School of Agriculture, Food and Ecosystem Sciences - Theses
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ItemFarm size, structural change, and adjustment policy : a study of the dried vine fruit industry in Sunraysia and Robinvale( 1977)Dried vine fruit farms in Sunraysia and Robinvale were nearly all established under closer settlement schemes, with farm size averaging about 8 hectares. The present study indicates that economics of size exist up to a harvested area of about 25 hectares. This would suggest that structural change is occurring in the industry, with farms being amalgamated to take advantage of these economies of size. However, structural change in recent years has been negligible. Some of the obstacles to adjustment are examined in the thesis. They have important implications for government policy; in particular, there is a need for a Land Authority to facilitate adjustment in dried vine fruit growing regions. The thesis also considers some methodological problems in estimating economies of size, and in deriving policy proposals from such estimates. It concludes that the results of most studies of farm size, including this one, must he regarded as provisional, pending the outcome of properly designed empirical tests. It also concludes that the Paretian concept of efficiency is inadequate as a framework for adjustment policy. I would like to thank my supervisors,Mr. G.W. Edwards, Mr. N.H. Sturgess, and Dr. A.S. Watson, for their advice and encouragement during this study. I am also grateful to Mr. John Connell who colaborated on a preliminary statistical analysis (see Section 4.1.6). Acknowledgement is made to the Bureau of Agricultural Economics for the data used in the empirical sections of the thesis. I am grateful to Mrs. Sue Valiance for her excellent typing of the manuscript, and to Mr. Bill Dahl for preparing the diagrams. I was assisted financially by an A.M. White Scholarship and an R.W.S. Nicholas Scholarship. Finally, I would like to thank my wife, Jacky, for her financial support, for help in preparing the bibliography, and for her patient encouragement.
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ItemThe Victorian scallop fisheries : an economic analysis( 1978)This thesis studies the Victorian scallop industry in an economic framework. It is the first of its kind to be performed on a Victorian fishery. A static model of a scallop fishery is used to investigate whether a reduction in the size of the scallop fleet would be desirable. The implications are examined of various management schemes which would aim to maximise the net economic benefits to be earnt from scallop fishing. Fishing industries and especially those based on highly valued species such as the scallop, have a tendency to be problem industries. The Victorian scallop industry is no exception. The common. property nature of the marine fishery is the root cause of this problem. Left to their own devices fishermen will keep entering a fishery as long as there is incentive to do so. The central hypothesis of this thesis is that the amounts of capital and labour allocated to the Victorian scallop fishing industry are excessive. The common property-theory of a fishery is dealt-with in chapter 2. There a static model of the . fishery is developed through two stages. The first enables the identification of the optimal rate of exploitation given that the objective of management is to maximise resource rent. The second stage of this model enables-the identification of several different optima each according to a form of control or ownership. Consideration is also given to some models which incorporate time as a variable. Chapter 3 deals with fisheries management. It outlines those measures which may be used to control-fishing effort as well as the secondary measures which may also be necessary to control a fishery. Chapter 4 discusses the two Victorian scallop fisheries at Port Phillip Bay and Lakes Entrance. It gives background. information on scallop fishing and a history of past and present management measures. It includes an outline of the management objectives the Fisheries and Wildlife Division of the Ministry for Conservation has in mind when formulating policy. A brief description of the biology of the scallop is given in chapter 5. This is followed by the development of a yield model which. is then applied to the two scallop fisheries. The results of a cost and income survey of scallop fishermen, are reported in chapter 6 and these results are used to calculate linear cost of effort functions for the two fisheries. Chapter 7 draws together the yield and cost of effort functions to produce cost of output functions. These - functions enable the estimation of optimal amounts of effort and catch given that the objective of management was to maximise resource rent. The implications of these results are discussed in chapter 8.