The 2002 Farm Bill creates several opportunities for landowners to adopt management practices that protect and improve soil and water quality. Landowners considering enrollment in conservation programs must compare the monetary and nonmonetary costs and benefits from removing land from...

Conservation reserve program (CRP) payments amount to several billion dollars annually. Payments are allocated to both remove land from production and to help farmers pay for conservation improvements. However, research examining whether farmers increase their utility with CRPs is limited. This...

Cropping in low-rainfall regions can be risky business. Farms are often characterized by high climatic and spatial variability, while input prices, particularly nitrogen (N) fertilisers, are rising steadily relative to grain prices. Consequently, in anticipation of having a poor season, farmers...

Mallee farmers minimize downside risk in dry seasons by applying low rates of nitrogen (N) fertiliser to their cereal crops. The opportunity to respond to and capitalize on the better years is further limited as most inputs are applied upfront at sowing. We used an economic-risk decision model...

Because the analysis of risky choice in agriculture and rural resource management is important but difficult, we argue that there is a need for some agreed principles on how to proceed. This paper is intended as a first step to this end. We start with the proposition that the importance of risk...