Commercial feed blending is a complex process consisting of many potential raw ingredients and final products. The sheer number of daily orders and final products at a typical feed mill means that raw ingredients cannot be mixed to directly produce final products in an economical fashion. As a...

In investment analysis, uncertainty and irreversibility can undermine net present value (NPV) as a decision rule since the option to delay investment may have value. We apply the real option theory of investment to the pasture investment decision facing livestock producers in southwest Western...

Aset of simulations were used to estimate the impact of improvements in cattle breeding efficiency and other management factors on gross margins in extensive pastoral systems in Western Australia. The simulations showed that gross margin was an increasing function of breeding rates, but age at...

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to assess farmers’ willingness to participate and pay for weather-based index insurance in the Upper East Region of Ghana, and what factors influence the participation and purchase of crop insurance schemes. Design/methodology/approach: A survey of 200...

Irreversibility and uncertainty render the standard capital budgeting techniques such as net present value (NPV) analysis insufficient as a decision criterion. The standard NPV underestimates the value of the investment by not including the value of waiting for new information to reduce the...

For horticultural commodities, labor is necessary for post-harvest activities such as management, marketing, packing, and distribution. We create a model with pre- and post-harvest tasks and transportation network to study how a shortage in the pre-harvest labor market affects the post-harvest...