Farmland offered for its productive or consumptive value may be viewed as a class of goods characteristic of product differentiation. Using the generalized Box-Cox transformation, an unrestricted hedonic model was employed to derive implicit valuations of parcel attributes. Results suggest that the significance and level of importance of attributes on land pricing depends on the spatial extent of markets in Georgia. Differences in the productive or consumptive use of farmland may imply that different factors and functional forms are appropriate to different farmland markets.

An expected utility model that includes output price and yield uncertainty was used to estimate cotton, com, and soybean acreage response equations for the Southeast. The model appeared to fit the soybean and corn data well, resulting in own-price elasticity estimates of 0.317 for com and 0.727 for soybeans. When applied to cotton acreage, however, the model did not yield satisfactory results. When elasticity was allowed to change over time, however, statistical results for the cotton equation improved, yielding an own-price elasticity of 0.915 at data means.

Effective teaching is a recurring topic of faculty discussion and disagreement. The title of my address suggests that effective teaching has two components. First and increasingly important, teaching has an empirical component. The empiricism of teaching asserts that there are identifiable traits of effective teaching that can be used to improve one's teaching experience. I want to share with you some insights we have gained from recent empirical studies on teaching and the teaching evaluation process. Second, there is the art of teaching or the intangible and creative component of teaching. I will speak on how the art of teaching can be refined. This I will do by way of offering some personal teaching tips that have at least made my teaching experience more enjoyable.

The study examines Louisiana small farmers' reasons for not participating in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), their awareness of the program, and their willingness to participate in the program. The results suggest that: farmers do not participate in the CRP if revenues from cropland are an important source of income, or if they are tenants; awareness is significantly related to education, income, race, and average return per acre; willingness is positively influenced by payment per acre, age, and farm status. Participation depends on whether payments per acre are comparable to the opportunity costs of removing cropland from production.

This paper determines the effects of cattle feeders' risk aversion on feeder cattle prices using pen data of Kansas feedlots. Higher profit risk results in lower feeder cattle prices. The elasticity of feeder cattle price with respect to profit risk was small (-0.013). The risk elasticity estimated here is similar to risk elasticities in previous studies and thus, the use of pen-level data does not seem to add much to the study of risk.

It appears the major private benefit from peer reviewed journals such as the Review of Agricultural Economics (RAE) is certification. To maintain public support for our journals, increased efforts are needed to demonstrate the social benefits from peer reviewed publications. Research cost considerations have led agricultural economists to emphasize applied disciplinary work using secondary data and to ignore the important work of careful data collection and reporting. Moreover, pressures to publish have led to more isolated research efforts ignoring other disciplines. Recommendations to improve the relevance of journal publications include more active efforts by journal editors to make applied journals such as RAE more accessible to the public.

Research on environmental and resources issues is interdisciplinary by nature. For example, studying the economics of pesticides may entail working with both entomologists to address pest problems and toxicologists to address the human health problems associated with pesticide use. Interdisciplinary efforts require familiarity with the findings of other disciplines as well as direct collaboration with professionals in other disciplines. This paper presents a somewhat personal perspective on the issues that economists may encounter in interdisciplinary work. It also presents suggestions on how to increase the acceptance of economic thinking /theory by professionals in other disciplines. The paper starts with a theoretical discussion on relations between disciplines and between professions, followed by discussion of the issues affecting the relationships of agricultural economists with other professions.

Much of the increase use of vertical coordination in the U.S. swine industry has taken place through contract production. While the incidence of contracting is much higher in non-traditional hog production areas, a growing number of Midwestern producers are being faced with contract options. A variety of contractual arrangements are available through feed companies, integrators, genetics firms, and packers. However, little is known about the profitability and risk characteristics of these alternatives. This research suggests that risk neutral producers in the Midwest would prefer independent production, and risk averse producers would prefer to choose among the various types of coordination arrangements.

A “pricing to market” international trade model is applied to U.S. and Thai rice exports to high and middle income countries that are continuous rice importers. These markets are characterized by strong quality preferences and highly inelastic demand, and thus exporters may exercise market power. Evidence of noncompetitive pricing either through price discrimination across destinations or through imperfect exchange rate pass-through is found in this small but growing segment of the international rice trade.

This article challenges the traditional model of the economist as a humble technocrat who simply provides analysis given the preferences of policy decision-makers. Since decision-makers rarely reveal their preferences, it is important that the would-be policy research/analyst know the political economy and be willing to identify potential performance goals for society. Researchers who are willing to incur the transaction cost associated with becoming involved in useful policy research must learn to work within the imperfect policy process. Policy research that considers the importance of implementation and that acknowledges the institutions and the history will have the highest chance of being useful to policy-makers.

The common thread running through these three papers is the quest for relevance in agricultural economics. Zilberman (DZ) is looking for acceptance and relevance in interdisciplinary research, Robison and Colyer (R&C) are looking for relevance in the professional journals, and Skees (JS) tells us how we can do relevant economic research for the policy process. I will discuss each paper in turn and then try to draw a relevant conclusion.

Nielsen ScanTrack data were used to study how income and prices influenced consumer juice beverage demand in the United States during the period from 1988-89 through 1991-92. Alternative differential demand models combining the features of the Rotterdam model and the almost ideal demand system (AIDS) were tested. Results indicate the CBS type demand responses describe consumer behavior better than the other specifications for this particular data set.

Robinson and Colyer, Skees, and Zilberman offer a number of propositions for improving economists' impact on public policy. Unanswered is what the potential impact on policy would be if these propositions are fulfilled. Couching these propositions in economic theory provides some clues for answering this question. Thus, the main point of this discussion is outlining the role that theory can play in developing hypotheses on the potential impact of these alternative propositions.

Changes in commercial bank market shares of farm debt are decomposed into portfolio decisions, loanable funds availability and loan market size for 64 counties in Arkansas from 1986 through 1990. A seemingly unrelated regression model is hypothesized to identify county characteristics that are related to changes in commercial bank market shares. Regression results indicate that county differences in economic activity, the relative risk associated with agriculture, farm structure and regional location contributed to changes in commercial bank market shares. The results imply a market niche for rural commercial banks emphasizing agricultural loans in the presence of unlimited branch banking.

A structural probit model is estimated to determine the change in the probability of selecting a milk handler. Cooperatives are thought to have lower prices and higher deductions than independent milk handlers and these factors reduce the probability that a farmer will select a cooperative by 0.39 and 0.32. Cooperatives are thought to have better services and an assured market and payment than independent milk handlers and these factors increase the probability that a farmer will select a cooperative by 0.20 and 0.26. This indicates that many cooperative members value monetary characteristics over non-monetary characteristics.

Pesticide use is regulated within a complex legal framework that includes the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act; the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act; and other environmental laws. The framework includes risk-benefit rules for some decisions that permit full consideration of comparative performance, cost, and risks of a pesticide and its alternatives before decisions to permit or ban uses. The framework also includes risk-only standards, such as the Delaney Clause, that prohibit such comparisons and can have unintended and undesirable consequences by increasing health or environmental risks while increasing the cost of producing agricultural commodities.

Mathematical programming results revealed that moving toward more flexible agricultural policies would generate substantial economic and environmental gains in a North Carolina diversified cropping region. But in a Washington-Idaho dryland grains region, only the use of relatively new and sometimes problematic alternative cropping systems permitted environmental and economic gains under policy reform. In both regions, a recoupling policy, which links government payments to resource-conserving farming practices, was needed to protect environmental quality when market prices for program crops were high.

Agricultural sustainability is an evolving process ever-seeking a balance between society's economic, environmental and social demands. Governmental policy and regulations while attempting to correct adverse externalities, have at times within themselves created adverse externalities. Failures often lie within the policies themselves, but poor coordination among government agencies is also at fault. This paper outlines a number of coordination issues and attempts to show how the empowerment of communities through ecosystem management is a partial solution to environmental degradation.