Melvin G. Blase

Economic feasibility of producing ethanol from lignocellulosic feedstocks

A mathematical programming model is built to analyze the economic feasibility of producing ethanol from lignocellulosic feedstocks. The optimal size of an ethanol plant is determined by the trade-off between increasing transportation costs for feedstocks versus decreasing average plant costs as the plant size increases. The ethanol plant is modeled under the assumption that it utilizes recent technological advancements in dilute acid hydrolysis. Potential feedstocks include energy crops, crop residues and woody biomass. It is found that the recent technological advancements appear to make ethanol competitive with gasoline, but only if higher valued chemicals are produced as co-products with the ethanol. The low cost and chemical composition of crop residues make them attractive as a feedstock.

Farm tractorisation, productivity and labour employment: A case study of Indian Punjab

The objective of this paper is to determine the effects of farm tractorisation on output and human labour employment on Punjab farms in India. The residts seem to suggest that, this far, the use of tractors has resulted in higher output and more employment. The authors believe that the threat from farm tractorisation is not all that great; the use of tractors is likely to be confined to certain areas only, and there too, any displacement of labour should be possible to control through appropriate public policies.

Profitability analysis of a farming system in Africa

Abstract This analysis questions the assumptions that in a traditional farming system food production is primarily for home consumption and is not competitive with export crop (cocoa) production. Government planners and policy makers must look at the total operation of a farmer to understand the role of food crop production. In the case of Ghana in 1981 they needed to seek ways to make cocoa production relatively more profitable if the goal of increased cocoa production from small farms were to succeed. The analysis indicates why farmers were devoting scarce resources, particularly labor, to producing food crops in Ghana in 1981. Food crops were the most profitable both (1) in 1981 and (2) when the flow of income from the life of the trees was considered. Clearly, the farmers were demonstrating that they were rational economic men. In order to get an idea of what price cocoa must bring for it to be as profitable as the food crop systems, the price of cocoa was varied with all other prices held constant. The price of cocoa would have had to be approximately ¢400 per load of 30 kilograms in 1981. The government purchase price was ¢120 per load. Nor surprisingly, cocoa production in Ghana was declining steadily.

Discussion: Why Overseas Technical Assistance Is Ineffective

This paper will be divided into two parts. Initially, specific points in the Loomis paper will be discussed. Subsequently, with a view toward extending the Loomis analysis and expanding the analytical framework suggested by Professor Schultz, a conceptualization of the technical assistance process will be presented. The latter will be used to elaborate several items in the initial discussion.

A Development Planning Model for Technological Change in Agriculture

This article examines a model for (1) coordinating activities in the development process and (2) inter-temporally allocating resources required by the process. Network analysis (PERT) and recursive programming are integrated in the model, which is applied to data for a district in India. The findings provide insights into the sporadic nature of economic development and differential marginal value productivities of limiting resources over time. The integrated planning technique, resulting from the methodological study, appears to be especially useful for spotting potential bottlenecks sufficiently early to initiate action for eliminating them, thereby facilitating the development process.