Politicians dealing with the “"farm problem”" sometimes lament that output increases when prices go up and when prices go down. This article presents three possible theoretical explanations. In the first, farmers deplete soil (over-farm) when prices are low and imperfect capital markets...

Recent rangeland reform attempts have increased ranchers'Â’ uncertainty of retaining grazing permits on federal land. This uncertainty is analyzed with a model of grazing on federal land. Ranchers facing this uncertainty will behave differently than if they were guaranteed the renewal of...

American agriculture is shifting from homogeneous commodities to differentiated products. Value differentiation, the process by which agrifood chain actors isolate, match, and exploit heterogeneity in consumer preferences and product attributes, is examined. Value differentiation is...

Offering evidence from the California Irrigation Management Information System (CIMIS) and centering around Kenkel and Norris conclusions regarding “"Agricultural Producers'’ Willingness to Pay for Real-Time Mesoscale Weather Information,"” this article questions the use of...

This article reviews two major approached used in the past for risk analysis—the expected utility approach and the use of safety rules—and endeavors to reconcile their applicability and use in light of the recent nonexpected utility risk literature and working using the mean-Gini...

A dynamic framework is presented for analyzing regulations affecting the use of spoilage-reducing inputs with potential negative environmental effects, such as pesticides, growth regulators, chemical preservatives, and irradiation. Such regulations change intertemporal consumption patterns as...

This article argues that the existing maze of pesticide policies reflects the multidimensionality of side effects of pesticide use that cannot be addressed by uniform policies. Pesticide policies will improve as (a) economic literacy among natural scientists and policymakers increases; (b)...