- The journal Agricultural and Applied Economic Perspectives just released a new issue with several interesting papers. Here are some excerpts of a few of the papers.
Our major findings are as follows: (1) if dietary requirements do not increase by more than 20% from the current level, crop yields from current cropland must increase by more than 57% just to meet dietary demand
Exercising short-run oligopsony power is inimical to the long-run interests of buyers in these settings because below-competitive returns will lead to the exodus of resources from input production. Policy proposals grounded in the presumed linkage between concentration, competition, and market power may well be misguided and detrimental to the objectives that proponents seek to advance.
Since U.S. domestic workers are unwilling to do farm work and the United States can feasibly import farm workers from only a few countries in close geographic proximity, the agricultural industry will eventually need to adjust production to use less labor. The decline in foreign labor supply to farms in the United States ultimately will need to be accompanied by farm labor conservation, switching to less labor intensive crops and technologies, and labor management practices that match fewer workers with more farm jobs.