This article utilizes the 2011 Nielsen scanner data for the Honolulu fresh tomato market to explore the existence of price premium for local food. Hedonic analysis is conducted to delineate the price impact of the local attribute. Contrary to the widely perceived local price premium in the consumer preference literature, mixed results of price premiums and discounts are discovered for local tomato products. Additional investigation suggests that the prices of local tomatoes are likely influenced by seasonal output fluctuation. The limited market distribution capacity facing local producers may have contributed further to the retail discounting.

This research aimed to illicit nonfarming absentee landowners’ and producers’ preferences for the benefits and characteristics derived from conservation practices during adoption decisions using maximum difference scaling, also called the best-worst method. Both groups are found to rank and value the attributes and reasons for adoption of conservation practices differently at the 95% significance level. This difference between the two groups reinforced the importance of land tenure in decision making. This indicated the need for new extension educational efforts, research efforts, and economic incentives to reduce negative externalities that could be ameliorated from adoption of soil and water conservation practices.

This paper analyzes the European Union (EU) import demand for in-shell peanuts from three sources: the United States, China, and the rest of the world. We find that peanuts from different sources are differentiated by EU consumers. The expenditure elasticity is elastic for U.S. in-shell peanuts, which is associated with their higher quality. The conditional own price elasticities are more elastic for U.S. and Chinese in-shell peanuts. These findings have at least two implications. First, U.S. producers and exporters should direct efforts to ensure that in-shell peanuts exported to the EU are of the best possible quality, and, second, promotion efforts should stress the quality of U.S peanuts as an advertising tool.

This classroom experiment allows students to explore pricing strategies available to the monopolist. Students are given full information about their costs but know nothing about demand except that it is simulated by the instructor. They submit their price-asked and quantity-offered records on one day and receive the quantity-sold response from the instructor on the next day, continuing this routine until they discover the profit-maximizing price and quantity. One of the objectives is to demonstrate that search strategies based on economic principles (MC=MR) can be more efficient than trial-and-error.

The substitution of capital for labor and new labor-saving technologies has reduced the labor required for farming, yet many farms today depend on hired labor in some form. Common in the literature is the assumption of perfectly substitutable farm labor. This has implications for the operator's off-farm labor decision. Intuitively, different forms of farm labor have different impacts on production. We use the Agricultural and Resource Management Survey to estimate the elasticity of substitution between hired and family labor. The results provide little evidence to support the popular homogeneity assumption and find labor can be unitary and complimentary under certain scenarios.

This research develops a multiregional optimal control model that incorporates regional allocation of a public budget for controlling invasive plants when regionally differential recreation demand functions and species control costs are present. Our equimarginal condition for optimal budget allocation equates the relative marginal economic benefits per dollar spent across regions. The model was applied to Florida Public Conservation Land regions, and results indicate that the magnitude of an annual management budget affects its distribution among species management regions, but the size of the intrinsic growth rate does not affect the pattern of budget allocation among regions.

Current concern about the health effects of American dietary habits has led to recommendations by government officials and nutrition experts that consumers increase their consumption of vegetables (U.S. Congress, Council for Agricultural Science and Technology).

Research on environmental and resources issues is interdisciplinary by nature. For example, studying the economics of pesticides may entail working with both entomologists to address pest problems and toxicologists to address the human health problems associated with pesticide use. Interdisciplinary efforts require familiarity with the findings of other disciplines as well as direct collaboration with professionals in other disciplines. This paper presents a somewhat personal perspective on the issues that economists may encounter in interdisciplinary work. It also presents suggestions on how to increase the acceptance of economic thinking /theory by professionals in other disciplines. The paper starts with a theoretical discussion on relations between disciplines and between professions, followed by discussion of the issues affecting the relationships of agricultural economists with other professions.

The U.S. Geological Survey has determined that irrigation in Arkansas' Delta is unsustainable. This study examines how irrigation restrictions would affect county net returns to crop production. It also considers the effect of planting less water-intensive bioenergy crops—switchgrass and forage sorghum—in the event biofuel markets become a reality. Results suggest that sustainable irrigation restrictions without bioenergy crops would decrease producer returns by 28% in the region. Introducing these alternative crops would both reduce groundwater use and may restore state producer returns, albeit with significant spatial income redistribution to crop production throughout the state.

U.S. growers filed an antidumping case against Canadian growers of greenhouse-grown tomatoes, alleging that U.S. growers were being injured, or threatened with material injury, by imports from Canada. The U.S. Department of Commerce determined that imports of greenhouse-grown tomatoes were being sold in U.S. markets at less than fair market value. The U.S. International Trade Commission determined the “like product” to be all fresh market tomatoes, concluding the domestic industry was not materially injured. Anecdotal evidence used by the Commission Department in determining like product ignores the wealth of knowledge that economics can add. An economic model is proposed for purposes of determining like product.

We used choice experiment data collected from 542 farmers in Nigeria to assess smallholders’ preferences for shifting to Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA). Results suggest that the higher the size of the incentive, the more the likelihood of farmers’ willingness to invest in CSA schemes. Similarly, the farmers were in favor of community development associations and non-governmental organizations-managed schemes over other project managements and also prefer government-based institutions as opposed to the private sector. Willingness to accept results suggest that an average farmer is willing to accept $540/ha/year and $386/ha/year to embrace good agricultural practices (GAPs) with and without manure application.

U.S. agriculture has seen a rapid adoption of biotechnology over the last two decades. This study investigates how biotechnology has affected U.S. farm input demand and agricultural productivity. The analysis relies on data at the national level and at the state level for selected states in the Corn Belt. It evaluates the rate of technological change and price elasticities of demand for agricultural inputs over time. The study documents the evolving biases in technological change in agriculture. It finds evidence that farm input demands have become more price inelastic.

In a coastal environment, open space can exist as land set aside by a real estate developer or as tidal marshland. In this article, we determine the relative values of both types of open spaces in a coastal county in Georgia using a spatial hedonic price framework. Results indicate that (1) there is a price premium associated with the marshlands and (2) developers have market incentives to incorporate more open space into their designs of residential subdivisions. Regarding marshlands, we also find that accessibility is an important variable that adds much more value to a property than just the proximity.

In this research, we analyze the economic effects across various crop insurance subsidy and policy scenarios to determine producer insurance choice response, total premium and subsidy payments and study their economic implications on dryland corn, soybean, and winter wheat producers. We rely on the expected utility maximization framework to rank policy combination sets that are available to a typical producer to analyze the impacts of crop insurance subsidy changes and elimination of certain insurance policies across the three crops. Several scenarios were analyzed across subsidy and policy options and were found to have noticeably different farmer behavioral responses and economic implications.

Researchers have employed farm household models (FHMs) for policy analysis under the separability assumption. However, separability can fail, and the household's production and consumption decisions become simultaneous. Using 5 years of household data, the separability assumption among Ghana's cocoa-producing households is tested via heterogeneity of household adult males and females, household children, and hired and exchange labor. Results show labor is heterogeneous, implying a lack of separability. Simulation analysis also shows that ignoring nonseparability leads to an underestimation of policy effects. Thus, nonseparability in production and consumption decisions must be incorporated in FHMs developed for Ghanaian cocoa-producing households.

A stochastic production frontier approach was used to estimate input distance functions for U.S. grass-fed beef (GFB) production. Average technical efficiencies of 0.84 and 0.79 were found for U.S. GFB whole farms and enterprises, respectively. Producer education level, experience, farm size, annual net farm income from the GFB operation, annual net household income from off-farm sources, and regional differences are the efficiency drivers of U.S. GFB farms. Increasing returns to scale were found for U.S. GFB farms. Our results suggest that U.S. GFB farms can be scale efficient if the optimal size of the operation is greater than approximately 100 GFB animals.

The success of the Boll Weevil Eradication (BWE) Program is believed to be one factor underlying the recent increase in cotton acreage in the Southeast. We find weak evidence that the initial, eradication phase of the BWE program decreases cotton acreage, and strong evidence that the second, maintenance phase of the program increases acreage. The full benefits associated with a BWE program may not become apparent until acreage adjustments occur, four to five years after program initiation. Our results indicate that for a representative sample county neglecting acreage effects may lead to underestimation of BWE program net benefits by 9 percent-12 percent.

The effects of agricultural research and extension expenditures on productivity in the United States are estimated during the period 1949-81 using data for ten production regions. The large time-series cross-sectional data base allows the translog production function to be estimated directly. Results from the translog and Cobb-Douglas production functions are compared. The results indicate that use of the Cobb-Douglas production function would overestimate the internal rate of return of agricultural research and extension expenditures in the United States and eight production regions. The total marginal product and internal rate of return for the United States are $8.11 and 66 percent, respectively.

To analyze fresh vegetable consumption using household survey data, the tobit model and a more flexible parameterization to the tobit model—the “double hurdle” model—were considered. Based on the likelihood ratio test, the tobit model was rejected against the “double hurdle” specification. Moreover, the results suggest that the tobit model underestimated the impact of the explanatory variables on fresh vegetable expenditures. Other results indicate that total food expenditures (proxy for income), age, household composition, sex, race, marital status, urbanization, region, and seasonality are all important determinants of fresh vegetable expenditures.

This article examines the impact of Bt corn adoption in the Philippines using an econometric approach that addresses simultaneity, selection, and censoring problems. Although previous literature emphasizes the importance of simultaneity and selection problems, this is the first study that addresses the issue of censoring in estimating the effects of Bt corn adoption at the farm in a developing country context. We show that Bt corn adoption provides modest but statistically significant increases in farm yields and profits. Furthermore, our results provide some evidence of inference errors that can potentially arise when censoring in the pesticide application variable is ignored in the estimation procedures.