SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
The claim of many that certain features of Jamaican land reform discourage optimum increases in farm output has been pointed out. To test the argument, seven land‐reform features, which meet methodological, theoretical, and practical restrictions, have been examined. An hypothesis derived mainly from agricultural‐ economic theory about the linear relation between each of the seven features and farm output per acre has been devised. The hypotheses have been tested with a multiple regression analysis of data from six land settlements selected to represent a variety of geographic settings. The hypotheses have been partially upheld, but must be revised in the following form: (1) in many cases, particularly in the early years of production, farm acreage is negatively related to output per acre; (2) in subsistence areas, where great diversity in agriculture is common, greater diversification leads to greater output per acre; (3) in most cases where farmers live an appreciable distance from their holdings (at least 0.3 miles), output per acre is negatively related to the distance; (4) output per acre declines as the age of operator increases, but only if the operator is mainly dependent on his own labour, and only after a relatively advanced age (60 years, perhaps) has been attained; (5) the number of a farmer's dependents does not affect output (gross income per acre); (6) a farmer's non‐farm income does not exhibit a negative relation to output per acre, and may be positively related if the outside income can be used to purchase productive farm inputs; (7) in some cases acreage of additional land used is positively related to output per acre on settlement properties. Hopefully, further research will lead to a more rational basis for the formulation of these hypotheses.
Using the regression equations, estimates have been made of the changes in output per acre which could have been achieved with feasible changes in relevant factors. Estimates indicate that current farm output could have been greatly increased in some settlements, thus justifying some of the criticism of Jamaican land reform.
The purpose of this paper is to formulate a normative economic model relating farm output (type, quantity, and value) to the distance between field and farmstead. Concern with such a model is by no means original; but the theory described below is a refinement and extension of traditional concepts, and leads one to severely question certain conclusions commonly accepted on the basis of empirical findings. It is shown (1) that the relation between the field-farmstead distance and output of a given land use is negative and curvilinear (not necessarily "concave upwards," as has been generally accepted), with the exact relationship depending on local production functions and travel facilities; (2) that net income decreases more rapidly than gross income with increasing distance; and (3) that optimum landuse patterns change with the distance. Towards the end of the paper, data from Jamaica are used in a partial testing of the model.It is recognized that this model, like other normative economic theories, assumes perfectly predictable and rather unrealistic human behavior. It is proposed, however, that in the development of a better and more general theory there is no more useful way to begin.
Current Theoretical DevelopmentVon Thunen was the first writer to consider the effects of distance between house and farm on farm economy in much detail. In The Isolated State [4] he postulated that the important effect of such distance is to alter the cost of labor, arguing that the time taken to travel between the plot and the farmstead gives rise to a cost which must be subtracted from the gross income in the calculation of economic rent. Consequently, economic rent is negatively related to the distance between the plot and the farmstead.
SINCE THE sixteenth century when citrus was first grown in Florida1 the destruction of trees by periodic "freezes" has been the major problem in citrus cultivation.Production has consequently come to be restricted to the southern two-thirds of the state, where the risk of killing winter temperatures is relatively small. But occasionally even this limited citrus-growing area (Figure 1 ) has experienced disaster. Unexpected invasions of particularly cold air have damaged trees in certain locations, sometimes ruining the producer economically. In this century serious freezes have occurred
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