The public is more interested in agricultural and food issues than ever before, as is evident in the many agricultural controversies debated in the media. Why is it that some people embrace new agricultural technologies while others steadfastly defend traditional farming methods? Why do some...

For much of human history, most of the population lived and worked on farms but today, information about livestock is more likely to come from children's books than hands-on experience. When romanticized notions of an agrarian lifestyle meet with the realities of the modern industrial farm, the...

This paper develops a valuation method which generates consistent and systematic estimates of people's preferences for complex multi-attribute goods by inextricably linking auction bids with conjoint ratings. The advantage of the valuation approach is that it permits the estimation of people's...

This paper analyzes price differentials among conventional, cage-free, organic, and Omega-3 eggs using retail scanner data from two regional markets and the United States as a whole. Results reveal significant premiums attributable to cage-free (a 57% premium on average) and organic (an 85%...

The application of manure phosphorus at rates above crop uptake has resulted in water pollution for some regions. In response, new manure management standards will require some farms to match manure phosphorus applications rates with crop uptake. For some regions, this will lead to more crop...

A previous study showed that imposing economic restrictions improves the forecasting ability of food demand systems, thus warranting their use even when rejected in-sample. This study attempts to determine whether this is due solely to the fact that restrictions improve degrees of freedom....

It is now fashionable in many circles to advocate vegetarianism, and many activist groups are vocal in their aim to convert the human race to vegetarians. What would be the economic costs and benefits of a shift away from meat consumption? In this article we provide some partial answers to this...

Although estimates of people’s values for public goods are often needed to conduct costbenefit analysis, existing value elicitation methods are prone to a number of well-documented biases. We argue that some of these biases result because people derive utility from the act of saying they are...