Purpose – This article seeks to examine the reference yield calculation method used in crop insurance rating and provides recommendations that could potentially improve actuarial performance of the Federal crop insurance program. Design/methodology/approach – Conceptual, numerical, and...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to be an academic inquiry into rating issues confronted by the US Federal Crop Insurance program stemming from changes in participation rates as well as the weighting of data to reflect longer-run weather patterns. Design/methodology/approach – The...

Purpose: Revenue insurance is the most popular form of insurance available in the US federal crop insurance program. The majority of crop revenue policies are sold with a harvest price replacement feature that pays out on lost crop yields at the maximum of a realized or projected harvest price....

Purpose – The aim of this study is to use a financial approach based on the Du Pont expansion to investigate the impact of demographics, specialization, tenure, vertical integration, farm type, and regional location on the three levers of performance (ROE) – namely, net profit margins, asset...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to assess the impacts of GM crop adoption on the profitability of farms operated by young and/or beginning farmers and ranchers (YBFR). Design/methodology/approach – This research uses weighted quantile regression analysis in conjunction with 2004-2006...

The rate of return on farm assets is a key indicator of the profitability of farm sector investments. The residual income approach is most commonly used to estimate the returns to farm assets, farmland, and labor and management. However this approach may be sensitive to the underlying...

Producers and lenders seek to avoid agricultural production-related risks through various managerial and institutional mechanisms. For individual farmers and agribusinesses, risk management involves choosing among alternatives for reducing the effects of risk on the firm, thereby affecting the...

This paper examines the changes in farm sector wealth from 1949 through 2002. The study uses Theil’s entropy-based measure of inequality of farm wealth for 10 regions of the United States. The entropy measure is then used to decompose U.S. inequality into within-region and between-region...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the effects of farm income variability, farm size, and other socio-demographic characteristics on the precautionary saving behavior of farm households and to estimate the influences of the identified factors on the amount of...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to use the DuPont expansion to examine those factors underlying differences in (rates of) return on different crop portfolios over space (ten regions) and time (1960-2004). The paper also estimates the impact of government payments on farmland values...