A long-term whole-farm analysis compared conventional and low-input farming systems. Data from a nine-year agronomic study at the Rodale Research Farm, Kutztown, Pennsylvania, were used to analyze profitability, liquidity, solvency, and risk on a representative commercial grain farm....

One of the most important objectives in eciency analysis is to investigate the rela- tionships between production decisions and their contextual environments like geographical regions, production time periods, modes of production, or policies and regulations. Using the measurement of technical...

A method is developed to integrate the efficiency concepts of technical, allocative, and scale inefficiencies (TI, AI, SI) into the variable returns to scale (VRS) frontier approximation in Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The proposed weighted DEA (WDEA) approach takes a weighted average of the...

This session focuses on new teaching skills and methods. What's So Funny About Teaching Dismal' Science Classes? (I.E. the Use of Humor in the Econ/Ag Econ Classroom), Ron Deiter, Iowa State University. Teaching the Algebraic and Geometric Intuition of Economics, Brent Gloy and Paul Preckel,...

We present a dynamic intraseasonal model of optimal investment in irrigation precision that takes into reductions in disease losses and acceleration of crop growth as well as water savngs. We derive the optimal levels of water use, investment in precision equipment and timing of harvest under...

Data envelopment analysis is applied to original farm-level data to investigate pesticide productivity in Vietnamese rice production. Pesticides are shown to have detrimental effects on productivity. A program aimed at reducing pesticide use is shown to be more cost-efficient in some...

Conservation subsidies may be awarded for otherwise profitable projects, in which case they do not improve environmental quality. We show that transaction costs involved in such subsidy programs may induce farmers to reduce the size and scope of conservation projects. An empirical study shows...

State and federal regulators have been considering making livestock integrators jointly responsible with growers for waste disposal. We show that joint responsibility will generally be efficient when contracts are structured to address problems of grower moral hazard. But joint responsibility...