Can We Save the Traditional Family Farm?

What is a traditional family farm? Is it a family of four living on a farm and supplying all of the labor, capital and management or is it a family corporation with four families supplying all of the capital and management? These types of questions continue to arise in policy debates, as they have for many years. While subject to heated debate and the core of many people’s positions on farm programs the answer is more sociological as it is becoming less and less economically relevant. Whether these types of farms or any other farm sizes should survive is not a question that can be answered by a policy analyst. The job of an analyst is to determine if and under what conditions family farms can survive. To this end, this paper reviews the various definitions of family farms and draws inferences as to the economic and financial survival of these different size farms using the results generated from simulating representative farms.Agricultural and Food Policy,

Chewing up the wood-wide web : selective grazing on ectomycorrhizal fungi by collembola

This work was supported by the Natural Environment Research Council (NE/C507510/1). We thank S. Van der Linde, A. Sim, L. Shivraj, and P. Parkin.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

SOUTHERN FARMERS EXPOSURE TO INCOME RISK UNDER THE 1996 FARM BILL

Arguably, since the 1930s, what farmers produced has been markedly influenced by farm programs. The 1996 farm bill affects farmers in terms of what they produce and their level of risk exposure. This paper investigates the farm level impacts of the 1996 farm bill on the South. Focus group perceptions of risk sources, observed acreage changes, and the farm level impact of increased price risk are evaluated.Agricultural and Food Policy, Agricultural Finance,

Post-Freedom to Farm Shifts in Regional Production Patterns

The FAIR Act of 1996, also known as the Freedom to Farm Act (ACT) dismantled many of the agriculture policy tools in use for the last 25 years. Gone were target prices, deficiency payments, and set asides. In their place were expanded marketing loan programs to effectively include wheat and feed grains and oilseeds in addition to cotton and rice. Full planting flexibility has been popular with farmers who are no longer constrained by base acres. Grain merchants and other volume oriented agribusinesses praise the elimination of set asides. The sharp decline in farm prices for all major program commodities since 1996 has left most farmers questioning the income safety net provisions of the FAIR Act. The flexibility and marketing loan provisions continue to be praised. Farm program changes in the 1996 farm bill rendered methods of crop supply response estimation based on econometric models, using historic data, difficult at best. Yet it can, and has been, hypothesized that the Act resulted in major shifts in regional crop production patterns. This paper draws inferences from changes in acres planted among crops for representative farms in the Texas A&M Agricultural and Food Policy Center’s (AFPC) farm data base. AFPC has maintained longitudinal data for more than three dozen representative crop farms across states, regions, farm size, and type of farm since 1990. The farms were updated in 1999 as to their crop mix changes following the ACT and the crop mix changes observed in the updates are summarized here. United States aggregate production shifts are identified from NASS data. Implications for future potential acreage changes are identified. The commodity focus includes feedgrains, soybeans, wheat, cotton, and rice.Agricultural and Food Policy,

Effect of sodium [36Cl]chlorate dose on total radioactive residues and residues of parent chlorate in swine

Sodium chlorate effectively reduces the numbers of gram-negative pathogens in gastrointestinal tracts of live animals when administered in the 24 to 72 hour period prior to slaughter

Some factorization properties of Krull domains with infinite cyclic divisor class group

In this paper, we study factorization properties of Krull domains with divisor class group . This continues a preliminary study of Dedekind domains with class group in Section IV of [7]. In section 1, using the Φ-function we introduce the notion of a Φ-finite domain and then determine the relationship between these domains and BFDs and RBFDs (see [1]). In particular, we show that a Φ-finite domain need not be an RBFD. In Section 2, we obtain necessary and sufficient conditions on the set S of divisor classes of D which contain height-one prime ideals so that D is Φ-finite. This leads to the following result: if D is a Krull domain with divisor class group , then D is Φ-finite if and only if D is an RBFD. We also find a bound for the elasticity, ϱ(D), of the domain D and show in Section 3 that, unlike the case where the divisor class group of D is finite, the elasticity of D may not be “attained” by the factorization of a single element

A FARM-LEVEL LOOK AT THE FUTURE OF AMERICAN AGRICULTURE

Relatively low crop prices over the past two years, as well as regional weather adversity, has been the catalyst for the passage of "ad hoc" emergency relief. This paper examines the economic and financial status of 41 representative panel farms over the 1999-2002 period. When forecasting through the life of the 1996 Farm Bill, the representative crop farms are assessed by Texas A&M's Agricultural and Food Policy Center to be in the weakest condition observed over the last decade for liquidity and the related need to refinance.agricultural policy, farm profitability, liquidity, Agricultural and Food Policy, Agricultural Finance,

Historical reconstruction of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation from the ECMWF operational ocean reanalysis

A reconstruction of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (MOC) for the period 1959–2006 has been derived from the ECMWF operational ocean reanalysis. The reconstruction shows a wide range of time-variability, including a downward trend. At 26N, both the MOC intensity and changes in its vertical structure are in good agreement with previous estimates based on trans-Atlantic surveys. At 50N, the MOC and strength of the subpolar gyre are correlated at interannual time scales, but show opposite secular trends. Heat transport variability is highly correlated with the MOC but shows a smaller trend due to the warming of the upper ocean, which partially compensates for the weakening of the circulation. Results from sensitivity experiments show that although the time-varying upper boundary forcing provides useful MOC information, the sequential assimilation of ocean data further improves the MOC estimation by increasing both the mean and the time variability

The Economic Impact of Land Purchases to Meet Buffer Zone Requirements on Representative Texas Dairies

Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy, Livestock Production/Industries,