The length of the growing season can limit sales of locally grown foods despite increasing demand. Season-extension technologies such as passive solar greenhouses ("hoop houses") have potential to address this constraint. This paper reports :findings from the first year of a project which...

As organic agriculture evolves from a movement to an industry, the organic label is increasingly disconnected from the founding spirit of organic, which is now more associated with the broader term sustainable agriculture. Increased competition due to the "commodification" of organic agriculture...

Pasture-raised livestock production offers opportunity for product differentiation and enhanced sustainability. Shopper surveys at three Michigan retail locations measured consumers’ attitudes and beliefs regarding pasture-raised livestock products, and willingness to pay for...

A credit scoring function incorporating statistical selection criteria was proposed to evaluate the credit worthiness of agricultural cooperative loans in the Fifth Farm Credit District. In-sample (1981-1986) and out-of-sample (1988) prediction performance of the selected models were evaluated...

Agricultural market information such as commodity prices, trade volumes and weather conditions, plays an important facilitating role in improving the performance of markets. This research assesses the impact of the agricultural Market Information Service (MIS) on the performance of maize markets...