Australian farmers face between three and ten times the level of production risk faced by farmers in competing countries worldwide (OECD-FAO, 2011). Consequently, in Australia, identical management plans may result in sharply contrasting distributions of financial outcomes. These differences...

We consider the limitations of optimisation analyses that ignore farm-level financial risks arising from combinations of high fixed costs, including debt burdens and highly variable local weather and prices. A sequential multivariate analysis method is used to compute cumulative distribution...

A 12-year experiment designed to show the benefits of applying lime to acid soils when growing annual pasture, perennial pasture, and annual crops in rotations with annual or perennial pastures, provides the context for comparing methods of economic analysis. In this study enterprise gross...

This study analyses the financial risk faced by representative mixed-enterprise farm businesses in four regions of south-eastern Australia. It uses discrete stochastic programming to optimise the ten-year cash flow margins produced by these farms, operating three alternative farming systems....

The net present value (NPV) of downstream economic benefits of changes in water-yield (W) and salt-load (S) of mean annual river flow received by a lower catchment from an upper catchment are described as a 3-dimensional (NPV,W, S) surface, where dNPV/dW 0 and dNPV/d(S/W) 0. Upstream changes...

The 1999 National Competition Policy Review of Ag & Vet Chemical legislation recommended, inter alia, that registrants no longer be required to prove ‘APPROPRIATE’ levels of efficacy of their products but only that the claims on product labels be ‘TRUE’. ‘Appropriate’ efficacy...

Tedera (Bituminaria bituminosa C.H.Stirt var. albomarginata) is a drought tolerant perennial legume originating in the Canary Islands. This study evaluates the potential role and value of tedera in dryland mixed crop and sheep production systems in southern Australia. Regional variants of the...

Based on the timing and location of 400 successful releases of insects specifically targeting Echium species of weeds including PatersonÕs curse / ÒSalvation JaneÓ since 1992 across southern Australia, and estimates of insect attack and spread rates according to dates of weed germination, a...

Herbicide labels recommend sufficiently large doses to achieve high efficacy of weed control under a range of environmental conditions. While users may not apply doses greater than recommended they may apply less, but do so without quantitative guidance. This paper explores long-run biological...

As the greatest rainwater users among all vegetative land covers, tree plantations have been employed strategically to mitigate salinity and water-logging problems. However, large-scale commercial tree plantations in high rainfall areas reduce fresh water inflows to river systems supporting...