Playas are small wetlands, averaging 14 acres in area, which periodically fill with rainwater and evaporate, and are not connected to any other body of surface water. On the Texas High Plains, the roughly 17,000 existing playas are a source of recharge for the Ogallala aquifer and the greatest...

Irrigated agriculture on the Southern High Plains of Texas relies heavily on water extracted from the Ogallala Aquifer, which is functionally non-renewable. Concerns about depletion of the aquifer have led to the implementation of policies designed to slow water extraction and increase the...

An econometric international supply/demand/trade simulation and forecast sorghum model in a partial equilibrium framework is built in this research paper to quantify the effects of key exogenous variables on the U.S.-Mexico sorghum trade. A forecast baseline is also established by using the...

Conversion of biomass to electricity is often not economically feasible as a result of large transportation costs and low output prices. We build a model of an adaptable biorefinery situated at an agri-processing facility that already has biomass on-site and consider the optimal scale of the...

This study evaluated the possibility of implementing a proposed cap and trade policy on water use in the Texas Southern High Plains. The results suggested that the decision of producers to enroll in a cap and trade policy introduced under a restricted 50/50 management plan, will be impacted by...

In a seeming paradox, bluegrass seed production in the State of Washington increased following imposition of a statewide ban on stubble burning in 1996. Despite forecasts that alternative production practices would increase the cost of producing bluegrass seed so much that the industry would be...