This study investigates the underlying reasons for a producer's choice of marketing channels for stocker cattle in the United States. In addition to traditional public auctions, private sales, video auctions, and Internet auctions have been recently used in the marketing of stocker cattle....

Many Thoroughbred stallions are being bred to increasing numbers of mares. This practice raises the question of how progeny value is affected by an increased supply of foals by the same sire, which ultimately influences the sire’s value. This paper addresses that question. Three of the...

This paper critically examines linkages between alternative farming practices and environmental quality. Environmental impacts of high-yield farming are contrasted to those of low-yield farming. Traditional low-yield farming systems, while being promoted by environmental groups, have resulted in...

Much has changed in the 50 years since modern food aid began with the enactment of U.S. Public Law 480 in 1954. Yet contemporary policy debates often become derailed by failures to appreciate the significant changes that have already occurred. This paper identifies the most important of these...

The 1996 Federal Agriculture Improvement and Reform (FAIR) Act dramatically affects the decision-making environment of farms by introducing provisions for reducing farm income support payments. These program changes are likely to affect not only farm incomes, but also farm capital asset markets....

According to estimates made by the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute in March of 1999, there are several macro factors that will significantly impact U.S. and global agriculture over the next decade. Factors leading to near-term price pressure are contrasted with likely...

What makes agriculture especially deserving of an active government safety net? What is different about agricultural production? Are we concerned about a safe and reliable food supply or about farmers' incomes and returns to assets? Those who make farm policy base their arguments on all of these...

Relatively low crop prices over the past two years, as well as regional weather adversity, has been the catalyst for the passage of "ad hoc" emergency relief. This paper examines the economic and financial status of 41 representative panel farms over the 1999-2002 period. When forecasting...

This study generates an econometric model of the allocation of political contributions by food firms. It combines information about food firms' total expenditures for political influence with the behavioral assumption of profit maximization to test the hypothesis that food manufacturing firms do...