Interest in sustainable agriculture probably had its roots in the concept of sustainable development. There exist no agricultural production technologies or farming systems that are environmentally benign. The question thus becomes "what is sustainable and what is not?" The two underlying themes...

The March, 2015 pdf version is recently-edited from a paper written in the late 1980s. A scanned copy of the paper as written in the late 1980s is also available for download. Students who wish to use their math skills to verify each equation and elasticity calculation may wish to download both...

I taught AEC 620, Advanced Production Economics, every year between 1974, when I arrived as an assistant professor at the University of Kentucky, to 2012, when I retired. The following publication is one of the early sets of class notes I used in the course, dating from 1978 set up as an early...

This paper investigates some applications of high-resolution, three­ dimensional PC-based computer graphics to research and education in agricultural production economics. Examples illustrate issues in the identification of stages of production for the multifactor case; special cases in which...

This paper pushes beyond past efforts in employing computer graphics in a number of ways. In this paper, the capabilities of the SAS for drawing surfaces and contours of three-dimensional functional forms are combined with the drawing, annotation and sequential animation features of Harvard...

In this paper I first discuss the role of external capital constraints in limiting the ability of farmers to implement new technologies. Via a theoretical model, I illustrate the role of farm size in determining if a particular cost-reducing technology is implemented. I show that the cost...

This paper outlines three basic issues states must consider before using computerized decision-making mode1s with farmers. These issues were identified from our experiences using an advanced linear programming model with grain farmers. One issue is creating an awareness with clientele of what a...

It's time to take a close look at recent trends agriculture and in rural areas and speculate where these trends might lead. What are the important forces that will shape the future agriculture and rural areas in the 21st century? What are the implications of these forces on the programs that...

In 1973 the Governor of Kentucky's Council of Agriculture commissioned a Task Force at the University of Kentucky College of Agriculture to develop estimates of Kentucky's Agricultural potentials. Product potentials were estimated for 1980 and for the "long-term" to 1992. Similarly, capital and...

Innovation is largely held to be unlikely in rural regions. This reflects the current emphasis on regional innovations systems that are driven by large expenditures on formal science based activity that results in patentable outcomes. From this metric the observation about rural innovation is...