This study evaluates the economic competitiveness of a sample of Kansas farrow-to-finish operations by estimating relative firm efficiency using nonparametric mathematical programming techniques. Measures of technical, allocative, scale, economic, and overall efficiency are then related to farm...

Using a non-parametric linear programming approach, our contribution is (1) to examine the impact of incorporating risk in efficiency analysis and (2) to compare the efficiency measures with and without risk for continuous and rotation cropping systems. The model uses Nebraska cropping system...

Agricultural production in greenhouses is an important user of energy and can lead to greenhouse gas emissions. This study uses Data Envelopment Analysis to compute input-based technical efficiency measures and energy efficiency of Michigan greenhouse growers. A two-limit Tobit model is used to...

Arkansas is the top domestic rice producer, representing nearly half of total U.S. rice production. Rice is a high-cost crop relative to other field crops in Arkansas, and production costs for rice have increased significantly since the mid 2000s due to rapidly increasing fuel and fertilizer...

We estimate a distance function of grains production using generalized method of moments that enables us to accommodate multiple outputs of farmers as well as address the endogeneity issues that are related with the use of distance functions for multi-output production. Using a panel data set of...

To reduce national oil dependency, ethanol has been given a center stage of U.S. energy sources. The Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) program was launched to increase the volume of renewable gasoline from 9 billion gallons in 2008 to 36 billion gallons by 2012, among which 15 billion are corn-based...