SOUTHERN JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS JULY, 1974 THE EFFECT OF RESOURCE INVESTMENT PROGRAMS ON AGRICULTURAL LABOR EMPLOYMENT AND FARM NUMBERS*

Investments in natural resources usually are for explain the rate of change in farm numbers. That is, the expressed purposes of conserving, developing, or farm number changes as well as changes in the managing the nation's supply of soil, water, timber, exogenous variables were measured as percentage minerals, and marine resources. Many public changes from a common temporal base. Using the investment programs in natural resources have also Tolley-Schrimper model, Eddleman [2] developed a contained explicit development objectives. Any model to explain the rate of change in employment. explanation of employment and income changes The general regional model used for this paper occurring within a region requires analysis of many consists of three basic types of components.1 These interacting variables because the effects of natural are (1) product supplies and factor demands for all resource investments may be masked by firms in individual types of industries, (2) aggregate counteractions. product demand and factor supply functions, and (3) Changes in investment levels that shift the the number of firms in each industry. The theoretical supplies of critical resources often occur concurrently model was developed to examine temporal changes in with changes in the demands for products, supplies of employment as the result of changes in exogenous other resources, firm production possibilities, and the shifters that affect labor employment. Variables wer