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...

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...

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...

This article describes the influence of input quality and scarcity, environmental conditions, human capital, water price, and other variables on adoption rates for modern irrigation technologies in terms of both speed and extent of application. An empirical model is developed to apply these...

A two-stage simulation/mathematical programming model is presented for determining the optimal intraseasonal allocation of irrigation water under conditions of limited water supply. The model is applied to a series of water shortage scenarios under both surface and center pivot irrigation....

Irrigation with saline waters is a major problem in many parts of the world. Economic questions have usually been addressed using synthesized production functions and theoretically based soil salinity relations. The purpose of this paper is to estimate functions relating crop yield and salt...

Rapidly rising fuel costs for irrigation and tillage, combined with groundwater depletion confront producers in the Great Plains. Maintaining profits while production costs escalate and water levels decline emphasizes the need to increase water and energy use efficiency. A linear programming...

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...

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.