Policy makers are looking for ways to preserve farmlands, especially near urban areas. Farmers are also trying to find ways to increase their farm income by incorporating non-traditional activities into their farm routine. This paper attempts to quantify the contributions of selected...

The main objective of this research is to compare estimates of technical efficiency obtained from the stochastic frontier approach for two samples of farmers of private and water user associations in the Nefzaoua Oases region (Tunisia), which are characterized by a severe scarcity of water and...

Dynamic programming techniques were used to evaluate the effects of alternative levels of normal flex acreage requirements on a Midwestern corn-soybean farm and a Southeastern cotton farm. Results indicate that increasing normal flex acres from the current level of 15 percent to 35 percent would...

The Dixit entry/exit real option model was applied to the entry/exit decisions of New York dairy farmers. For the cost structure of a 500-cow farm, the entry milk price is $17.52 per hundredweight (cwt) and the exit milk price is $10.84. For the 50-cow farm cost structure, the entry price is...

Productivity of U.S. farmers by age is measured by non-parametric programming using 1992 Census data, decomposed into efficiency and technology Malmquist index components. Productivity increases slightly with age and then decreases. In most states productivity variations are from technology use...

Agricultural policymakers place increasing emphasis on developing efficiency measures for organic producers in order to evaluate regulatory strategies and evolving organic market conditions. We develop technical efficiency measures for U.S. organic farmers using a stochastic production frontier....

This study develops a model to examine the impacts of uncertainty about crop production and irreversibility of program participation on determining land rental payments and least-cost land retirement targeting in the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program (CREP). Results show that under risk...

Data on the number of Pennsylvania dairy farms by size category are analyzed in a Markov chain setting to determine factors affecting entry, exit, expansion, and contraction within the sector. Milk prices, milk price volatility, land prices, policy, and cow productivity all impact structural...

The extent to which individual factors influence the adoption of sustainable agricultural practices is estimated using a logit model and data from a 1990 survey of West Virginia producers. The results are, as expected, different than those for conventional agricultural technologies. For example,...

In this study it is argued that conflicting empirical results on the relationship between technical efficiency and education may be in part attributed to difficulties in the measurement of key variables. Calculation of technical efficiency with three alternative frontier methods for a sample of...