IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/ajagec/v60y1978i4p575-588..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Economic and Policy Implications of the 160-Acre Limitation in Federal Reclamation Law

Author

Listed:
  • David Seckler
  • Robert A. Young

Abstract

Proposals for strict enforcement and, conversely, for relaxation or elimination of acreage limitations in federal irrigation projects have arisen in response to recent court decisions regarding two large California irrigation districts. These proposals are examined against criteria including distributive justice, allocative efficiency, and administrative workability. Empirical evidence is offered which shows that proposed regulations would permit overly generous family incomes in the two areas and brings into question the existence of significant economies associated with larger size farms. An alternative policy instrument, based on control of the water supply, rather than of the land, is proposed so as to reconcile more effectively conflicting policy objectives.

Suggested Citation

  • David Seckler & Robert A. Young, 1978. "Economic and Policy Implications of the 160-Acre Limitation in Federal Reclamation Law," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 60(4), pages 575-588.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:ajagec:v:60:y:1978:i:4:p:575-588.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.2307/1240242
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Moore, Charles V. & Wilson, David L. & Hatch, Thomas C., 1982. "Appendix to Structure and Performance of Western Irrigated Agriculture: With Special Reference to U.S. Department of Interior's Acreage Limitation Policy," Information Series 263858, University of California, Davis, Giannini Foundation.
    2. Wysong, John W. & Leigh, Mary G. & Ganguly, Pradeep, 1984. "The Economic Viability of Commercial Fresh Vegetable Production in the Northeastern United States," Journal of the Northeastern Agricultural Economics Council, Northeastern Agricultural and Resource Economics Association, vol. 13(1), pages 1-8, April.
    3. Becker, Nir, 1995. "Value of moving from central planning to a market system: lessons from the Israeli water sector," Agricultural Economics, Blackwell, vol. 12(1), pages 11-21, April.
    4. Miller, Thomas A. & Rodewald, Gordon E. & McElroy, Robert G., 1981. "Economies of Size in U.S. Field Crop Farming," Agricultural Economic Reports 307907, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    5. McBride, William D. & Key, Nigel D., 2003. "Economic And Structural Relationships In U.S. Hog Production," Agricultural Economic Reports 33971, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    6. Moore, Charles V., 1982. "Impact Of Federal Acreage Limitation Policy On Western Irrigated Agriculture," Western Journal of Agricultural Economics, Western Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 7(2), pages 1-16, December.
    7. Helmers, Glenn A. & El-Osta, Hisham & Azzam, Azzeddine, 1989. "Economies Of Size In Multi-Output Farms: A Mixed Integer Programming Approach," 1989 Conference, January 7-10, Tucson, Arizona 260158, Regional Research Committe NC-181: Determinants of Farm Size and Structure.
    8. Small, L. E. & Adriano, M. S. & Martin, E. D. & Bhatia, R. & Shim, Y. K. & Pradhan, P., 1989. "Financing irrigation services: a literature review and selected case studies from Asia," IWMI Books, Reports H005735, International Water Management Institute.
    9. Lynne, Gary D., 1988. "Values, Public Choice, And The Design Of Permit Based Agricultural Water Institutions," 1988 Annual Meeting, August 1-3, Knoxville, Tennessee 270396, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    10. Levan Elbakidze & Brett Schiller & R. Garth Taylor, 2017. "Estimation of Short and Long Run Derived Irrigation Water Demands and Elasticities," Water Economics and Policy (WEP), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 3(01), pages 1-22, January.
    11. Wysong, John W. & Leigh, Mary G. & Ganguly, Pradeep, 1984. "The Economic Viability of Commercial Fresh Vegetable Production in the Northeastern United States," Northeastern Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Northeastern Agricultural and Resource Economics Association, vol. 0(Number 1), pages 1-8, April.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:ajagec:v:60:y:1978:i:4:p:575-588.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aaeaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.