The informational content in live cattle and hog deferred futures prices is assessed using a direct test of incremental forecast ability for two- to twelve-month horizons. For 1976-2007, the results indicate that hog futures prices add incremental information at all horizons, but unique...

The role of price risk in sow farrowings is investigated by using bivariate ARCH-M and GARCH-M models and a nonparametric kernel estimator. To account for the relevant time horizon of irreversible supply decisions, predictions for mean price and conditional price variance are iterated forward....

This article makes an initial attempt to design catastrophe (CAT) bond products for agriculture and examines the potential of these instruments as mechanisms for transferring agricultural risks from insurance companies to investors/speculators in the global capital market. The case of Georgia...

Weather conditions are a primary source of dairy production risk. Hot and humid weather induces heat stress, which reduces lactation. Heat abatement, such as ventilation, directly affects the temperature and humidity. Abatement can increase expected profit, but cannot eliminate the lost revenue...

Soybean rust is a highly mobile infectious disease and can be transmitted across short and long distances. Soybean rust is estimated to cause yield losses that can range between 1%-25%. An analysis of spatio-temporal infection risks within the United States is performed through the use of a...

Risk reduction through diversification across cultivars is evaluated. A case study of peach growers in California shows that cultivar diversity reduces both yield and revenue variability. As a result, the probability of falling below minimum income requirements set using a safety-first model is...

The nature of indemnities and reliance on futures price averaging during two distinct time intervals throughout the production year imply Crop Revenue Coverage (CRC) insurance behaves like an exotic put option. Treating this type of insurance as a derivative security, an analytical model is...

Subsidies and fines are compared to voluntary and mandatory refuge insurance (insurance for pest damage on Bt corn refuge) as mechanisms for securing grower compliance with EPA refuge mandates. A conceptual model partially ranks mechanisms. Tradeoffs between mechanisms using grower welfare,...

Revenue insurance, only recently introduced for major crops in the U.S., has captured a considerable share of the multiple-peril insurance market. This study evaluates the predictive reliability of using price distributions inferred from options markets to rate revenue insurance products. We...