This paper examines how off-farm work affects the economic performance of crop and (selected) livestock farms. It estimates returns to scale and technical efficiency following an input distance function approach and compares the relative performance of dairy and corn farm operator households...

Replaced with revised version of paper 07/15/08.

Replaced with revised version of paper 04/20/10.

This paper presents the first part of an ongoing project whose objective is to present a long term relationship between conservation tillage, adoption of GE crops and pesticide use for major crops in the United States. In addition, the project aims to provide some innovative tests on causality...

This paper presents findings on the use of HT corn and quality-adjusted herbicide use for 12 key corn producing states using a panel data set for 1986-2008. Our preliminary findings indicate an insignificant impact of HT corn on herbicide use, conditioning or accounting for HT corn with other...

While the growing importance of off-farm earnings suggests large benefits accrue to farmers from efforts to expand off-farm income opportunities, survival still depends on greater efficiency. To comprehensively gauge the economic health of farm operator households we interpret off-farm income as...

The economic well-being of most U.S. farm households depends on income from both onfarm and off-farm activities. Consequently, for many farm households, economic decisions (including technology adoption and other production decisions) are likely to be shaped by the allocation of managerial time...

The objective of this study is to assess the technical efficiency and other economic performance measures of southeastern U.S. cow-calf farms. We describe and compare cow-calf operations by size, farm resource regions, and states, and measure their relative competitiveness. We estimate a Cobb-...

This paper is an assessment of patterns of investment by farm households via an econometric model adapted from a land allocation approach of Holt (1999). This analysis will shed light on the importance of different classes of assets to farm household well-being, and show the reaction of farm...

Water quality has implications for the health of our ecosystem and the welfare of our population. Agriculture is one of the major contributors of non-point source pollution that contaminates our nation's water supplies. Understanding how farmers substitute manure for commercial fertilizers...