For the ten crop seasons 1979-80 to 1988-89, returns to producers in the Australian wheat industry were underwritten by a government-guaranteed price floor. Similar schemes operate in other rural industries (dairy, apples and pears, dried fruits). Although the underwriting provisions have only...

A simple model is developed relating the debt and asset portfolio of the farm to the production decision, which leads to a small non-linear system of equations. The system is estimated with time-series cross-sectional data from Australian broadacre agriculture using non-linear three-stage least...

The necessary conditions for the existence of a financially viable crop insurance scheme against drought are examined. A supply and demand model for crop insurance is developed which identifies the parameters that are critical to the efficiency of such a scheme. The values of these parameters...