Includes: Front Cover, Table of Contents, Editorial Information

Machinery-sharing provides an alternative for smaller producers to obtain the efficiencies of large farming operations and remain competitive in an increasingly concentrated agricultural industry. This research uses a multiple case study design to examine the motivations for sharing equipment...

This study provides valuable insights into cow-calf producer voluntary participation in the National Animal Identification System and producers’ perceptions of several issues critically impacting the success of voluntary traceability systems. Cow-calf producers believe that the most...

While a substantial amount of research has been devoted to showing what social capital does, research explaining social capital itself lags behind. The literature has a long tradition of examining the effect of social capital on local economic growth and development. In this paper we examine...

This paper introduces and defines the concept of collective entrepreneurship. A review of the defensive single-level rent-seeking objective of traditional agricultural cooperatives is introduced followed by an analysis of recent studies documenting a shift in the objective functions of producers...

While state government spending on early education has grown in recent years, accessibility of preschool programs for rural children remains a problem. Using census-tract data from a nationally-representative data set on U.S. children, multinomial logit estimation reveals significant differences...

One of the most critical elements of a nation’s social infrastructure is its system of education. Concerns with accessibility, achievement, and choice are significant elements in determining the quality of life for all communities, but most especially for rural communities where...

The substitution of capital for labor and new labor-saving technologies has reduced the labor required for farming, yet many farms today depend on hired labor in some form. Common in the literature is the assumption of perfectly substitutable farm labor. This has implications for the...

The increase in energy prices between 2004 and 2007 has several potential consequences for aggregate agriculture in the U.S. We estimate the derived input demand elasticities for energy as well as capital, labor, and materials using the differential supply formulation. Given that the derived...