SOUTHERN JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS JULY, 1984 DISCUSSION: USE OF BIOPHYSICAL SIMULATION IN PRODUCTION ECONOMICS

effort to "review the current use of biophysical SIMULATION simulation in production economics and to eval- Musser and Tew define a biophysical simu-uate the potential of biophysical simulation as lator as "a complex mathematical model of a methodology. " Four general topics are ad- some process with explicit attention to biolog-dressed: (1) definition and description of bio- ical and/or physical determinants of agricul-physical simulation; (2) survey of current use tural production. " They relate biophysical of biophysical simulators; (3) behavioral theory simulators to production functions using Dil-as it relates to the use of biophysical simulation; lon's general formulation: and (4) uses of biophysical simulators. They X X conclude that "the use of biophysical simulators is accelerating " and that "the primary area of where Y is the output; XI,...,Xn are the input application is to provide input-output data when decision variables; Xn+,..,Xk are the predeter-dynamic, risky, input decisions are prevalent. " mined input variables; and Xk+l,...,Xm are the Two major disadvantages of biophysical simu- uncertain input variables. lation were identified. First, cooperation of other This formulation explicitly recognizes envi