Specification of a Regional-National Recursive Model for IIASA/FAP's Iowa Task 2 Case Study

Heady, E.O. & Langley, J.A. (1981). Specification of a Regional-National Recursive Model for IIASA/FAP's Iowa Task 2 Case Study. IIASA Working Paper. IIASA, Laxenburg, Austria: WP-81-090

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Abstract

The major objectives of the Food and Agriculture Program (FAP) of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis are to evaluate the nature and dimensions of the world food situation, to identify factors affecting it, and to suggest policy alternatives at the national, regional, and global levels to alleviate current food problems and to prevent future ones. The present shortrun problems of policy are explored in FAP's Task 1, "Strategies: National Policy Models for Food and Agriculture" by means of a set of descriptive, general-equilibrium, price-endogenous national models of various countries linked in a consistent international framework.

From a longer term perspective the food problem acquires added dimensions; and questions of availability of resources to produce adequate food, efficiency of techniques, and environmental consequences become important. These questions are addressed by FAP's Task 2 "Technological Transformations in Agriculture: Resource Limitations and Environmental Consequences". Quantitative knowledge of the interactions between agriculture and the environment requires a great deal of detailed information on the site-specific nature of resource inputs and on alternative land use practices. A general-equilibrium approach to such types of investigation is not empirically feasible. The research methodology of Task 2 is to formulate a series of region-specific case studies within a general recursive programming framework.

The regional-national recursive model specified in this paper represents the intermediate stage of development of the Iowa Case Study. The Iowa model has been specified by a team of researchers including Dr. Earl 0. Heady, James Langley, Andrew Morton, and Burton English of the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development, Iowa State University, and Wen-yuan Huang and Klaus Alt of the Natural Resources Economics Division, U.S. Department of Agriculture. Work is continuing on the specification of various components of the Iowa model along with preliminary applications in accordance with the framework of FAP's Task 2.

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