Bt corn offers a powerful tool to control European corn borers and some other pests. Because pest infestations and farming practices differ across the Corn Belt, economic benefits also differ. This research estimates the value of Bt corn across the Corn Belt. Results identify areas where Bt...

Automatic, or robotic, milking systems are beginning to be introduced to U.S. dairy farmers. This paper employs an ex ante approach to real options investment analysis of automatic milking systems.

A stochastic capital budget was used to analyze the effect of net metering policies and carbon credits on profitability of anaerobic digesters on dairy farms in Pennsylvania. We analyzed three different farm sizes—500, 1,000, and 2,000 cows—and considered the addition of a solids...

The financial performance and relationships between several management factors and financial performance are examined in a panel of 107 New York dairy farms. A panel regression model with fixed effects is estimated in an effort to identify management factors that influence profitability. The...

Automatic, or robotic, milking systems have the potential to significantly change the way milk is produced on U.S. dairy farms. However, there is a high degree of uncertainty associated with adoption of this new technology. A real options approach is used to analyze the decision to replace an...

This research tests for causality between indexed retail pork revenues and pork advertising. Evidence was found of feedback between revenues and total pork advertising, but not between revenues and generic advertising. In fact, generic advertising was found to have no significant impact on...

The financial performance and relationships between several management factors and farm financial performance are examined in a panel data set of 107 New York dairy farms. The overall level of compound and annual return on assets of the farms considered in this study was quite low. However, the...

This study examined the potential economic impacts in the United States of the commercial adoption of a corn rootworm (CRW) resistant transgenic corn. Using a counterfactual approach, we estimated that if the technology had been made available in the year 2000 at a price that would equate per...

Sound human resource management practices such as performance bonuses, performance reviews and feedback, and standard operating procedures allow farm managers to improve the human capital, and profitability, on the farm. To date, no research of the impact of HRM practices on farm profitability...

Two approaches have been taken to the modeling of poultry demand in U.S. meat demand studies. One has been to ignore turkey, and estimate demands for beef, pork, and chicken. The second has been to include turkey by combining it with chicken, and estimating demands for beef, pork, and poultry....