Long-term Global Agricultural Output Supply-Demand Balance and Real Farm and Food Prices

Global food demand is estimated from population projections of the United Nations and food supply is projected from Food and Agriculture Organization yield data to quantify the global food supply-demand balance for 2025 and 2050. The eight food categories examined account for 95 percent of global food consumption. Results indicate that the historic era of secularly falling real food prices is over. The real price of corn, for example, is not expected to fall over the next four decades at the annual rate of 1.3 percent that it fell annually from 1960 to 2006. The analysis foresees future real food prices fluctuating around a flat or rising trend. Slowed national economic growth from flat or rising real food prices may be little more than an irritant for consumers in affluent countries, but will entail severe hardship for consumers in the many countries currently troubled by poverty and hunger. Opportunities exist to expand food output by adding cropland in Brazil and irrigation in Africa, for example, but in the long term such developments will be offset by cropland removed from production by urban and industrial development, soil degradation, and the like. Although cropland can be expanded through higher real farm and food prices, higher yields rather than added cropland offer the most attractive opportunities for farm output expansion at low cost to consumers and the environment. The slowing rate of increase in crop and livestock yields corresponds with a slowing rate of increase in public and in private agricultural research and development spending. The world will not have the luxury of curtailing spending on agricultural technology and rejecting promising technologies such as genetically modified organisms (GMOs) if is to keep real food costs from rising. Productive new cropland, irrigation, genetically modified varieties, and other technologies will be hard pressed indeed to match the massive historic gains from hybrid varieties, irrigation, synthetic fertilizers, and mechanization. On the demand side, subsidies to expand demand for farming resources such as biofuels will need revisiting if rising food costs are to be contained.World Food Supply-Demand, Food Prices, Agricultural Markets, Crop and Livestock Yields, Agricultural and Food Policy, Demand and Price Analysis, International Development, Q11, Q18,

A game-theoretic model of kleptoparasitic behavior in polymorphic populations

Kleptoparasitism, the stealing of food by one animal from another, is a widespread biological phenomenon. In this paper we build upon earlier models to investigate a population of conspecifics involved in foraging and, potentially, kleptoparasitism. We assume that the population is composed of four types of individuals, according to their strategic choices when faced with an opportunity to steal and to resist an attack. The fitness of each type of individual depends upon various natural parameters, for example food density, the handling time of a food item and the probability of mounting a successful attack against resistance, as well as the choices that they make. We find the evolutionarily stable strategies (ESSs) for all parameter combinations and show that there are six possible ESSs, four pure and two mixtures of two strategies, that can occur. We show that there is always at least one ESS, and sometimes two or three. We further investigate the influence of the different parameters on when each type of solution occurs

Snow cover monitoring by machine processing of multitemporal LANDSAT MSS data

LANDSAT frames were geometrically corrected and data sets from six different dates were overlaid to produce a 24 channel (six dates and four wavelength bands) data tape. Changes in the extent of the snowpack could be accurately and easily determined using a change detection technique on data which had previously been classified by the LARSYS software system. A second phase of the analysis involved determination of the relationship between spatial resolution or data sampling frequency and accuracy of measuring the area of the snowpack

Public Policy for Agriculture After Commodity Programs

Exact date of working paper unknown.The Federal Agricultural Improvement and Reform (FAIR) Act of 1996 opted for the market rather than the government to allocate resources and set returns in agriculture. A modest safety net of marketing loans and crop insurance remains but the era in which government managed the supply of major crops appears to be ending. The objective of this paper is to consider appropriate public policy for American agriculture without supply-control programs. We discuss options for policies addressing key concerns: economic efficiency, equity, the environment, instability, the family farm, and rural communities. The discussion is suggestive, not exhaustive, and is intended to stimulate thinking on how post-commodity program policy might better serve the needs of agriculture and the public at large

Post-Industrial Agriculture

Exact date of working paper unknown.The "industrialization of agriculture" has become a catch-all phrase to describe a set of changes occurring in agriculture during the 1990s (for example, see Boehlje and Drabenstott). We, however, contend that the current changes result mainly from post-industrial factors rather than from industrialization. Viewing the current changes in agriculture through the prism of post-industrialization rather than through the prism of industrialization leads to a richer understanding of the emerging economic and social trends within the sector. After briefly stating our case for a post-industrial perspective, we highlight some key economic and social implications

Reconciling Economic and Political Realities in Farm Legislation for the 1990s

Exact date of working paper unknown

Free-space quantum key distribution

A working free-space quantum key distribution (QKD) system has been developed and tested over a 205-m indoor optical path at Los Alamos National Laboratory under fluorescent lighting conditions. Results show that free-space QKD can provide secure real-time key distribution between parties who have a need to communicate secretly.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, 2 tables. To be published in Physical review A on or about 1 April 199

Cash Farm Income, 1983-88: A Period of Phenomenal Growth

Exact date of working paper unknown