BLS Publications, 1886-1971, Bulletin 1749

The catalog contain listings for BLS publications from 1886-1971. Numerical listings for BLS Bulletins and Reports as well as subject indexes for these and other BLS publications are included

Farm Price Programs

This publication should be useful to farmers and others who want to review the road that agricultural price policy in the United States has traveled in the past and to appraise the effect of such policies. It will also be useful to a person planning and taking part in discussions of farm price policy and programs at meetings of farmers and others interested in American agriculture. In a democracy, farmers and agricultural leaders may expect to be called upon more and more to express their views concerning matters of agricultural policy and national farm programs. The discussion is divided into two parts. The first half describes the major farm price programs of the past generation. The second part presents information on the results of these programs. On the final page there is a list of selected publications containing more detailed information on farm price programs

MAJOR IDEAS IN THE HISTORY OF AGRICULTURAL FINANCE AND FARM MANAGEMENT

This paper contains two articles that discuss major ideas from the history of agricultural finance and farm management. The agricultural finance article focuses on ideas that emerged prior to 1960. These ideas are classified into those emerging from action and scientific-framing eras. The second article characterizes the evolution of farm management and production economics from its beginnings in about 1900 to the start of the 21st century. Emphasis is placed on the melding of ideas from agriculturalists and economists.Agricultural finance, farm management, production economics, Agricultural Finance,

Mergers of the Utah Cooperative Association in Post-War Utah, 1940-1970

Agricultural historians have long grappled with the causes leading to the dissolution of the farming community and their disassociation with their lands. Cooperatives were key to maintaining this relationship. The cooperative economic model sustained farmers to shape, negotiate and create a place for themselves in the 20th century agrarian landscape. Long time agricultural leaders like W.B. Robins worked to bolster cooperative ideologies and prevent integration into large scale American agribusiness between 1940 and 1970. This plan B paper examines a series of failed mergers that Robins had intended to thwart the decline of the Utah Cooperative Association (UCA). W.B. Robins’s career as General Manager of the UCA provides a lens to examine why the cooperative mergers failed and their context to the larger decline of the Utah cooperative movement. Examining why the mergers failed sets the foundation for answering the following questions. First, what economic conditions existed that made the mergers necessary? Second, what political ideologies were exposed between competing capitalist and socialist farm organizations. Lastly, what part did religious influence of Mormon ideologies play to threaten the continuity of cooperatives and Utah agriculture as a whole? In answering these questions, this paper makes two important contributions. It updates and explains the local history of farmer cooperatives in Utah after 1940, and builds on the work of historians Hal S. Barron and Keilor Stevens, by exploring the era when Utah agriculturalists resisted and accommodated market changes. To uncover the merger history of the UCA and its manager W.B. Robins I marry archival and secondary sources together to illustrates the history of farmer co-operatives throughout Utah and the movement’s longstanding connection with Utah State University

Economic problems of the potato industry

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston UniversityThe purposes of the thesis are first to summarize the production, marketing and income problems of the potato producers, and secondly to examine some possible solutions to these problems. All available sources of information have been used to obtain data and expert opinion to make the summary of problems as complete as possible. Most of the important concepts, institutions and methods advanced in the past as aids to farmers in solving their most important problems are discussed and evaluated. In addition, the author proposes an original plan of price protection for farmers designed to overcome the flaws in other schemes. The history and background of the potato are discussed beginning with the discovery of the sweet potato Ipomoea Batatas by Columbus and the discovery of the Irish potato Solanum Tuberosum by other early Spanish explorers. It is the latter species with which this thesis is concerned. Historical, economic and social determinants of importance to the potato industry are traced through the period of increasing consumption, which roughly coincided with the rise of capitalism; and into the period of declining consumption which began around World War I. Part II begins with a discussion of economic factors involved in such problems of production as Who should produce potatoes, what kind of potatoes to produce, and where production should take place. Price fluctuations, income and profits are related to each other as well as to production and consumption. A great effort is made to show how improved product differentiation, grading, and standardization may affect the relatively inelastic demand for potatoes. In addition, the possibilities of demand creation are explored as a means of shifting the demand curve to maximize the industry's income. The conclusion is reached that potatoes must be promoted into a useful yet superior class of goods by developing higher quality standards and increased product services. Potatoes cannot remain as an inferior economic good if the industry is to know anything but decreasing usage, surplus production and low prices for years to come. On the other hand, cost minimization is given emphasis as a major area of difficulty for the potato producer. Storage, transportation, packaging, grading, and handling costs and trends are discussed. The third part of the thesis involves the various methods of solving farm problems. Measure for controlling production are developed and evaluated. Among the techniques of control discussed 214 are acreage allotments, marketing quotas, and withdrawal of land from production. These plans are discussed as general agricultural policies first; then related directly to the potato industry where evidence is available. The various ways of aiding the farmer by manipulation of prices and practices at the marketing level of our economic system are the next area developed. Among the best known methods discussed are commodity loans, marketing orders, marketing agreements, marketing cooperatives, direct purchases by the government, and purchase agreements as well as consumer subsidies. Advantages and disadvantages of each are weighed along with the description of the important features of each plan. So far as evidence is available, the actual experiences of the potato industry with various techniques of farm aid are discussed. The last chapter in Part III is a discussion of parity and other pricing and income devices to solve farm problems. Included among others are the parity scheme sponsored by George Peek, Brannan's plan, the forward price plan of Schultz, and the cost of production plan of Governor Thornton of Colorado. There is in addition an original cost of production plan devised by the author of the thesis. No one plan of agricultural aid can solve the many problems of the farmer. Cooperatives, marketing agreements, commodity loans and other devices to help the farmer help himself must be accompanied by some sort of price protection plan. We advocate a price guarantee based on the individual farmer's cost of production. Each farmer would estimate his cost of production using standard accounting procedures and submit a bid to a government authority to supply a given number of bushels of potatoes at a given cost before planting his crop. The government would accept the lowest cost bids until a volume of potatoes sufficient to satisfy estimated market requirements for the following years was contracted for. No potatoes would be sold directly to the government but farmers whose cost bids were accepted would be protected against price declines which fell below their individual cost of production. Those whose cost of production estimates showed them to be inefficient would be discouraged from planting potatoes at all, first because they would know in advance their costs were too high, and secondly, because they would have no price protection. We advocate this plan because we believe that the farmer cannot control production to maintain a high price level as industry does with many of the products it sells the farmer. While it would be unsatisfactory for the farmersto combine to maintain high prices by cutting production, we do want to give efficient farmers some price protection while they produce adequate quantities of essential foods and raw materials. Profits would not be guaranteed nor would a standard of living be protected as with parity plans. Each farmer would have to strive to be efficient to make a profit and the necessity of controlling and computing costs for this plan would help farmers to be efficient. No farmer would be paid a subsidy unless he sold his crop below the computed cost, so that no audit of farm accounts would be necessary unless a farmer applied for a subsidy. Such a plan would tend to promote the constant adjustment of the factors of production to the most efficient proportions, the shift of production to the most efficient farms or areas, and the most efficient production and marketing practices

The influence of farm interest groups in the agricultural policy-making process /

Analysis of the data indicated that exchange theory could be applied successfully to explain interactions between lobbyists and policy makers. In general, exchange benefits and traditional group lobbying techniques and characteristics were not successful in explaining group goal attainment.Content analysis of hearings on the 1976 agricultural appropriations legislation and 1977 omnibus farm legislation served as the data base. Testimony of 68 groups that testified on the appropriations legislation was content analyzed; 44 groups' testimonies concerning the 1977 general farm legislation were content analyzed.This study used Salisbury's (1969) exchange theory to examine interactions between interest group lobbyists and congressmen. Exchange theory inducements (material, purposive, solidary, and coercive) were examined for relationships to interest group goal attainment (policy output) as were other variables (e.g., organizational structure, resources, tactics of influence, etc.). The early portions of the study provide an overview of domestic and foreign agricultural policy, plus a brief review of interest group literature, including that on farm interest groups

How to grow quickly: land distribution, agricultural growth and poverty reduction in Vietnam (1992-1998)

This thesis explores how, in the wake of momentous agrarian reforms implemented during the 1980s and 1990s, Vietnam succeeded in generating both a strong increase in agricultural growth, and remarkable trends in poverty reduction. Three specific channels of transmission between agricultural growth and rural poverty reduction are explored and evaluated empirically using the Vietnamese Living Standard Survey. Chapter 2 investigates the impact on agricultural investments of the strengthening in tenure security induced by Vietnam's 1993 Land Law, which set up a new land tenure system based on de jure private property rights. Idiosyncratic characteristics of Vietnam's land reform and the panel nature of the VLSS are taken advantage of to capture the exogenous changes in tenure security brought by the 1993 Land Law. By interpreting the results in the light of Vietnam's agrarian history, I shed light on the role of formal institutions during the process of establishing a new private property right system. Chapter 3 explores the role of education in promoting agricultural growth and documents how, in the 1980s, Vietnam emerged from thirty years of war with literacy levels that are normally achieved by middle-income countries. The differential in educational attainment between North and South Vietnam is used to devise an instrumental variable strategy and to evaluate the contribution of Vietnam's high initial education levels to rice yields. The results confirm the importance of literacy and numeracy skills as pre-conditions for agricultural growth but highlight the importance of non-linearities in the impact of schooling, and of factoring in information on the quality in education in order to better understand the processes through which education affects economic efficiency. Finally, Chapter 4 showed that growth in the agricultural sector had been remarkably pro-poor as it benefited even the poorest of the poor, probably because of favourable initial conditions for pro-poor agricultural growth