Wheat acreage response : a regional econometric approach
No Thumbnail Available
Authors
Meeting name
Sponsors
Date
Journal Title
Format
Thesis
Subject
Abstract
Management of the current farm program around the theme of farmer-held reserves requires information on expected future supply responses of grain farmers. These response estimates are a crucial link in maintaining the crops sector around program guidelines that include loan rates, release prices, reserve objectives and market price objectives. Realigning the industry during periods of excess supplies implies acreage reductions that are generally maintained through economic incentives to farmers. The principal objectives of this study were: 1) quantify a supply inducing price that incorporates in a single variable market price and government program variables via a weighting process conditioned on actual program participation, 2) examine a regional supply response to counteract the heterogeneous nature of wheat producing regions, 3) incorporation of variable cost of production, 4) examine risk as a factor in the decision process, 5) quantify climatic impacts via the utilization of a weighted precipitation index, and 6) examine the regional distribution of wheat. Acreage response measures indicated the southern and northern plains were relatively more inelastic than the corn belt, northwest and southeast. The performance of the model over the historical period and outside the period of fit indicates that this model would be useful to policy makers in the formulation of farm programs. The results also indicated an alarming upward trend in acreage planted in the southeast regions. An investigation of the regional loan rates, yield trends, and variable costs per acre indicated that wheat loan rate relative to the variable cost per bushel was at a relative advantage compared to the other commodities grown in the southeast region. This tends to indicate that farm program variables should be more carefully coordinated across commodities. Otherwise, comparative advantages across commodities could easily become distorted by the relative level of farm program variables.
Table of Contents
DOI
PubMed ID
Degree
M.S.
Thesis Department
Rights
OpenAccess.
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License.