The assumption of homogeneity between family and hired farm labor is common in farm labor research. Controlling for region and farm size, this study employs a seemingly unrelated regression analysis to jointly estimate a translog cost function and factor cost shares to determine the elasticity...

Seafood processor preferences for hiring employees are explored in light of references, wages, and immigrant situations. The objectives of this study are to determine the relative importance of labor attributes, and to identify distinct clusters of processors in terms of preference for immigrant...

Replaced with revised version of paper 02/09/04.

Farmers are likely to be motivated by alternative goals besides profit maximization. Goal structure is highly influential in farmer enterprise selection decisions. This paper addresses the roles of goal structure, location, financial situation, and socio-demographic variables and their influence...

Costs, returns, and profitability of cow-calf farms that are organic or transitioning to organic are compared with those of cow-calf farms that are non-organic. A method of matching samples is used for the comparison. Results suggest higher cost of organic production due to higher unpaid labor,...

We examine U.S. dairy farmer adopter characteristics and adoption rates of eleven technologies. Excepting grazing, technologies were generally adopted complementarily. Four were used on higher percentages of farms in 2005 than 2000. The interaction of farm size with adoption suggests greater...

Adoption decisions and profitability of advanced breeding technologies are analyzed for U.S. dairy farms. The bivariate probit with selection model is used. Results show that specialized, younger, more educated farmers with longer planning horizons are more likely to adopt the technologies, with...

Profitability and labor associated with rotational grazing at three stocking rates and continuous grazing at a medium stocking rate are compared. On a per-acre basis, profits are lowest for low stocking rate rotational grazing. Labor is greatest on both per-acre and per-cow bases with high...

US swine production has undergone significant structural change in the last two decades, reflecting increasing size and specialization (Key and McBride; Key). In particular, the widespread use of contracting has enabled individual producers to grow by specializing in a single phase of production....

The objective of this study is to assess the scale and technical efficiencies and other economic performance measures of southeastern U.S. cow-calf farms. We describe and compare cow-calf operations by size and farm resource region and measure their relative competitiveness. We estimate an input...