This paper examines three invited papers focused on commodity prices. Public responses to high nominal commodity prices and perceived increases in price risk have ranged from attempts to assign blame, attempts to change contracting arrangements, and development of public policy that...

The non-point pollution rules proposed by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) have generated questions regarding the costs of compliance for Wisconsin agriculture. It is clear that some agricultural practices will have to change if the proposed rules are enacted, but the costs of...

The existence of a commodity market risk premium has attracted the interest of researchers for several decades. Most attempts to measure risk premiums have been focused on futures markets. However, if the risk premium is a payment made by hedgers (as suggested by Keynes) to reduce their risk...

The popularity of public investment in local bio-fuels production as a rural development initiative is growing. An important consideration in determining the level of public support for a plant's development, however, is accurately measuring public externalities resulting from plant activity....

There has been considerable interest focused on the further development and expansion of a domestic bio-fuels industry. While most early attention from the commercial sector focused on ethanol, interest is now growing in the area of biodiesel production. Reasons for growing interest in biodiesel...

There has been considerable interest recently in alternative cropping opportunities for US grain producers. One crop that has received significant interest has been industrial hemp. Hemp production has essentially been non-existent in the US since the 1950's. The purpose of this paper is to...

A system of equations representing corn supply, feed demand, export demand, food, alcohol and industrial (FAI) demand, and corn price is estimated by three-stage least squares. A price dependent reduced form equation is then formed to investigate the effect of ethanol production on the national...