The Marketing Order for California almonds was amended in 2007 to enhance food safety. Around 400-500 million pounds of almonds undergo an added step in processing to reduce risk of salmonella contamination. This paper reports on the logistics necessary for implementing the program. We use a...

Blueberries are experiencing a major increase in acreage in Georgia and the Southeast region. The demand for blueberry crop budgets is at an all-time high. Due to the world economic crisis, agricultural input prices are constantly fluctuating. The increase or decrease in input prices has a...

This study estimates the relationship between catfish feed prices (per-unit cost) and relevant economic factors such as the price of farm-raised catfish, farm inputs, and feed ingredients, which include com, soybean meal, cottonseed meal and wheat middling. Given changes in these economic...

The recent trends in primary food prices have been evaluated as a signifier of the potential threats to the world in terms of food shortages and hunger. The prices of primary agricultural products like wheat and rice have risen significantly in the essential producer countries. The recent price...

The organic segment of the food industry had sales of $17 billion in 2006, with an annual growth rate of 20 percent The growth in organic baby food has paralleled the overall growth in organic foods. The organic niche for baby-food processors and retailers may continue to be a window of...

This paper evaluates how efficient US futures prices have predicted future spot prices since 2006. It uses cointegration and causality methods to assess the efficiency of US commodity futures markets. The cointegration between the spot and futures price is a necessary condition for our...

The length of the growing season can limit sales of locally grown foods despite increasing demand. Season-extension technologies such as passive solar greenhouses ("hoop houses") have potential to address this constraint. This paper reports :findings from the first year of a project which...