Restrictions on the hyperbolic trigonometric (HT) transformation are imposed to guarantee that a probability density function is obtained from the maximum likelihood estimation. Performance of the restricted HT transformation using data generated from normal, beta, gamma, logistic, log-normal,...

In production agriculture, good management is demonstrated by profits that are persistenly greater than those of similar neighboring farms. This research examined the effects of management practices on risk-adjusted profit per acre for Kansas farms over 1990-1999. The management practices were...

A whole farm economic analysis was conducted to provide a detailed assessment into the economic, risk, and production implications due to the adoption of auto-steer navigation. It was determined that auto-steer navigation was profitable for a grain farmer in Kentucky with net returns increasing...

Exploratory factor analysis was used to identify approaches to farm management based on a list of management questions posed to a sample of U.S. cash-grain farmers. Three approaches were identified by the factor analysis: price negotiation, long-term cost control, and input adjustment. Estimated...

Agricultural water use is becoming an issue in much of the South due to population growth. Results of projects evaluating the impacts of conservation strategies aimed at reallocating or extending the life of water supplies are being met with great skepticism by stakeholder groups. In order to...

The three articles presented at this invited session examine the evolution of water policy planning and the implementation of regulatory tools to achieve water conservation objectives. Two articles focus on Texas water issues and the third focuses on the Georgia planning experience. Each article...

Increased demand for corn for ethanol production has helped push grain prices to record levels. This has increased livestock production costs, and producers have responded with changes to production systems. This paper explores the degree to which costs can be mitigated with alternative feeds,...

Using optimization techniques in a simulation framework, this study demonstrates the synergy between risk balancing and alternative strategies in effectively reducing risk under changing farm conditions. Highly risk-averse farmers tend to prefer integrated risk-management plans, based on the...

Texas dryland upland cotton yields have historically exhibited greater variation and more distributional irregularities than the yields of other crops, raising concerns that conventional parametric distribution models may generate biased or otherwise inaccurate crop insurance premium rate...

The imputed pig death loss contained in the reported monthly U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) pig crop data over the December 1995–June 2006 period ranged from 24.93% to 12.75%. Clearly, there are substantial measurement errors in the USDA monthly pig crop data. In this paper, we...