This study examines the rapidly expanding biofuels industry and identifies challenges for producer-owned biofuel projects. The U.S. ethanol industry has been growing rapidly, and biodiesel production is poised for similar growth. Producer involvement is driven by the desire to add value to farm...

The American Native Beef project involved a failed attempt to establish cow and bull slaughter operation in Southeast Oklahoma. The effort was initially organized as a new generation cooperative and raised over US$2.5M from area producers who retained their funds in escrow for over 5 years...

The Journal of Cooperatives (formally titled the Journal of Agricultural Cooperation) was published as a print journal from 1986 to 2003. The journal resumed publication as an electronic journal in 2007. This article provides a short history of the journal, analyzes trends in authorship,...

Years of research have been dedicated to determining the best time for producers to sell their commodities. Researchers have developed basis models, market efficiency tests, hedging/risk models, price forecasting models, and many other models in an attempt to help producers. There is a vast...

Some extension economists and others often recommend profit margin hedging in choosing thetiming of crop sales. This paper determines producer’s utility function and price processeswhere profit margin hedging is optimal. Profit margin hedging is shown to be an optimalstrategy under a highly...

The major finding is that liquidity costs in futures options market are two to three times higher thanliquidity costs in the futures market. Liquidity cost is one potential factor to consider when choosingbetween hedging with a futures contract or with an option contract. While there is...

Futures prices when combined with a basis forecast provide a reliable way to forecast cashprices. The most popular method of forecasting basis is historical moving averages. Given therecent failure of longer moving averages proposed by previous studies, this research reassessespast...