A test of a linear programming model of agriculture
Tóm tắt
The pattern of agricultural production and land use specified by the linear programming model was greatly different from the actual pattern existing in 1963. I believe that the application of this model or similar models to other areas would not approximate actual patterns of production or resource use. Therefore, it is concluded that the assumptions upon which the model is based are inadequate for the construction of models aimed at estimating the economic feasibility of water resource investments. Further work on the model itself is necessary before it can be properly used in the predictive sense required in economic feasibility studies. In order to improve the model, it will be necessary to quantify additional constraining relationships that are generally encountered by the type of economic units being studied. Care should be taken not simply to build empirical realities into the model so as to reduce differences between the model results and existing production and resource use. Rather the type of constraints needed appear to require such studies as how economic units tend to react to opportunities for increased profits in situations where changes in habits would be required for the realization of these increased net returns. Studies which accurately estimate the economic efficiency of water resource investments need to consider how economic units will react to changes in water resources. The use of mathematical programming models in these studies serves to make this need more apparent.
Từ khóa
Tài liệu tham khảo
Policies now in effect are summarized inPolicies, Standards and Procedures in the Formulation, Evaluation and Review of Plans for Use and Development of Water and Related Land Resources, The President's Water Resources Council, May 29, 1962.
For a more complete treatment of the concepts behind the policies see O. Eckstein,Water REsource Development Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1961) andProposed Practices for Economic Analysis of River Basin Projects, Report to the Interagency Committee on Evaluation Standards, May, 1958.
A number of recent studies were designed to improve these analytical methods; see, for example, G. S. Tolley and F. E. Riggs,Economics of Watershed Planning (Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University Press, 1961). A. Maass,et. al. Design of Water Resource Systems (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1962). R. N. McKean,Efficiency in Government through Systems Analysis (Chicago Illinois: John Witey, 1958).
G. G. Judge and T. A. Hieronymus, “Interregional Analysis of the Corn Sector,” (Urbana, Illinois: Department of Agricultural Economics, University of Illinois, 1962), p. 14.
The equivalance of this model and the maximum net returns model for all farms combined was shown in A. C. Egbert and E. O. Heady,Regional Adjustments in Grain Production, Supplement to Technical Bulletin 1241, (Washington, D. C.: United States Department of Agriculture, 1961) p 10.
This model, which considers the efficiency of the agricultural economy as a whole without specific reference to the individual firm, is similar to models used in A. C. Egbert, E. O. Heady, and R. F. Brokken, “Regional Changes in Grain Production: An Application of Spatial Linear Programming,” Research Bulletin 521, Ames: Iowa Agricultural Experiment Station, January, 1964); and J. M. Henderson, “A Short-Run Model for the Coal Industry,”Review of Economics and Statistics, XXXVII (November, 1955), pp. 336–46.
M. M. Snodgrass and C. E. French, “Linear Programming Approach to the Study of Interregional Competition in Dairying,” Bulletin No. 637, (Lafayette: Indiana Agricultural Experiment Station, 1958), p. 16.
Judge and Hieronymus,op. cit. “, p. 27.
New York Conservation Needs Committee,New York State Soil and Water Conservation Needs Inventory, 1963; and Pennsylvania Conservation Needs Committee,Pennsylvania Soil and Water Conservation Needs Inventory, n.d.
R. Dorfman, P. Samuelson, and R. Solow,Linear Programming and Economic Analysis (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1958), pp. 39–129.