This paper describes farmer’s exposures to risks at the individual farm level and develops a model representing the decisions of an individual risk averse farmer facing variability in both prices and yields. A set of stylised risk market instruments is represented. The model is calibrated...

Water is a key input in the production of many goods and services and under certain conditions can become a critical limiting factor with significant impacts on regional development. This is the case of many agricultural European Mediterranean basins, where water deficit during drought events is...

The instability of prices and the hypothesis that speculative behaviour was one of its sources has brought renewed interest in the futures markets. In this paper, we concentrate on the European wheat futures markets (feed and milling) and the CBOT’s wheat contract as a comparison. The purpose...

Environmental, social, and economic attributes are important for the sustainability of a farming system. Resilience is also important, yet has seldom been directly considered in evaluations of economic sustainability. In economic terms, resilience has to do with the capacity of the farm business...

This study seeks to determine the workings of a system of acreage allocation given price and yield uncertainty so as to identify the role that uncertainty in market output has in acreage allocation decisions.

A probabilistic financial model was developed to assess the economic feasibility of energy-cane-based hydrolysis ethanol production. At an expected price of $1.97/gallon and no tax credit, the chances of a positive NPV were 70%. By slightly increasing feedstock and ethanol yields by 5 units, the...

Survey data from Southeastern Pennsylvania is used to estimate the costs of current mushroom pest management practices. Pest management costs represent a sizeable proportion of the variable costs of producing mushrooms. 'The practices found are highly variable with costs ranging from $ . 04 to $...