Production Costs

 In Florida, four production areas were delineated: Dade county, Palm Beach county,

Southwest Florida, and the west central production area located near Ruskin and Palmetto.

These regions are shown in Figure E.2. Using the survey data presented in Section 4, cropping

systems were developed for each production area. The production budgets published annually

by the University of Florida (Smith and Taylor, 1993) were adapted to provide pre-harvest cost

of production. These figures are shown in Table E.8. It is important to note those cropping

systems which do not utilize methyl bromide.

 Per acre yields were also based on the work of Smith and Taylor (1993). In some cases,

yields were adjusted to reflect the per acre yields reported in the Vegetable Summary. The

extension specialist survey discussed in Section 4 also provided information on per acre yields.

The per acre yields included in the model are shown in Table E.9.

 Per acre pre-harvest production costs and yields for Mexico, Texas, and California are

shown in Table E. 10. Most of the data for Mexico is based upon the production budgets found

in Van Sickle et al., (1994). The pepper budget for Texas was based upon information from

the Texas Extension Service, and the California strawberry information was provided by the

California Extension Service.

 An assumption imposed on the model is that the total production from one acre of a

particular cropping system is not concentrated in a single month. The enterprises included in

the model are composites of all similar cropping systems in that production area. For example,

tomatoes produced in Dade county, Florida are harvested from November through March. This

occurs because growers stagger plantings so that mature product will be available over several