Do Irish cereal producers use multiple cropping as a strategy for dealing with risk?

Portfolio theory suggests that risk-averse agents favour a diversified portfolio of assets as a strategy to offset market risk. This paper explicitly tests whether Irish cereal producers decision to engage in multi-crop production (asset diversification) in itself reveals a relatively risk-averse nature. The issue is examined within the context of sample selection bias, where multi-croppers (portfolio diversifiers) are treated as a sub-sample of a general sample (mono + multi croppers) of Irish cereal production.