The paper discusses the context of changing sanitary-phyto-sanitary (SPS) standards, concerns, questions and studies related to food standards and safety,strategic options for developing countries to deal with rising standards, results for case studies on compliance costs, benefits and...

Recent trend depicts that tomatoes and tomatoes products rank 2nd most important vegetable crop in the United States after potatoes and potatoes products contributing 20 percent of total vegetable production. More-so, tomato is equally ranked 2nd in the United States in terms of production...

This study compares farm operators’ risk perceptions and actual realization of risk attitudes revealed through off-farm labor, enterprise diversification, and use of contracts, crop insurance, and other types of insurance, using data from 2001 Agricultural Resource Management Survey (ARMS)....

Results of a nationally representative survey of US farmers link previously validated survey measures of risk aversion and interpersonal trust to farmers’ intended use of online venues for transacting used equipment. Other factors affecting online purchase propensity includes the quality of...

Using a national survey, double hurdle models are estimated to examine the impact of farmers’ risk attitude on use of production and marketing contracts. Risk averse farmers are less likely to use contracts but risk attitude does not have any significant impact on the intensity at which...

The commodity bull cycle of 2006-2008 and subsequent dramatic price decline have been a source of hardship for traditional commodity market participants such as producers and merchant/shippers. The usefulness of futures markets has been called into question, especially given that some market...

Recent spikes in commodity prices have led to higher margin amounts and option premiums. For the most part, producers have always attributed their lack of use in reducing risk via futures and options markets to the high cost associated with the use of these markets. This study determines the...

This paper investigates the dynamics of sequential decision-making in agricultural futures and options markets using a quantile regression framework. Analysis of trading records of 12 traders suggests that there is great heterogeneity in individual trading behavior. Traders respond differently...