No satisfactory motivation has been forwarded in favor of any crop yield distribution, including thenormal. This article explores the foundations of yield distributions for the Law of the Minimum resourceconstraint technology at the plot level of analysis.With independent, identical, uniform...

Biotechnology has had an important impact on the agricultural and food industries over the last twelve years by way of fast and extensive adoption of a few genetically modified (GM) crops. This has produced large efficiency gains, including higher yields and reduced costs of weed and pest...

A methodology for measuring public agricultural research capital is developed and described for the first time, new public agricultural research capital measures for each of the 48 contiguous US states, 1970-1999, are presented, and a new econometric analysis of the contribution of public...

The potential of biomass for alternative energy production has attracted considerable attention because of associated implications for energy security, food supply, and climate change. This paper considers the economic impacts of spatial variation and landowner behavior on potential biomass...

The spatial dimension of agricultural production is important when a communicable disease enters a region. This paper considers two sorts of biosecurity risk that producers can seek to protect against. One concerns the risk of  spread: that neighboring producers do not take due care in...

We develop a long-run cost model for cellulosic biofuel production that accounts for locational differences in biomass production conditions.  The cost model minimizes the per-gallon cost of biofuel when feedstock costs vary within local biomass-producing regions and plant size is determined by...

This paper suggests four models that could link US and Chinese investment and yield productive new avenues for commercial collaboration. All four models focus on animal protein supply chain technologies. That is because agricultural innovation in this realm is of particular importance to...