Obituary: Alan Grahame Lloyd (1926-1999)

Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,

SOME THOUGHTS ON COMPETENCY STANDARDS

The Australian Agricultural Economics Society has made a practice of not being directly involved with political matters or taking a stance on matters of economic policy. In accordance with the constitutional objectives of the Society, our role has been to foster interest in such matters, to foster analysis of them and to facilitate discussion but not to put forward a particular viewpoint as being the Society's. On the other hand, our Constitution requires the Society: -to encourage the study of agricultural economics in Australia and to promote high standards of accomplishment in research, teaching and extension in this field'; and inter alia -to promote the profession of agricultural economics in Australia ... '. Therefore, when a matter of government policy and the way it is being implemented affects these objectives, the Society must become involved. The issue I have in mind is that which centres around competency standards in the professions and I believe that issue has the potential to assume crisis proportions for our profession

Farm Planning in the Graman District of New South Wales: A Linear Programming Study of Adjustment Possibilities for Some Soldier Settlement Farms

A survey of twenty-three soldier settlers who face adjustment problems following falls in sheep product prices and damage to pastures by a scarab pest is reported. Settlers estimates of input-output coefficients, and results from agronomic experiments, were used in formulating production possibilities in linear programming matrices. Normative plans for farm organization, to maximise incomes over a range of relative prices of agricultural and livestock products, were derived from these matrices by simplex programming. It was deduced that settlers could increase incomes by devoting all arable or potentially arable land to a cash crop rotation, even where pastures are not scarab infested. Once embarked on such a programme, substantial change in relative prices would be required before further adjustment was merited. Improved rotations for the district have been suggested by co-ordinating results from programming and agronomic experiments

A STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF A PILOT SURVEY OF SALT-AFFECTED DAIRY FARMS

A small stratified sample was drawn from irrigated dairy farms judged to exhibit two degrees (high and low) of salting in the soil. Cobb-Douglas production functions were fitted to time series and cross sectional data for each stratum. The results support the conclusion that the data from the two strata can be pooled and that the quality of the soil in this area can be modelled using an analysis of covariance approach. A preliminary confidence interval for the geometric mean of the ratio of the shadow price of water to the price of butterfat for farms in the sample was also calculated. This interval supports the hypothesis that rationed irrigation water is worth more to these farms than the price paid

USUFRUCT AND USURY: AN ANALYSIS OF LAND LEASING IN EAST JAVA

On Java, land leasing functions as a credit instrument when the entire rent is paid in advance. The rights obtained by the tenant/lender are the 'price' of the loan made to the land owner/borrower. A model of such transactions shows that the area leased and duration of the lease are substitutes in raising a loan of given size and that the substitution rate is related to the term structure of interest rates

Farm Planning in the Graman District of New South Wales: A Linear Programming Study of Adjustment Possibilities for Some Soldier Settlement Farms

A survey of twenty-three soldier settlers who face adjustment problems following falls in sheep product prices and damage to pastures by a scarab pest is reported. Settlers estimates of input-output coefficients, and results from agronomic experiments, were used in formulating production possibilities in linear programming matrices. Normative plans for farm organization, to maximise incomes over a range of relative prices of agricultural and livestock products, were derived from these matrices by simplex programming. It was deduced that settlers could increase incomes by devoting all arable or potentially arable land to a cash crop rotation, even where pastures are not scarab infested. Once embarked on such a programme, substantial change in relative prices would be required before further adjustment was merited. Improved rotations for the district have been suggested by co-ordinating results from programming and agronomic experiments.Farm Management,