Increasing use of Benefit-Cost Analysis (BCA) in ex ante research evaluation has not been accompanied by consensus on the increased returns flowing from the evaluation effort. There are likely to be a wide range of views held by researchers, agricultural economists and research managers on how...

Fifty years of Australian academic literature about farm management is surveyed and reviewed chronologically and methodologically. Farm management started as a field of academic inquiry during the 1940s, and at the end of the first decade most of the major emphases which were to predominate over...

The price farmers pay for farm land can be a critical determinant of the continued success or eventual failure of a farm business. A decision support model has been developed to make explicit the usually implicit assumptions about expected profitability, financing and debt servicing aspects of...

Farming systems throughout the Murray-Darling Basin are under increasing scrutiny from the perspective of ecological sustainability of farm and catchment systems. In northern Victoria, the dairy industry is a major user of water, and contributes to the environmental issues. Changes in irrigation...

Dairy Australia has delivered a program entitled DMF involving a series of activities to enhance the expertise of dairy farmers and encourage their use of expert services. A substantial investment of $5.2m (adjusted to 2005 dollars) has been made by Dairy Australia in the program. In this...

Economics and the Future tackles the discounting issue from a number of angles, ranging from relatively short-term private financial decisions, to very long-term public issues spanning generations. The authors present differing perspectives and original ideas in a style that remains accessible...

The dairy industry in northern Victoria faced dramatic changes between 2001/02 and 2002/03. Drought resulted in a substantial decrease in availability, and subsequent increase in price, of irrigation water and supplementary feed. Most farms recorded substantial net cash flow deficits. Prior to...