THE WELFARE EFFECTS OF CONSUMING A CANCER PREVENTION DIET

representative of US market prices. Finally, it may be possible to purchase additional
data from the USDA on retail prices for many of the food items in this study. Grocery
store scanner data are not available for fruits and vegetables. Data on inputs such as
land, labor and purchased inputs are available from the USDA and the California
Agricultural Statistic Service.

Demand elasticities have been estimated for apples, oranges, bananas, grapes,
orange juice, apple juice, other fruit, lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, other
vegetables, canned tomatoes, canned peas, and other processed fruit (Huang, 1995).

Supply elasticities are more difficult to obtain. While supply elasticities for some
commodities (such as avocados) have been estimated, most commodities included in
this analysis have not. For those commodities, the elasticities will need to be
extrapolated from other studies. When doing so it is important to distinguish between
short-run and long-run effects. Some resources are more easily moved from the
production of one commodity and into another. In the short run growers may hesitate
to switch land permanently out of rice or cotton production, as it means losing base
acreage for farm assistance programs. Tree fruit and nut crops are long-term
commitments. Growers cannot move land in and out of production of those crops on
an annual basis, as they can with vegetable and melon production. Therefore, tree fruit
and nut crops are less responsive in the short run to changes in prices than vegetables
and melons. In the long-run, producers are able to move all resources to their best use.
The Census of Agriculture for California contains information on input use in California
(USDA 1999a).

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