Specialty crop agriculture may be affected by immigration reform given that most farm workers are foreign-born and unauthorized for U.S. employment. Controlling for selection on legal status and job type according to skill level, this research examines the wage effects for workers with different...

Specialty crop farmers have expressed concern about labor shortages and cost increases which may arise with immigration reform. The large-scale mechanization of the Florida sugarcane harvest during the 1970s/80s serves as an historical example of how technologies evolved due to changes in local...

A cost function approach of induced innovation is used to measure the biases in U.S. agricultural technology between 1969-1999. The rate of technological change is explained by socioeconomic variables. The post-IRCA results show that an increasingly illegal workforce significantly induces...

The prospect of immigration policy reform has renewed growers’ concerns of serious labor shortages and cost increases given that a large portion of the workforce is unauthorized for U.S. employment. This concern of labor shortages and cost increases is more serious for specialty crop...

Immigration reform may significantly impact the specialty crops sector since more than half of the workforce is foreign-born and undocumented. Based on data from the National Agricultural Workers Survey, the trends pertaining to workers' legal status, employment and wage rates in the U.S. and...

Using National Agricultural Workers Survey data, we estimate U.S. farm worker wage differentials by legal status. In order to adequately correct sample selection bias, we develop a Heckman-type two-stage method with an ordered probit model in the first stage and a wage equation model in the...

Irrigation fuel costs represent a significant portion of rice production expenses. Multiple inlet (MI) irrigation represents a water saving alternative to conventional flood irrigation. This study uses simulation to calculate the range of monetary benefits to MI in rice production. Water savings...

Arkansas is the top domestic rice producer, representing nearly half of total U.S. rice production. Sediment is one of the major pollutants in rice producing areas of Arkansas. In order to mitigate this problem no-tillage management is often recommended. No-tillage is not well understood by...

No-till (NT) has been shown to reduce fuel, labor, and machinery costs compared to conventional-till (CT) but very few rice producers in Arkansas practice NT. The low adoption rate is most likely due to difficulties in management but also limited information on the profitability and risk of NT....

This study evaluates both the profitability and risk efficiency of grazing stocker steers on conservation tillage winter wheat pasture using simulation and stochastic efficiency with respect to a function (SERF). Average daily gains are simulated for steers grazed on conventional tillage (CT),...