Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics Elton R. Smith Endowment

As with cropping systems and animal production systems, while integrated food systems as an object for economic inquiry had received attention the perspective was usually descriptive. These systems were, and remain, complex, often avail of locality-specific resources and deal with information asymmetries. More recently, standardizing technologies have brought more similarity to regionally disparate systems while innovations in economic methods have facilitated the analysis of complex systems. Many of the papers listed under this section nip around the edges of that theme. Recurrent topics are information and technology and competitive pressure. Other papers listed in this section really don’t fit under that theme at all and are best seen as contributions to developing the standard microeconomic theory of Industrial Organization.