Purpose – This paper aims to develop and utilize a conceptual framework to examine the impact of liquidity and solvency on cost efficiency for a sample of Kansas farms. Design/methodology/approach – A standard cost-efficiency model is modified to incorporate liquidity and solvency ratios....

Purpose – Many associations in the Farm Credit System, which are financial cooperatives, pay their member-borrowers a cash patronage payment based on the amount of loan volume with the association. In today's competitive lending environment, some Farm Credit associations have offered lower...

Since 1990, the farmer cooperative landscape has experienced a significant structural shift. Steep consolidation, elevated competition, and surging commodity prices have elevated the need for co-ops to be mindful of their cost structure and efficiencies. To test for this structural shift, this...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to compare the characteristics of farms who participate in farm management associations to the wider population of farms at the state level. Design/methodology/approach -Farm-level records obtained from the USDA's Agricultural Resource Management Survey...

Using 11 years of experimental crop yields by cropping systems and fertilizer level, a MOTAD frontier was developed. This analysis allowed yield, cost, and stability interactions arising from crop sequences to be implicitly included. Target-MOTAD, Safety-First, and undominated stochastic...

A sample of Kansas farms was used to examine the impact of risk and specialization on mean financial performance. Mean financial performance was hypothesized to be influenced by risk, age of the operator, percentage of acres owned, financial efficiency, leverage, specialization, and farm size....

Replaced with revised version of paper 07/16/05.

This paper examines the relationship between overall efficiency and years of farm experience for a sample of Kansas farms. In addition to years of experience, overall efficiency is significantly related to farm size, percent of time devoted to farming, and percent acres owned.

Efficiency measures can be used to generate inferences about the future direction of the industry and determine factors that may influence the structure. This study evaluated relative efficiencies of Kansas backgrounding operations. Farms that engaged in the backgrounding of cattle were very...

Using the non-parametric linear programming approach, this study examines overall efficiency gains due to diversification between crop and livestock enterprises for a sample of Kansas farms. Overall efficiency gains were decomposed into scope efficiency gains and scale efficiency gains. Farms...