MORE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT INVOLVEMENT IN SOIL CONSERVATION

Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Effects Of Energy Price Rises, Energy Constraints, And Energy Minimization On Crop And Livestock Production Activities

During past periods of cheap fossil fuels and abundant agricultural production, farmers and society in general displayed limited interest in energy costs and in crop and livestock production residuals. The events of the 1970\u27s, including rising energy prices, restricted energy supplies, and growing awareness of the Impact of confined livestock feeding on world food supplies, have given rise to interest in new and old technologies that con serve energy use in agriculture and to the need for adjustments in current agricultural production practices

Agriculture And Water Quality Improvement

The symposium Agricultural and Water Quality Improvements; What are the Implementation Costs and Policy Issues? was organized to establish what is known and to identify additional research needs. The major impetus for action on agricultural nonpoint source pollution problems comes from Section 208 of the Federal Water Pollution Control Amendments of 1972 and the Rural Clean Water Program. Public programs involving large expenditures from both public and private sources are being implemented and require economic research and analysis..

Implicit Prices of Soil Characteristics for Farmland in Iowa

Arguments have long persisted that purchasers pay too much for poor land (i.e., less productive, more erosive) relative to the higher quality counterpart. In other words, purchasers are either irrational or poorly in- formed relative to the differences in land productivity between poor and good farmland. Similar arguments have been advanced concerning the willingness-to-pay rent on the part of tenant operators

Innovative behavior and spatial location: using patent counts and geographic location to estimate innovative spillins

In this paper we examine the relation between geographic location and innovative behavior. Knowledge spillins, as opposed to knowledge spillovers, are modeled as an externality which exists between geographically close economic agents and enters the representative inventor production function explicitly from neighboring regions. To proxy new innovative behavior and new knowledge generated we use counts of patent filings per county. The proposed geographic spillin is tested for the US Midwestern States of Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota and North Dakota using a newly constructed data set and implementing spatial statistical methods. The data set is comprised of primary inventor utility patent filings per county for the years 1975-2000. The results do indeed suggest spatial interaction does occur and innovative activity in surrounding counties is an important factor in explaining new innovative behavior. Further analysis also reveals lagged patenting behavior within the county also has a significant impact on patenting activity suggesting innovative externalities exist over both space and time

An economic breakeven model of cellulosic feedstock production and ethanol conversion with implied carbon pricing

The objectives of this paper include: 1) developing an economic framework to estimate long run equilibrium breakeven prices that cellulosic ethanol processors can pay for the marginal or last unit of biomass feedstock they purchase and still breakeven and that cellulosic feedstock producers need to receive for supplying the last unit of feedstock delivered to a commercial-scale plant; 2) estimating the gap or difference between the biorefinery’s willingness to pay (WTP) or derived demand for the last unit of cellulosic feedstock and the suppliers’ willingness to accept (WTA) or marginal cost (MC) of supplying the last unit of feedstock; 3) completing a life-cycle analysis (LCA) of each feedstock alternative or a “well-to-wheels” accounting of the potential greenhouse gas (GHG) savings associated with feedstock-specific ethanol relative to gasoline; and 4) calculating the carbon price or credit necessary for a biofuel market to exist in the long run. The model is designed to address various policy issues related to cellulosic biofuel production, including cellulosic biofuel production costs, the cost of cellulosic feedstock production when accounting for all costs incurred, government intervention costs either through tax credits and other incentives needed to sustain biofuel markets or through mandates to achieve the revised Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS.2), and finally, the implicit price or credit for CO2e embodied in cellulosic biofuel

Immigration, Meat Packing, and Trade: Implications for Iowa

The objective of this paper is to examine changes in employment and wage patterns, industrial restructuring, and foreign competition that affect job opportunities of recent immigrants to the nonmetropolitan Midwest, especially to Iowa. The food and kindred products industry which includes meat packing and poultry slaughtering and processing is a significant employer of recent immigrants. The meat packing industry has a long history of employing immigrants, especially Irish and Polish immigrants during the first half of the 20th century. U.S. meat packing has undergone significant technical change and geographical relocation during the past 25 years. During 1945 to 1968, unions gained considerable wage advantage for hourly meat packing workers relative to other manufacturing workers. These relatively high wage rates of the unionized packing house workers were undoubtedly one of the contributing factors to these changes. The technical changes that occurred were somewhat unusual in that technical advances replaced a major component of skilled labor, the meat cutters, in meat packing and opened packing house employment again to less skilled workers, including recent immigrants. Hispanics, Asians, and Sudanese are groups represented in the Midwest

Using Cellulosic Ethanol to ‘Go Green’: What Price for Carbon?

The revised Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS2) mandates that cellulosic biofuels be part of the liquid transportation fuel mix and contribute to reducing our carbon footprint. Unfortunately, since no commercial cellulosic biorefinery exists and cellulosic biomass production is typically smaller scale than conventional crop production, limited knowledge exists of the actual costs of producing cellulosic biomass and converting it to cellulosic ethanol. Understanding of the implications of RFS2 requires a better understanding of the economics of producing cellulosic ethanol. We use the Biofuel Breakeven model (BIOBREAK), a simple long run breakeven model that represents the feedstock supply system and biofuel refining process, along with estimates of the potential reduction in carbon emissions from biofuels relative to conventional fuels, to derive the implicit carbon price (or carbon credit) needed to sustain a biomass market and cellulosic ethanol industry. We evaluate BIOBREAK under different oil prices, the RFS2 mandate, and with and without other biofuel incentives.Environmental Economics and Policy, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy, Biofuels, Biomass, Cellulosic Ethanol, RFS2, Carbon,

IMMIGRATION, MEAT PACKING, AND TRADE: IMPLICATIONS FOR IOWA

The paper examines changes in employment and wage patterns, industrial restructuring, and foreign competition that affect opportunities of recent immigrants to the non-metropolitan Midwest, especially to Iowa. The focus is on food and kindred products where meat and poultry packing and processing are major components. Although total employment in this industry declined between 1980 and 1990, a significant increase in employment of Hispanic- and Asian- origin persons occurred in Iowa. As unions weakened and the real wage rate declined sharply during 1980-85 in meat and poultry packing and processing, new job opportunities for recent immigrants became available. These jobs provided full-time year-round work at significantly above the minimum wage and made regular schooling for their children and frequently home ownership possible. Note: Tables are not included in the PDF file--contact the authors for more information.

Spatial Labor Markets and Technology Spillovers - Analysis from the US Midwest

In this paper we examine the relation between geographic location and innovative behavior. Knowledge spillins, as opposed to knowledge spillovers, are modeled as an externality which exists between geographically close economic agents and enters the representative inventor production function explicitly from neighboring regions. To proxy new innovative behavior and new knowledge generated we use counts of patent filings per county. The proposed geographic spillin is tested for the US Midwestern States of Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota and North Dakota using a newly constructed data set and implementing spatial statistical methods. The data set is comprised of primary inventor utility patent filings per county for the years 1975-2000. The results do indeed suggest spatial interaction does occur and innovative activity in surrounding counties is an important factor in explaining new innovative behavior. Further analysis also reveals lagged patenting behavior within the county also has a significant impact on patenting activity suggesting innovative externalities exist over both space and time.patents; employment growth; technology spillovers; spatial spillovers