SOUTHERN JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS JULY, 1975 SIMULATION OF SOIL WATER-CROP YIELD SYSTEMS: THE POTENTIAL FOR ECONOMIC ANALYSIS*

Economists have shown an increasing interest prolonging the life of the system. in systems theory and simulation. The recent re- The purposes of this paper are: (1) to pre-views by Anderson [1] and LaDue and Vincent sent a model capable of simulating soil water-crop [10] indicate the literature is repleat with models yield relationships for several irrigated and dry-of business and farm firms developed by research- land crops grown in the Oklahoma Panhandle, ers from several disciplines. A smaller but no less (2) to demonstrate the usefulness of the model by sophisticated group of models is focused on sim- incorporating it into a farm firm simulator to ulated physical or biological processes. An even evaluate alternative irrigation strategies, and (3) smaller segment of the literature deals with eco- to discuss the potential value of creating more nomic applications of models which simulate complete models of the soil water-crop yield sys-physical and biological phenomena. tem. Economists have become interested in models simulating physical and biological phenomena MODEL DEVELOPMENT because of their experimental value. When a satis- The Production Subset factory approximation of reality can be created Building on earlier soil moisture-crop yiel