Cattle producers and beef packers need to understand basis determinants as they develop price expectations and make pricing, hedging, and forward contracting decisions. This study empirically estimated factors explaining variability in monthly fed cattle basis. The five main results regarding...

In production agriculture, good management is demonstrated by profits that are persistenly greater than those of similar neighboring farms. This research examined the effects of management practices on risk-adjusted profit per acre for Kansas farms over 1990-1999. The management practices were...

Farm supply cooperatives are an important component of the retail agribusiness industry in the United States. The objective of this research is to identify financial variables that are determinants of return on equity in these cooperatives. Firm effects are important and their effect is the...

The impact pre-harvest hedging and crop insurance strategies have on expected revenue and associated risk as well as how producers' risk attitudes affect optimal strategies was analyzed for Kansas wheat farms. No insurance, Catastrophic (CAT), Actual Production History (APH), and Crop Revenue...

This paper provides an overview of the development of the Management Analysis and Strategic Thinking (MAST) program conducted by Kansas State University. This intensive management training course for progressive farm and agribusiness operators is being delivered successfully using a combination...

With increasingly thin margins and new technologies, it is important that farm managers know their cost of field operations on a per unit basis (e.g., acre, ton, bale). Accurate per unit costs give confidence when constructing enterprise budgets and evaluating new technologies, such as no-till....

The genetic traits of a purebred bull convey the reproductive and economic value to buyers. This study examines and compares the value of actual production weights (birth, weaning, and yearling weight), production expected progeny differences (EPDs) (birth, weaning, milk, and yearling), and...

Changes in consumer demand for poultry meats can be characterized as evolving over time and following seasonal patterns. The focus of this study is on understanding factors affecting wholesale poultry prices. This information is needed so that poultry processors and poultry producers may better...

This study summarizes research on farm-, local-, regional-, and macro-level economic effects of ethanol production. Given current production levels, the ethanol production industry annually employees approximately 3,500 workers, pays out nearly $132 million in worker salaries, generates over...

We investigate thinness of hog and pork markets in terms of quantity and representativeness of negotiated transactions. Transactional volume imparts marginally greater confidence in pricing precision for Iowa-Southern Minnesota negotiated hogs than for the national carcass cut-out, suggesting...