Due to differences in ownership structure between cooperative and non-cooperative firms (NCFs), it has been hypothesized that co-ops may be less efficient than their non-cooperative counterparts. Illiquidity of owners’ investment and democratic governance may lead to underinvestment and...

The organic milk pay price is more stable year round and increases every year. However, the conventional milk price varies within the year and from year to year. As an emerging segment of the milk industry, consumer demand for organic milk is increasing rapidly. The growth in demand relative to...

Participants in the Louisiana sugar cane industry have provided little information related to the efficiency of sugar processing operations. Using panel data from the population of Louisiana sugar processors, alternative model specifications are estimated using stochastic frontier methods to...

Our objective is to identify the determinants for success among USDA’s Value- Added Producer Grants (VAPG) program recipients. Business development has become an important program in departments of agricultural economics. Market share was found to be an important determinant of VAPG...

This paper investigates habitat-fisheries interaction between two important resources in the Chesapeake Bay: blue crabs and Submerged Aquatic Vegetation (SAV). A habitat can be essential to a species (the species is driven to extinction without it), facultative (more habitat means more of the...

The present study uses local maximum likelihood (LML) methods recently proposed by Kumbhakar et al. (2007) to assess the technical efficiency of arable crop Kansas farms. LML techniques overcome the most relevant limitations associated to mainstream parametric stochastic frontier models. Results...

Stochastic simulation is used to analyze the effects of weather and output price risks on feeder cattle backgrounding systems common to the mid-south region of the United States. The results show that backgrounding systems beginning in the fall and ending from April to late August are associated...