In emerging markets for high-value food products in developing countries, processing companies search for efficient ways to source raw material of consistent quality. One widely embraced approach is contract farming. But relatively little is known about the appropriate design of contracts,...

Since corn is the primary feedstock used for producing ethanol in the U.S., and ethanol production yields byproducts that can be fed to livestock in combination with corn, addressing the effect of ethanol production on meat markets should consider not only demand and supply interdependence...

There is pressure in Australia for water management reform to ensure an efficient allocation of resources between productive uses and to provide adequate conservation of the environment. The establishment of water markets and trade has been seen as the primary mechanism for improving the...

Much of Australia’s native vegetation has been cleared or altered as a result of agricultural development. The native vegetation that remains on private land is highly fragmented and continues to be degraded and modified due to various land use and environmental pressures. One of the major...

This paper examines consumer attitudes to quality characteristics of chickpea in India. A linear hedonic price functional form was estimated using price and quality data of 52 kabuli chickpea and 128 desi-type chickpea samples obtained from major chickpea markets in India. Empirical results...

This report examines optimum supply formula (OSF) in the tart cherry industry. The OSF is a tool for stabilizing market prices as authorized by a federal market order (FMO). The current OSF sets the optimum supply volume (OSV), or free sales of tart cherries in a given harvest year equal to the...

Most of the increase in ethanol production in the 2008-2012 period can be attributed to the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA) and earlier federal energy legislation. The expansion in U.S. biofuel production, particularly ethanol, was the predominant cause of the elevated...