2000 BUSINESS ANALYSIS SUMMARY FOR GENERAL CROPS FARMS

Crop Production/Industries,

Counter-Cyclical Farm Safety Nets

Since the 1920's, the federal government has used an array of farm programs to provide a “safety net” for American agriculture. Farm programs have used price supports, disaster payments, income supports, direct payments, and supply management to provide a safety net for particular markets and producers. This array of farm programs has rarely been organized or managed with the sole purpose of providing a minimum income level to farmers. With the exception of set aside programs, the programs have provided incentives for production and the diversification of production through out the continental United States. While the FAIR Act of 1996 has been generously applauded for allowing producers planting flexibility, maintaining export competitiveness through marketing loan programs, and maintaining production, the Act has been criticized for its lack of a sufficient safety net. All crop insurance programs and marketing loan provisions may be considered safety nets. However, the ad hoc passage of emergency relief in each of the last three years 1998-2000 suggests that these programs have not provided sufficient support to program crop agriculture. The safety net issue, therefore, will likely be a major source of debate in crafting the next farm bill. Can the U.S. government reduce the liquidity problem facing major crop agriculture while pressing the popular provisions of the FAIR Act? Developing a whole farm safety net proposal is one alternative being studied.Agricultural and Food Policy,

Land Tenure and the Management of Land Resources in Trinidad and Tobago

The potential of the agricultural sector in Trinidad and Tobago has not been realized in recent decades. The more productive land resources of the country are underutilized, while many of the more fragile ecosystems are in danger. This threatens to deny the country potential income from ecotourism as well as deprive future generations of a stable land, forest, and water base. The optimal use of the country's land resources requires a stable and secure tenure system defining land rights. The Government of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago contracted the Land Tenure Center to carry out land rationalization studies, which are intended to assist in the preparation of an action plan to deal with the problems of the land tenure system. The result was the preparation of twenty-one studies, which have been organized into two LTC research papers. This first paper explores the nature and extent of tenure insecurities in both urban and rural contexts, with a focus on agricultural land tenure problems. Several hypotheses are advanced concerning the possible constraints that legal and social insecurity of tenure pose for the future development of the country. Also explored are the environmental problems that past tenure regimes have helped generate, and what might comprise a strategy for protecting fragile ecosystems. A second paper (LTC Research Paper 116) will dig more deeply into the institutional and historical roots of the tenure insecurity problems. A final report presented to the government in August 1992 described a Land Rationalization and Development Programme, which was derived from the twenty-one studies carried out by LTC.Land Economics/Use,

LAND TENURE, LAND MARKETS, AND INSTITUTIONAL TRANSFORMATION IN ZAMBIA

This paper identifies current land market constraints as a basis for designing an action plan to assist the government with land policy reforms. Chapter 1 provides a general overview of the history of land policy in Zambia and critiques selected pieces of land legislation that define the legal framework governing land rights and land markets in the country. Legal and institutional impediments to the development of a market-oriented land policy are identified along with concrete recommendations for short- and long-term legal and institutional reforms. Chapter 2 presents a thorough review of land registration procedures starting with the roles and activities of the chiefs and rural councils` and ending with the issuance of the title certificate by the Commissioner of Lands. Chapter 3 focuses on the assimilation and analysis of data on official title issuances and transfers in State, Reserve and Trust Lands. Chapter 4 reviews alternative methods for administering government land policy in undeveloped areas, including options for land development, land distribution via allocation or auction, land price determination, valuation of leasehold rents, and property taxation. Chapter 5 is a synthesis of a land tenure study involving a survey of 200 agricultural producing households in Eastern and Southern provinces. The chapter briefly discusses the research methodology used, followed by empirical findings on land acquisition, land rights, and land conflicts. Chapter 6 reviews the nature and scale of past settlement schemes and assesses their performance based on archival research, and analysis of primary and secondary data. Chapter 7 uses available time series data to analyze national and regional changes in land use, productivity, and profitability of agriculture, both spatially and temporally, for the commercial and noncommercial farm sectors. This chapter was intended as a more forward-looking analysis of economic forces influencing the profitability of farming in Zambia, the rate of expansion in the agricultural frontier, and the resource issues that are likely to emerge in the context of agricultural extensification. Chapter 8 provides an overview of official time series published by various agencies in Zambia, including the state of their availability for analysis and the methodology used to collect the data. Data presented in this and previous chapters underscore the difficulty of making policy decisions given the very weak and tenuous base of empirical research on property rights, agrarian structure, resource management, land use, and market access in both the state and customary sectors.Land Economics/Use,

PRICES AND PRICING POLICIES FOR SMALL ANIMAL AND EQUINE VETERINARY SERVICES: A STUDY OF TEACHING HOSPITALS AND MICHIGAN PRIVATE PRACTICES DURING 2000

Prices are a key determinant of financial performance for virtually any business in either the public or private sector, and the Veterinary Teaching Hospital at Michigan State University (MSU-VTH) offers no exception. To achieve consistent success, it is critical that a business understands the prevailing conditions in the marketplace when setting prices for its goods and services. Important issues to address include: 1. What are the prices of similar goods and services produced by other firms? 2. How important is price as a choice factor when customers select a source of these goods and services? 3. How do staff members view prices at the point-of-sale? 4. How are prices determined? These questions are especially crucial in small businesses such as those typical of the veterinary profession, where the decision-makers tend to be technical experts rather than trained business managers. Without this information, these decision-makers often have very little basis on which to develop a pricing policy.Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,

Spatially generalizable representations of facial expressions: Decoding across partial face samples

A network of cortical and sub-cortical regions is known to be important in the processing of facial expression. However, to date no study has investigated whether representations of facial expressions present in this network permit generalization across independent samples of face information (e.g. eye region Vs mouth region). We presented participants with partial face samples of five expression categories in a rapid event-related fMRI experiment. We reveal a network of face sensitive regions that contain information about facial expression categories regardless of which part of the face is presented. We further reveal that the neural information present in a subset of these regions: dorsal prefrontal cortex (dPFC), superior temporal sulcus (STS), lateral occipital and ventral temporal cortex, and even early visual cortex, enables reliable generalization across independent visual inputs (faces depicting the 'eyes only' versus 'eyes removed'). Furthermore, classification performance was correlated to behavioral performance in STS and dPFC. Our results demonstrate that both higher (e.g. STS, dPFC) and lower level cortical regions contain information useful for facial expression decoding that go beyond the visual information presented, and implicate a key role for contextual mechanisms such as cortical feedback in facial expression perception under challenging conditions of visual occlusion

Algorithms for Multi-channel DTMF Detection for the WE DSP32 Family

The authors describe two DTMF (dual-tone multiple frequency) detection algorithms that are highly efficient in the use of both real time and memory. The first algorithm is based on linear prediction (LP) and can be used to implement up to 32 DTMF detectors on a single 25-MHz NMOS WE DSP32. Using a 50-MHZ WE CMOS DSP32C, up to 45 detectors can be implemented. The second algorithm is based on a slight modification of the Goertzel algorithm and can be used to implement up to 16 DTMF detectors on a single DSP32 and up to 32 detectors on a DSP32C. In each of these implementations no external memory is used. Thus, for DSP32 implementations, the small 40-pin DIP package can be used. While the LP based algorithm is the more efficient of the two, the modified-Goertzel-based detector performs better in the presence of speech