Today the European agrofood sector is increasingly confronted with the threatsas well as the opportunities of liberalizing markets. Therefore, competitiveness on globalmarkets is becoming of paramount importance for European farmers. The challenges ofglobal markets are accompanied by a growing...

In Flanders glasshouse vegetables andornamental plants are typically produced at familybusinesses. At this type of businesses the objectives andlong-term firm developments are influenced by the socalled ‘family-firm life cycle’. In many cases the firmshows a life cycle that corresponds with...

This article provides a farm sector comparison of levels of capital input for fourteen OECD countries for the period 1973 to 2002. The starting point for construction of a measure of capital input is the measurement of capital stock. Estimates of depreciable capital are derived by representing...

This study uses a large increase in US Federal crop insurance subsidies as a natural experiment to identify the importance of risk for farm operator labour supply. Subsidy increases induced greater crop insurance coverage, which in turn reduced farmers' financial risks. Crop insurance...

A farmer's decision to contract or produce independently depends on the distribution of income and the nonpecuniary attributes associated with both business arrangements. The benefits to growers from contracting (such as risk reduction) may be overestimated if the nonpecuniary benefits enjoyed...

Allocations of research funds across programs are often made for efficiency reasons. Social science research is shown to have small, lagged but significant effects on U.S. agricultural efficiency when public agricultural R&D and extension are simultaneously taken into account. Farm management...

The paper discusses the appropriate functional form and estimation technique for a wildlife production function on the farm level. A random effect model was developed to capture the relationship between wildlife output, management practices, natural conditions and non-observed factors that cause...

Technical change at the farm level or changes ininput prices often entail that the firm's supply functionchanges. These changes can take place in numerous ways. Thispaper presents a methodology that increases the consistency insupply responses across various sets of agricultural productsand farm...

A positive mathematical programming model was constructed in this study to assess theeffect of three water pricing scenarios on Teboulba’s agricultural production systems.The effects of these scenarios were estimated for three groups of farmers from three irrigated districts. Results show that...

This research investigates the nature and extent of e-business adoption by Australian wineries in order to describe the activity and increase understanding of the factors influencing the behaviour. Pilot study interviews grounded the research and provided industry-based direction for the survey....