In some cultures inheritance customs results in land fragmentation such that over time operating farms become composed of a collection of spatially dispersed fields rather than a contiguous land unit. This study was conducted to determine the impact of land fragmentation as measured by average...

Biorefineries that plan to use switchgrass exclusively will have to account for year-to-year variability in feedstock production. The objective of this research is to determine the quantity, class, and location of land to lease for switchgrass production to provide for the needs of a...

A risk-averse irrigated corn producer would be better off choosing the more expensive subsurface drip irrigation (SDI) over center-pivot sprinkler (CPS), given limited aquifer life and swine effluent and urea fertilization. A stochastic optimization using EPIC data maximized expected utility of...

This study compares he profitability and risk related to conventional and organic vegetable production systems A linear programming model was used to find the optimal mix of vegetables in both production systems. And a target MOTAD (minimization of total absolute deviation) model was used to...

Crop rotations are not common in the wheat belt of the Southern Plains. After years of continuous wheat, weeds have become increasingly difficult and expensive to manage. Yield data were elicited from farmers and used to determine if canola-wheat-wheat rotations are economically competitive with...

Biomass yield to nitrogen response functions were determined for four perennial grass species. The species, nitrogen level, and harvest frequency that maximize expected net returns given the climate and soils of the U.S. Southern Plains were determined. For most combinations of biomass and...

Dual-purpose winter wheat (fall-winter forage plus grain) production is an important economic enterprise in the southern Great Plains. Grazing termination to enable grain production is a critical decision. The objective is to determine the optimal grazing termination date for dual-purpose wheat....

This study was conducted to determine the value of independent and joint nitrogen and phosphorus soil tests. Generalized stochastic dominance was used to estimate the value of information. Combined information from both the nitrogen and phosphorus tests was substantially more valuable than the...

Replaced with revised version of paper 08/31/06.