Increasing volatility in milk and feed prices has led to higher levels of market and financial risk for dairy farmers. We examine dairy farmer use of forward pricing methods for milk sales and feed purchases. Operators with larger herds, higher levels of education, and those farm businesses that were not organized as sole proprietorships were more likely to have used forward pricing. We also examine reasons dairy farm operators had not used these tools to date and find that the most common reason was lack of knowledge. These findings may be used to target educational seminars and outreach to dairy farm managers.

Questions have been raised regarding the economic costs of a foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) outbreak in the United States. This analysis examines how welfare changes are measured and argues that they must be decomposed by groups. Producers with animals quarantined and slaughtered because of FMD measure their welfare change using lost sales. Producers not quarantined measure their welfare change using producer surplus. The change in national sales revenue is accurate when the supply elasticity is low. Welfare changes for consumers also must be decomposed because the change in aggregate consumer surplus hides important shifts in welfare among groups of consumers.

A two-stage model is used to examine a landowner's decision to use riparian buffers. First, the farmer chooses whether to continue farming or to sell the land for development. If the farmer continues farming, then he or she must decide whether or not to plant a buffer. If the farmer plants a buffer, he or she must choose its type: trees or grass. Simulations of a representative farmer determine the parameters and parameter values that affect each decision. The farmer chooses to plant a buffer unless the net crop price is high or the land rental rate is low. The choice of buffer type is affected by crop price, farm size, relative incentive payments, relative cost share rates, and amount of deer damage.

This paper reports results from a U.S. national telephone survey ongenetically modified foods (vegetable oil, cornflakes, and salmon). Thesurvey featured a contingent valuation in which respondents chose betweenthe GM and non-GM alternatives with an option of indifference. The binomialand multinomial logit models yielded estimated willingness to pay (WTP) toavoid the GM alternatives. Respondents were willing to pay 20.9%, 14.8%,28.4%, and 29.7% of the base prices to avoid GM vegetable oil, GMcornflakes, GM-fed salmon, and GM salmon, respectively. The inclusion ofindifference option could increase the sample size and moderate the meanWTP.

Using data from the 1994-1996 CSFII/DHKS, we identify and assess factors affecting the decision to consume pork and conditional on consuming pork, the decision of the amount of pork intake. Branded and generic advertising of pork play a prominent role in both decisions. Beef advertising, however, does not significantly affect either the probability of consuming pork or the amount of pork intake. Key health, attitudinal and lifestyle factors are smoking status, dietary status, body mass index, the importance of nutrition in buying food, and trimming visible fat from meat. These factors however impact the probability of consuming pork rather than the amount of pork consumed. Region, urbanization, race, age, income, and seasonality also affect pork demand.

This study measures willingness to pay (WTP) for extrinsic attributes (Angus, local, DNA traceable, raised carbon friendly, and humanely treated cattle) in steak and ground beef using choice-based experiments from a national consumer survey. Belief that survey responses could have consequences on beef products offered by the steak and ground beef industry is investigated, as well as its effect on attribute WTP. For most attributes, belief in consequentiality increases WTP. Results suggest that although consequentiality believers tend to place greater importance on certain food industry issues, they are less certain about the attribute's provision actually effecting change in the industry.

A visitor's decision to use a particular recreational site is influenced by the individual's taste as well as the characteristics of the site. For this reason, improved knowledge of the visitors' interests and factors influencing their choices are vital for both planning and policy formulations in coastal development. This study examines visitor characteristics and desired site-specific characteristics in order to determine the factors affecting use of the Louisiana coast for specific recreational purposes. We use a multinomial logit model and internet survey data to evaluate the factors affecting individuals' decisions to visit coastal Louisiana for a specific use. Results suggest that the major variables affecting the choice of coastal recreational activities include environmental quality of the site, income, and travel time.

An efficient market has been described by Fama (1970) as one in which prices always fully reflect all available information. Of the three tests of efficiency discussed, the weak form test is concerned with the randomness of price movements and measures the ability to predict future price changes from past and present changes. There are two general ways to evaluate weak form efficiency: statistical tests and mechanical trading rules. Statistical methods, including serial correlation, spectral analysis and nonparametric runs tests, permit hypothesis testing, but Fama and Blume (p. 227) point out that they may be of limited value with complex or irregular price structures.

Job satisfaction is likely the most studied work-related attitude and isassumed to influence a variety of behaviors. This study analyzes the jobsatisfaction of agricultural employees using Herzberg's theory, which isbroadly employed in management. Fourteen horticultural businessesparticipated in case studies of labor-management practices. Fifteennonsupervisory employee interviews were analyzed regarding job satisfaction.Components of job satisfaction relevant to horticultural employees werefamily-business values, achievement, recognition, work itself, involvement,personal life, interpersonal relationships, job security, supervision,working conditions, organization, safety, compensation, and information.While support for Herzberg's theory is weak, it is useful for classifyingemployees' attitudes.

A sample of 226 cash grain farms in the Lake States-Corn Belt region are analyzed to estimate the impact of restricting pesticide use on profits. These 226 farms are classified into small, medium, and large farms according to their sale revenues. The results suggest the existence of pest management practices that could substantially reduce pesticide use without incurring economic losses. The reductions in profits associated with gradual reductions in pesticide expenditure appear to increase with farm size.

This study investigates the relationship between cash and futures prices of soybeans and soybean meal from 1992 to 2013. Error correction models are estimated for the prices of both commodities. An exogenous measure of price variability is included in both models to determine if variability increases the speed with which cash and futures prices return to their long-run equilibrium relationship. This is used to measure the impact of price variability on short-run market efficiency and the price discovery process. The findings indicate that the level of price variability influences market adjustment rates and the price discovery process.

The effect of negative publicity on consumer demand for brands is examined in the context of recall of a peanut butter brand as a result of pathogen contamination. The recall was associated with negative impacts for the implicated brand and positive effects on the leading competitor brand. Consumers responded to the foodborne illness outbreak within three weeks. The case demonstrates that consumer response is an incentive for companies to prevent safety lapses and that the problems of one brand do not necessarily harm rivals within the category.

Increased use of alternative fuels and low commodity prices have contributed to the recent expansion of the U.S. ethanol industry. As with any competitive industry, some level of output price risk exists in the form of volatility; yet, no actively traded ethanol futures market exists to mitigate output price risk. This study reports estimated minimum variance cross-hedge ratios between Detroit spot cash ethanol and the New York Mercantile Exchange unleaded gasoline futures for 1-, 4-, 8-, 12-, 16-, 20-, 24-, and 28-week hedge horizons. The research suggests that a one-to-one cross-hedge ratio is not appropriate for some horizons.

This article analyzes factors that affected the decision to exit tobacco production in the wake of the tobacco buyout program using the data collected through a survey of Kentucky tobacco farmers. Using the Heuristic logistic regression model, we find that the decision to exit tobacco growing was affected by efficiency considerations, availability of off-farm employment, and exit barriers. Availability of off-farm employment had the strongest effect on farmers younger than 46, while the effect of variables measuring efficiency and exit barriers seemed to be more uniform across age groups. Based on the results we suggest several policy interventions.

This study contributes to the literature by using a spillover index method to examine the changing interrelations in volatility among corn and energy future prices. This methodology allows us to account for endogenously determined economic fundamentals and market speculation. After controlling for market trends and seasonality, we find relative large increases in volatility spillovers between corn, crude oil, and ethanol futures prices. Our results suggest that the cross-commodity spillovers provide useful incremental information in determining future price volatility; however, a commodity's own dynamics explain the largest portion of volatility spillovers.

Using IRI Infoscan data pertaining to six types of spaghetti sauces and employing an extension of the demand systems framework developed by Duffy, estimates are obtained of own-price, cross-price, and total expenditure elasticities as well as own- and crossproduct advertising elasticities. We augment the Duffy model through the use of a polynomial inverse lag mechanism to deal with the carryover effects of advertising. We also account for the impacts of features in newspaper fliers, in-store displays, and coupons. Advertising efforts by industry leaders in spaghetti sauce produce positive own-advertising elasticities (ranging from .000058 to .0168) and negative cross-advertising elasticities (ranging from –.000003 to –.0094). Own-price elasticities are in the elastic range, and nearly all compensated cross-price effects are positive, indicative of Hicksian substitutes.

Simulation has become a standard methodology in agricultural economics with models being used in all aspects of the profession. Johnson and Rausser identify two major types of production simulation models in their recent survey of the topic—firm and process models. Firm models, especially those concerned with growth, are most prominent in the agricultural economics literature. However, Johnson and Rausser also review some application of process models, which emphasize specific types of firm decisions. Biophysical simulation models are a specific form of these models concerned with the interaction of weather, soil, and/or biological processes in agricultural production and/or environmental loadings. In the recent agricultural economics literature, these models often are identified as bio-economic simulators. However, similar models are being utilized to evaluate erosion. Since erosion is largely a physical process, biophysical simulation seems more appropriate for the general classification of models considered in this paper.

Binary logit regression models were used to estimate factors affecting adoption of recommended management practices. Variables analyzed include aspects of farm structure, human capital, farm objectives, and production system employed by the producer. Results reveal that operation size and dependency upon income from the stocker operation, in particular, influence the adoption of recommended practices. Older producers and those pursuing a year-round production strategy were found to lag in adoption.

The introduction of vertical coordination in the hog industry has provided producers with new business arrangements for raising hogs. While some researchers have elicited utility functions for hog producers on the basis of income risk, none have addressed autonomy, a factor which appears to be important in business arrangement selection for independent family hog operations. In this study, a method is developed for eliciting a multi-attribute function with attributes of income and autonomy. Utility functions are elicited for a group of Minnesota farrow-to-finish hog producers. For these producers, autonomy dominated risk as the most important attribute in business arrangement selection.

In the past four decades, productivity in United States field crops has been transformed by the mechanical and fertilizer revolutions. Since input data are typically not available by crop, most investigations of productivity have been at the aggregate level. This paper develops a simultaneous equation, partial adjustment model of the demand for inputs, which generates estimates of the technical change parameters for wheat, corn, soybeans, and cotton. These estimates allow comparisons of the factor saving biases in technical change, leading to a novel test of the induced innovation hypothesis and the suggestion that the productivity slowdown may yet affect agriculture in the United States.