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

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...

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...

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...

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

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...

Pesticide use has changed considerably over the past five decades. Rapid growth characterized the first 20 years, ending in 1981. The total quantity of pesticides applied to the 21 crops analyzed grew from 196 million pounds of pesticide active ingredients in 1960 to 632 million pounds in 1981....

This paper provides a farm sector comparison of levels of capital input for fourteen OECD countries for the period 1973-2002. The starting point for construction of a measure of capital input is the measurement of capital stock. Estimates of depreciable capital are derived by representing...

Preliminary estimates of technical efficiency based on USDA data for 1997 through 2001 indicate that independent operations were significantly more efficient than contract operations. Preliminary estimates also indicate that both types of operations exhibited increasing returns to scale with...