The level of natural hedge, i.e. the (negative) correlation between price and yield levels, is an important determinant for farmers’ income risks and their demand for risk management instruments. The natural hedge is often approximated with correlations observed at more aggregated levels, e.g....

Risk management strategies are of increasing importance in agriculture. An important question is, what type of risk management strategies are required to reduce farmers’ income risks. Applying a variance decomposition approach using data of more than 3000 Swiss farms over a five year time...

Purpose – Maize production in China is exposed to pronounced yield risks, in particular weather risk, which is one of the most important and least controllable sources of risk in agriculture. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the extent to which weather index-based insurance can...

type="main" xml:id="jage12069-abs-0001" <title type="main">Abstract</title> <p>Increasing concerns with income risks in agriculture have led to discussions on the introduction of an Income Stabilisation Tool (IST) in Europe. In this note, we extend existing evaluations of the IST by investigating the potential effect of the...</p>

Site Specific Technologies (SST) can reduce environmental pollution caused by common agricultural practice. Using a case study for corn yields, we investigate the impact of climate change (CC) on profitability of SSTs. We find CC to increase spatial variability of soils with respect to optimal...

Over the last decade, it has been shown in the ecology literature that species diversity increases yield stability in managed grasslands. Here, we develop and apply ecological economic and econometric frameworks to evaluate these potential risk-reducing effects of species diversity in terms of...

Landwirte sind bei der Weizenernte mit einem beachtlichen Wetterrisiko in Form von Ernteverlusten konfrontiert. Dem kann mit einer höheren Maschinendichte entgegengewirkt werden, was jedoch zu höheren Maschinenkosten führt. Der vorliegende Tradeoff zwischen Maschinenkosten und Ernterisiken...

The liberalization of Swiss agricultural markets will not only decrease crop price levels but is also expected to increase the volatility of prices. Even though these potential increases in price volatilities for Swiss producers are acknowledged as an important fact, no empirical estimates are...