First-generation grain ethanol biofuel has affected the historical excess capacity problem in U.S. agriculture. Second-generation cellulosic ethanol biofuel has had difficulty achieving cost-competitiveness. Third-generation drop-in biofuels are under development. If lignocellulosic biomass from...

Technology that would enable use of lignocellulosic biomass for biorefinery feedstock is under development. The 2002 Farm Bill permitted managed harvesting of biomass from Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) land. This study was conducted to determine the cost to procure, harvest, store, and...

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...

Dual-purpose winter wheat production is an important economic enterprise in the southern Great Plains of the United States. Because of the complex interactions involved in producing wheat grain and beef gain from a single crop, stocking density is an important decision. The objective of the...

A method of estimating a linear response stochastic plateau function is developed and used to determine optimal levels of nitrogen fertilization for wheat. Under the stochastic plateau model, optimizing behavior implies different nitrogen levels than the linear plateau model, depending on the...

The Federal Agriculture Improvement and Reform Act of 1996 was promoted as legislation that would enable and encourage farmers to base planting decisions on market incentives rather than commodity programs. Data from a designed experiment are used to compare the economics of three cropping...

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...

A site-specific fertilizer application system that uses optical reflectance measurements of growing plants to estimate fertilizer requirements and that can apply liquid nitrogen fertilizer at a grid level of four square feet is under development. The objective is to determine if the...