Irrigation development in the Pacific Northwest expanded rapidly during the 1960s and 1970s when economic conditions, including very cheap electricity for pumping water, were favorable for this activity. Thousands of acre of land were irrigated that required lifting water 400 feet or more. The...

This paper uses multiple regression analysis to examine the effects of energy resource development on sale prices of agricultural land in western North Dakota. The findings suggest that energy resources development has exerted only modest upward pressure on agricultural land values in the...

Important linkages between farm management variables, soil loss, crop yields, and incentives to practice soil conservation have often been omitted from previous empirical studies, due to regional data limitations and incomplete knowledge of soil loss/crop yiled relationships. An optimal control...

Almost all applications of the Travel-Cost-Method demand function which include site quality variable(s) are multisite models. The results of this study serve as a note of warning that using the demand equation derived from multisite cross-sectional data to perform a benefit-cost analysis of...

Increasing interest in range economics research calls for a more tightly defined set of issues and a menu of research projects addressing these issues. This paper identifies major issues of national importance followed by a brief description of suggested research projects.

Simulation is used to examine impacts of land expansion strategies and self-imposed borrowing limits upon growth and survival odds of a dryland wheat farm over a 15-year period. Compared to share-rent expansion, purchasing land shows only marginally great growth at best, with substantially...

The complementary interaction between topsoil depth and technical progress for winter wheat in the Palouse region was found to strengthen the long run payoff to conservation tillage. Nonetheless, conservation tillage was found to be competitive with conventional tillage only if its current yield...

A Markov chain dynamic programming model is presented for determining optimal range improvement strategies as well as accompanying livestock production practices. The model specification focuses on the improved representation of rangeland dynamics and livestock response under alternative range...

Multicrop farmers must choose variable input levels and land quantity for each crop. Economic researchers to date have analyzed these two decisions separately, either finding the best land use, given crop technologies, or solving for optimal input levels, ignoring the allocation of land. We show...

A model of farmland accumulation analyzes the impact of credit allocation and the level of debt on farmland prices. The model stresses the importance of the real net wealth accumulated by the farming sector on the lending procedures for farmland purchases. It is shown that credit allocated on...