Anne B. Effland

United States Department of Agriculture | USDA · Economic Research Service (ERS)

Nearly two decades into the 21st century, we revisit the topic of changes in the US agricultural system. We focus on trends in structure, technology and policy, and on the increasing influence of consumer preferences on this system, particularly for organic agriculture and local and regional foods. We examine technological innovations in the 21st c...

The 2008 Farm Act introduced a wholly new type of commodity program intended to protect producers against price and yield variability through a market-oriented revenue guarantee. Expectations were high in 2009 that many producers would choose the new Alternative Crop Revenue Election (ACRE) program, but that did not happen. We analyze this unexpect...

This address is an exploration of a lifetime of disparate and often conflicting observations about how different people view what is right and good for agriculture, food, and farmers around the world. The exploration utilizes the concept of wicked problems to focus on the issue of differing historical interpretations of global agricultural developm...

We estimate the impacts of various types of government payments to U.S. agriculture on different components of farm household consumption. Using 2003 to 2005 data from the Agricultural Resource Management Survey (ARMS), we show that marginal rates of consumption differ by consumption category and income source, including different types of farm pro...

The decision to write contracts for production of commodities can be framed as an institutional response to changing industry and market conditions. When innovations increase available rents to technology owners (or technology appropriators), contracts can replace cash market transactions even though contracts carry higher transaction costs. We pro...

We begin with a brief comparison of the size distribution of US and EU-15 farms to provide the European audience a greater context to the US issues. The EU data are from the Farm Structures Survey and the US data are from USDA’s Agriculture Resource Management Survey (ARMS). We next address the reasons for the unexpected increase in the number of s...

IntroductionDabney and Whitney in North CarolinaThe Association of American Agricultural Colleges and Experiment Stations and The U.S. Weather BureauDabney as Assistant Secretary of AgricultureConclusion References

When the automobile was developed near the beginning of the last century, it was the relatively new fuel gasoline, not the familiar ethanol that became the fuel of choice. We examine the intersections of the early development of the automobile and the petroleum industry and consider the state of the agriculture sector during the same period. Throug...

The belief that farm work is good for children is deeply rooted in agrarian ideals, which impute a wholesomeness to farming tied to its economic, social, and moral value to society. Nevertheless, in the context of the changing scale of work, community, and new ideas about childhood and education, Progressive reformers suggested that some farm work...

Anne Effland is a historian and social science analyst with the Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. 1. Julian E. Zelizer, "Clio's Lost Tribe: Public Policy History Since 1978," Journal of Policy History 12 (2000):370-382. 2. Richard E. Neustadt and Ernest R. May, Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision Makers...

This paper analyses how farm access to credit affects farm input allocation and farm efficiency in the CEE transition countries. Drawing on a unique farm level panel data with 37,409 observations and employing a matching estimator we are able to control for the key source of endogeneity – unoberserved heterogeneity. We find that farms are credit co...

U.S. agriculture underwent a tremendous transformation during the 20th century—the structure of farming and rural life today barely resembles that of the early 1900s. A comparison of six basic agricultural indicators across the century reveals a dramatic transformation of the U.S. agricultural sector. Snapshots of five points in time—1900, as t...

The 1890 land-grant universities (1890s) have developed teaching, research, and extension programs that reach historically underserved students and communities. Many studies have described the programs of 1890s, but no systematic effort has measured their contribution to human capital development and to improving the well-being of the rural populat...

"Recent attention to the issue of immigration in the United States has led to the addition of questions about immigration status to the Current Population Survey. Data from the March 1996 version show that Mexico has been the single largest source of immigration to the nonmetro United States, that a large proportion of nonmetro immigrants are child...

Brooks Farm is an independent Black farming community unique in the Mississippi Delta. A community case study shows that, despite declining population and resources, Brooks Farm has drawn on the strength of its traditional institutions (family, churches, civic groups) to sustain community life and to continue to provide services to the elderly, you...

head of the State's economic development agency.2 The Clinton Presidential campaign had, in fact, promulgated a plan for rural America that called for Federal investment not only in health care and education, but also in infrastructure and telecommunications improvements. The Clinton plan, however, indicated that the focus on State and local direct...

"We have learned a great deal in a short time about women's roles and experiences of agriculture and rural life. Fundamental among our discoveries has been the certainty that women farm, on their own in some cases, or as partners in the work of family farms, performing essential household production tasks, as well as tending gardens, livestock, and...