Tile drainage was first demonstrated in the United States in 1835 as a method to adapt agriculture to excessive water in soils. Subsequently, innovations in coordinated drainage enterprises, engineering, and tile manufacture led to drainage over large portions of the U.S. Midwest and Southeast....

We apply a new Bayesian approach to multiple-contract futures data. It allows the volatility of futures prices to depend upon physical inventories and the contract's time to delivery - and it allows those parametric effects to vary over time. We find a time-varying negative relationship between...

This paper analyzes the effects of waterway transportation costs on the spatial distribution of corn prices at U.S. grain markets. Interregional trade theory predicts that in a competitive market price differences between markets are explained by transportation cost. The precise role played by...

U.S. ethanol production capacity increased more than threefold between 2002 and 2008. We study the effect of this growth on corn acreage. Connecting annual changes in county-level corn acreage to changes in ethanol plant capacities, we find a positive effect on planted corn. The building of a...

This book is a study of the ways in which U.S. agriculture policies contribute to or help to ameliorate the adverse effects of farming on the environment.