Crop yields are not commonly found to be normally distributed, but the cause of the non-normal distribution is unclear. The non-normality might be due to weather variables and/or an underlying von Liebig law of the minimum (LoM) production function. Our objective is to determine the degree to...

Livestock Risk Protection Insurance (LRP) is a risk management tool available to cattle producers protecting against price declines. It can be used to establish a price floor much like a put option. The primary difference between put options and LRP is LRP can be purchased for as few as one...

Wheat regression models that account for the effect of weather are developed to forecast wheat yield and quality. Spatial lag effects are included. Wheat yield, protein, and test weight level are strongly influenced by weather variables. The forecasting power of the yield and protein models was...

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...