Long term storage of corn is becoming more common due to the recent increase in the demand for corn by ethanol plants. Infection of maize kernels by toxigenic fungi remains a challenging storage problem despite decades of research. Experts in storage management propose the use of a combination...

Organically produced products are one of the fastest growing segments of food sales in the U.S. The extent to which proximity to consumer markets influences certification among producers that farm using organic practices was estimated in this study. Data from a 2012 survey of 16 states with...

This study uses nationally representative data from 360 farm households in Benin to estimate how access to storage technologies and storage losses from insects affects a smallholder African farmer’s decision to hold grain from production, in an environment of high price variability. We find...

Structural and technological change in American agricultural input markets has increased the influence of seed company supplied information relative to other information sources in farmers' decisions. I examine theoretically the incentives for biotechnology firms to provide reliable, useful...

Mathematical programming analysis has been quite effective for commercial farm planning in developed countries, but less so for subsistence farms in developing countries. In particular, it is difficult to reproduce the level of diversification observed on subsistence farms using a simple profit...

During the last decade, cotton production and area have been declining as a result of depleting soil nutrients and low cotton prices in the cotton zone of Mali. This paper shows that the Malian government’s 2011 policy to increase the farm gate cotton price as a response to world cotton price...

Capital budgeting decisions faced by tart cherry producers often challenge our traditional valuation techniques. Real Options Valuation (ROV) methods may be useful but assumptions of existing ROV approaches are restrictive and, in some cases, unrealistic. In this paper we assert that use of...

The 2002 Farm Act allowed farm owners to update base acres for direct payments (DPs) and counter-cyclical payments (CCPs) and to update yields for counter-cyclical payments. A minority, about 40 percent, of the 1.9 million enrolled farms choose to update their base acres using 1998-2001...

The impact of new manure management regulations depends on the willingness of crop producers to accept manure. A contingent valuation analysis of crop producers was used to estimate the willingness of crop producers to accept or pay for manure. Results indicate that producers will pay a positive...

A translog stochastic cost frontier is estimated to calculate cost efficiency index (CEI) of 203 Kenyan and Ugandan maize producers using survey data from 2003. Results show a mean CEI of 1.95, with greater inefficiency among farms in Kenya of medium-large size. Key sources of inefficiency are...