Weakening demand for livestock and dairy produce, historically high prices for feed ingredients and increasingly strict regulations on animal waste management continue to put significant pressure on livestock and dairy operating margins. In this paper, we use representative farm mathematical...

The U.S. Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 mandates the production of 16 billion gallons of cellulosic biofuels by 2022. Desirable feedstock properties, biomass to biofuel conversion rate, and investment required in plant and equipment differs depending on which of several competing...

This paper proposes and applies an innovative estimation approach for farm group programming models using Generalised Maximum Entropy. The proposed set-up simultaneously determines calibrating cost function parameters and input allocations to production activities. The methodology is applied to...

While climate change is widely regarded as a threat to food security in southern Africa, few studies attempt to link the science of climate change impacts on agriculture with the specificities of smallholder livelihoods. In this paper, we build a series of linear programming (LP) farm-household...

This article investigates the role of greenhouse gas (GHG) offset payment design on abatement efficiency in agriculture. We develop a regionally disaggregated positive mathematical programming model of California agriculture calibrated to economic and agronomic information. Regional yield and...

In this paper, we simulate the Brazilian agriculture and transportation fuel sectors using a price endogenous mathematical programming model to analyze the impacts of recent changes in fuel policies and strong demand in world sugar markets on producers’ supply responses, consumers’ driving...

There is a need for cost-effective methods to reduce nitrogen pollution from agriculture. Marginal abatement cost (MAC) curves for nitrate-nitrogen pollution in an agricultural watershed are evaluated using estimated crop yield and nitrate pollution production functions for alternative cropping...

Biorefineries that plan to use switchgrass exclusively will have to account for year-to-year variability in feedstock production. The objective of this research is to determine the quantity, class, and location of land to lease for switchgrass production to provide for the needs of a...

The value of an innovative new seed technology is evaluated in a discrete stochastic programming framework for a representative farm in the northern Corn Belt. Temperature-activated polymer coated seed has the potential to increase net returns by reducing yield loss due to delayed planting and...