electricity, heating, water, and sewage costs; and the number of potential growers in the region were also found to be important.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries has conducted several buyback programs to reduce harvesting capacity in fisheries. These programs have attempted to maximize capacity reduction given a fixed budget. However, restructuring issues have not been considered. We explore the possibility of satisfying three different buyback objectives. We examine the black sea bass trap fishery and determine the number of vessels given different allowable catch levels and objectives of maximizing technical efficiency, capacity utilization, and vessels in the fishery. We find considerable variation in the number of vessels allowed to remain in the fishery given the different objectives.

Attitudes of Japanese consumers toward domestic and foreign varieties of rice were analyzed on the basis of a survey. We found that the current retail prices for imported rice are higher than the average consumers' willingness-to-pay (WTP), whereas most domestic rice was priced below the average WTP. Unfamiliarity or negative perceptions of the safety and flavor of foreign rice lowered WTP substantially. The WTP for U.S. rice was limited more by negative perceptions of flavor than from concerns about food safety.

This paper explores the effect farmer perceptions concerning how best management practice (BMP) adoption changes the profit distribution have on BMP adoption incentives and the potential for insurance to increase these incentives. Adoption indifference curves illustrate the effect of farmer perceptions on BMP adoption incentives and the potential for insurance to expand the set of perceptions consistent with adoption. Empirical analysis quantifies these conceptual results for nutrient BMP insurance, a new policy available to corn farmers as part of a USDA-Risk Management Agency pilot program in four states. Results indicate that nutrient BMP insurance can have economically relevant effects on farmer adoption incentives.

Both of the papers presented in this session deal with various aspects of buyback programs for fisheries. Each paper highlights the need to rationalize capacity output in fisheries in which property rights are poorly specified. However, neither paper places buyback programs into a consistent framework in which the distinction between capacity reduction and capacity utilization is clearly recognized. This distinction is important in order to elicit the most appropriate policy response (particularly with respect to buybacks) to degraded fishery resources.

Probit analysis identified factors that influence the adoption of precision farming technologies by Southeastern cotton farmers. Younger, more educated farmers who operated larger farms and were optimistic about the future of precision farming were most likely to adopt site-specific information technology. The probability of adopting variable-rate input application technology was higher for younger farmers who operated larger farms, owned more of the land they farmed, were more informed about the costs and benefits of precision farming, and were optimistic about the future of precision farming. Computer use was not important, possibly because custom hiring shifts the burden of computer use to agribusiness firms.

Price-quality relationships for alfalfa hay were analyzed by hedonic pricing models using 1996-2001 Wisconsin auction data. Individual nutrients included in the analysis all affected alfalfa price, with acid detergent fiber accounting for the largest impact. Alternative pricing models, based on an aggregate quality index or detailed quality information, were similar in their ability to predict price. However, disaggregating price predictions to account for differences in relative feed value (RFV) and crude protein (CP) indicate that both RFV and CP are important determinants of price and that aggregating the two into a quality index is not warranted.

Between the 1970s and the 1990s, processed food exports switched from using more skilled labor per unit of output than imports to the opposite. Processed food trade also expanded during this period. More meat and poultry products in processed food trade could explain this switch in skill intensity. Growing meat trade paralleled an urban-to-rural shift in meat processing. Although this could have been a win-win situation for rural areas, many of the jobs related to expanded meat trade benefited commuter and migrant workers because late-1990s jobs slaughtering livestock and processing meat did not appeal to domestic rural workers.

We demonstrate the use of the small-sample econometrics principles and strategies to come up with reliable yield and acreage models for policy analyses. We focus on demonstrating the importance of proper representation of systematic and random components of the model for improving forecasting precision along with more reliable confidence intervals for the forecasts. A probability distribution function modeling approach, which has been shown to provide more reliable confidence intervals for the dependent variable forecasts than the standard models that assume error term normality, is used to estimate cotton supply response in the Southeastern United States.

Conjoint analysis is used to measure the preferences of United States consumers for labeling of biotech foods. The study found that consumers in the sample support mandatory labeling of biotech foods. This suggests that U.S. consumers would support revisions to the present voluntary labeling policy of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Results also showed that the preferred labeling format is a text disclosure that describes the benefits of biotechnology in combination with a biotech logo.

We examine the allocation of technology rents between a price-setting, innovating monopolist and heterogeneous technology adopters. A model of monopoly pricing in the presence of heterogeneous adopters is used to examine conditions under which greater producer (farmer) heterogeneity leads to greater producer benefit from innovation in noncompetitive markets. An application to Bt cotton determines the profit-maximizing price of Bt cotton seed and reveals that Monsanto and Delta and Pine Land are indeed leaving money on the table in the form of unexploited profit opportunities. However, we estimate that the presence of heterogeneous adopters explains over 80% of the rents that accrue to the farmers.

The opportunities and challenges of incorporating accurate policy representations into institutional partial equilibrium commodity models were investigated. Six issues are raised: commodity space definition, vertical linkages, assessing market power, the changing nature of government support, trade policy, and data requirements. The importance of product attributes and different approaches to modeling product differentiation are considered. A case study of food safety is used to bring together the major issues. Although institutional commodity models still have a role to play, we advocate the use of smaller idiosyncratic models to address many of the relevant policy questions in a rapidly changing sector.

Preconditioning calf programs, while not new, are becoming more prevalent. They provide benefits to cow-calf producers while adding value for feeder cattle buyers. However, questions remain regarding the economic costs and returns of such programs. A model was estimated with data from three consecutive-day sales, to determine the value that buyers place on preconditioning programs and related feeder cattle traits. Our results indicate that price premiums, although evident, appear to be insufficient by themselves to cover the marginal costs of preconditioning.

Stocker cattle ownership is compared to contract grazing using stochastic simulation. Returns are evaluated for both cattle owners and caretakers in contract grazing agreements. For caretakers, contract grazing is significantly less risky than cattle ownership. Slightly to moderately risk-averse caretakers could be expected to prefer some type of contract grazing to direct ownership of cattle. For cattle owners, contracting reduces risk only slightly while significantly reducing expected returns.

The present study examines technical efficiency patterns in Ukraine's crop sector for 1991-1996. The economic and policy environment in Ukraine has changed since reform began in 1991. Many policy changes have exerted offsetting economic pressures on efficiency. Enterprise privatization and the liberalization of prices and trade put upward pressure on technical efficiency, whereas start-stop land privatization efforts, unpredictable government intervention, and slow developments in the credit and labor markets put downward pressure on efficiency. We found that technical efficiency appears to have improved slightly over the 1991-1996 period, suggesting that the positive forces had more impact.

Major issues and challenges encountered in modeling and analyzing agricultural and trade policy reforms are reviewed. We focus on modeling approach and pay special attention to the type and scope of models, calibration of a realistic baseline scenario, representation of the reform agreement, use of extramodel information, choice of metrics to measure reform impacts, and emerging issues in policy modeling. Existing solutions and unresolved issues are examined. We stress the complementarity of various modeling approaches in assessing policy reforms and the importance of helping users understand the limitations of the chosen approach.

Interactions among the nitrogen (N) fertilization rate, N source, and disease severity can affect mean yield and yield variance in conservation tillage wheat production. A Just-Pope model was used to evaluate the effects of N rate, N source, and disease on the spring N-fertilization decision. Ammonium nitrate (AN) was the utility-maximizing N source, regardless of risk preferences. The net-return-maximizing AN rate was 92 lb N/acre, providing $0.52/acre higher net returns than the best alternative N source (urea). If a farmer could anticipate a higher-than-average Take-All Root Rot infection, the difference in optimal net returns between AN and urea would increase to $35.11/acre.