Arizona State and Local Government Documents Collection

This paper provides a methodology that can be used to weigh the costs and benefits of precision agriculture in the measurement and application of variable-rate production technology. Empirical estimates of the economic value of precision farming in the form of variable-rate fertilizer application to corn fields in the mid-western United States are calculated and compared to the current cost of investing in this technology. The results of this study indicate that the use of precision technology in the application of fertilizer for corn production in the United States is not profitable over a relatively wide range of corn prices, nitrogen prices, and agronomic differences in soil characteristics.

Contains a dynamic programming algorithm for projecting policy parameters based on a storage model of international markets featuring uncertainty, forward-looking rational expectations and non-negative storage. This algorithm is motivated by the need for a non-analytical solution to the competitive equilibrium in a storage model of U.S. and foreign cotton policy regimes. Obtaining an analytical solution is difficult, except in a limited number of special cases. The numerical solution algorithm essentially consists of multiple nested numerical approximations that reach convergence simultaneously when the relationship between domestic storage and expected farm price achieves stationarity. Given the stationary relationship between storage and expected farm price, we then run the model forward in time (given a sequence of annual realized yield disturbances) under alternative policy regimes representing FACT and FAIR.

After twenty years of Ag Mediation’s assistance to the American rural areas, there are a number of key developments which I would like to highlight for the Bureau of Land Management and others interested in mediation and dispute resolution. These include background, law, and efforts by states and federal government to focus on mediation as a way of settling disputes. Finally, I would like to enumerate the lessons we have learned.

The theory of factor market distortions deals largely with taxing inputs. However, input subsidies are not only common in manufacturing. For example, U.S. agriculture is heavily dependent on input subsidies.
If water subsidies in the production of California cotton were removed, along with commodity payments, production of cotton in California would likely cease. Likewise, transportation subsidies were common in both the U.S. and Canada, and still prevail in the U.S.

The economic theories of New Institutional Economics, auctions, and welfare economics are used to analyze the potential for E-Commerce as an institution within the agricultural sector. We discuss the theory of the firm within the NIE paradigm and focus on the potential for E-Commerce to reduce transaction costs, search costs, and the costs associated with buying and selling livestock under various auction formats. We develop a theoretical model that captures the effect of Internet feeder-cattle auctions on Florida’s cattle market at three different levels in the marketing channel. We discuss the institutional arrangements and marketing mechanisms associated with the marketing of stocker and feeder cattle in Florida. We present the results of a survey distributed to cattle producers in North Florida regarding herd size, direct transaction costs of marketing cattle, and the implications of internet technology. Finally, we perform an empirical welfare analysis in order to estimate the impact of reduced transaction costs associated with Internet and video livestock auctions on cow-calf operators and backgrounders in Florida.

We investigate the underlying reasons for producers’ choice of marketing channels for stocker cattle in the United States. In addition to traditional public auctions, private sales, video auctions, and Internet auctions have been recently used in the marketing of stocker cattle. We find that while the number of marketing options may have increased in recent years, only relatively large producers can actually take advantage of these options. The marketing options for smaller producers are still limited due to their relative size. We also find that the number of cattle marketed privately and through video and Internet auctions is positively correlated with herd size. In addition, the New Institutional Economics provides insights into how herd size influences the choice of marketing channels.

We compare the current Canadian Supply Management regime in which producers and importers benefit from rent-seeking activities that set production quota and import quota levels with those under a tariff, in which producers partakes in rent-seeking activities in order to induce the government to introduce a favorable tariff regime. We explore three different quota-setting games: (1) the import quota and production quota are set at a level that arises from a Cournot-Nash equilibrium between producers and importers; (2) the producer marketing board acts as a Stackelberg leader, taking into account the importers’ reaction to its production quota level; and (3) the importer behaves as a Stackelberg leader, taking into account producers’ reaction to its import quota level. We compare these quota-setting games with two different tariff-setting games: (1) A non-cooperative game in which the government sets the tariff at a level that maximizes tariff revenue; and (2) A cooperative game in which producers, through rent-seeking activities, induce the government to set the tariff at a level that maximizes joint government and producer rents.

A massive pile of wood debris caught fire and burned from October 27 to October 31, 2001, in northern Pinal County, Arizona. The fire consumed wood debris from citrus trees that had been stored in an approximately 25-acre area in Pinal County near the Queen Creek area. The fire generated a large quantity of smoke. Persons reported smelling the smoke up to 40 miles away from the fire. Meteorological conditions during the fire intermittently created conditions that limited lift, especially at night, causing smoke to settle in residential neighborhoods in the Queen Creek area. The Arizona Department of Health Services issued public health advisories for the evenings of October 29 and 30. This report summarizes the events that occurred during the fire and analyzes the data collected by the Arizona Department of Health Services and the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality to determine the extent of the public health threat from the fire.

The Rodeo-Chediski Fire Complex began as a small blaze in a remote region of east-central Arizona and within days erupted into the largest wildfire in Arizona history. Fortunately, no lives were lost. However, from June 18, 2002 to the time of its containment on July 7, 2002, the Rodeo-Chediski fire destroyed over 490 structures and 467,000 acres of ponderosa pine and pinyon-juniper woodland—an estimated 500 million to 1.3 billion board feet of timber. Jurisdictions involved included the Fort Apache Indian Reservation, the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest, the Tonto National Forest, and private lands adjacent to Highway 260, from the Town of Forest Lakes east to the City of Show Low. Virtually all of the acres burned were in Navajo County, with some damage in the contiguous counties of Coconino, Apache, and Gila Counties. This health assessment describes the fire events and summarizes the resulting public health impacts from the fire.