The objective of this study is to assess the scale and technical efficiencies and other economic performance measures of southeastern U.S. cow-calf farms. We describe and compare cow-calf operations by size and farm resource region and measure their relative competitiveness. We estimate an input...

We estimate an input distance function for U.S. dairy farming to examine the competitiveness of organic and non-organic dairy production by system and size. Across organic/non-organic systems and size classes, size is the major determinant of competitiveness based on various measures of...

Costs, returns, and profitability of cow-calf farms that are organic or transitioning to organic are compared with those of cow-calf farms that are non-organic. A method of matching samples is used for the comparison. Results suggest higher cost of organic production due to higher unpaid labor,...

Our initial findings indicate that GM crops do not contribute to the decline of traditional family farms. We make a significant methodological impact by using the within transformation to remove unobserved individual effects and demonstrate that the within transformation results in ML estimates...

The share of corn used in ethanol production has been growing rapidly. USDA predicts that more than 30 percent of the corn crop will be used for ethanol production in 2009/2010. Expanded corn acreage contributes to the application of more fertilizer and is likely to introduce a larger volume of...

This study describes and compares cow-calf operations and assesses their relative competitiveness, developing performance measures for a sample of U.S. farms. We find that larger operations tend to be significantly more scale and technically efficient than smaller operations. However, we do not...

Facing rapid and significant change in the sector, U.S. dairy production trends from 1993-2005 were tracked and performance measures (scale and technical efficiency and returns on assets) were estimated for conventional and pasture-based dairy farms using data from USDA's Agricultural Resource...

In recent years, significant structural and production system changes have been noted in the U.S. and European Union, as well as increased interest in pasture-based dairy systems. Technical efficiency, returns to scale, and farm characteristics are compared by size and production system in...

US swine production has undergone significant structural change in the last two decades, reflecting increasing size and specialization (Key and McBride; Key). In particular, the widespread use of contracting has enabled individual producers to grow by specializing in a single phase of production....

Recent trends in livestock concentration suggest that there may be an increasing risk of water pollution from manure applications. These trends in livestock operations may be offsetting improvements in commercial fertilizer management that have the potential to reduce the risk of water...