Firms producing ethanol may find management of the price risk associated with production of this leading alternative fuel a key factor to continued success. As with other agricultural commodities, the influence and ability of futures contracts to serve as a risk management tool deserves attention.

Recent federal agricultural programs have accelerated the devolution of enterprise risk management responsibility from the state to individual producers. Using a biophysical simulation model, the risk management benefits of federal crop insurance and supplemental irrigation are derived and...

Replaced with revised version of paper 02/15/06.

Replaced with revised version of paper 08/31/06.

This paper examines the role of risk aversion in setting herbicide label rates and application rates. Companies establish label rates to be efficacious for a wide range of conditions. The use of reduced rates of herbicide offer the opportunity to increase farm profit and reduce herbicide use, an...

The cotton harvesting industry is in the beginnings of its next technological advance, cotton harvesters that form cotton modules inside the machine then deposit them off the rows. These new machines eliminate the need for extra labor and equipment, but are more expensive than conventional...

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...

One of the potential management practices of precision agriculture (PA) is the capability of varying input application rate across a field. A potential benefit of that practice is the reduction in yield variability. Temporal reduction in yield variability can also be achieved through irrigation...

A non-parametric simulation model incorporating price and yield risk determined gross revenue less risk management costs for corn, cotton, and soybeans produced with and without irrigation. Risk management alternatives protecting price risk, yield risk, and combinations of price and yield were...

Heat stress is associated with reduced milk production in dairy cows. Insurance instruments based on an index of ambient temperature and relative humidity measured at Macon, Georgia and Tallahassee, Florida are shown to reduce net revenue risk for a representative farm in south-central Georgia.