Analyzing the Economic Impact of National Beef Import Level Changes on the Virginia Beef and Pork Sectors

Dynamic, recursive simulation models for the publications and the Virginia Crop Reporting national livestock-feed sector have been deService. signed by agricultural economists for the specific purpose of making long-run projections and evaluating alternative agriculture policies (ReyVIRGINIA BEEF SECTOR nolds et al.; Yanagida and Conway). While these models are useful for describing the workConceptually, a complete econometric model ings of the national grain and livestock sectors, of the Virginia beef sector would have three sets they are incomplete for policy evaluation purof equations (Crom; Folwell and Shapouri; Reutposes at a subnational or state level (Knapp et linger). A set of equations would correspond to al.; Maki et al.). In these situations, unless state each of the beef cow, steer, heifer and calf subor regional production and marketing patterns sectors. Each subsector would contain five equaare represented as a constant percentage of the tions estimating inventory, slaughter, liveweight, national model solution values, the impact of price, and income; however, data limitations rechanges in a state's crop or livestock production duced the amount of possible disaggregation in relative to other states and alternative policy dethis investigation. Four annual behavioral relacisions cannot be considered (Ratajczak). Contionships were actually estimated: beef cow insequently, a state model must be able to reflect ventory, beef cattle slaughter, calf inventory, the impact of national and international policies and calf slaughter. In functional form, the equaand events to be effective and functional (Colyer tions are and Irwin).