Farms systems are open to financial systems. Financing matters. Analysis of questions about management of farms is a multi-dimensional task; focusing on economic efficiency only partly does the job. A financial system channeling funds efficiently from the non-farm sector to the farm sector,...

The ‘openness’ of farming systems that is the focus of this paper is ‘open to information’, in particular the way that new information from the farming systems research project, Dairy Directions, flows from research outputs to dairy farmers. Dairy Directions is a multidisciplinary...

In this study, the possible impacts of different prices of carbon on farm profitability in two dairy farm businesses with different feeding systems operated over five years were analysed. The feeding systems were a ryegrass pasture-based system (RM) and a complementary forage-based system (CF)....

Economics and the Future tackles the discounting issue from a number of angles, ranging from relatively short-term private financial decisions, to very long-term public issues spanning generations. The authors present differing perspectives and original ideas in a style that remains accessible...

Risk and uncertainty have been extensively studied by agricultural economists. In this paper we question (a) the predominant use of static frameworks to formally analyse risk; (b) the predominant focus on risk aversion as the motivation for considering risk and (c) the notion that explicitly...

Fifty years of Australian academic literature about farm management is surveyed and reviewed chronologically and methodologically. Farm management started as a field of academic inquiry during the 1940s, and at the end of the first decade most of the major emphases which were to predominate over...

The price farmers pay for farm land can be a critical determinant of the continued success or eventual failure of a farm business. A decision support model has been developed to make explicit the usually implicit assumptions about expected profitability, financing and debt servicing aspects of...

The dairy industry in northern Victoria faced dramatic changes between 2001/02 and 2002/03. Drought resulted in a substantial decrease in availability, and subsequent increase in price, of irrigation water and supplementary feed. Most farms recorded substantial net cash flow deficits. Prior to...