Using nationwide survey data, we investigate U.S. meat goat producer preferences and willingness to pay for meat goat breeding stock attributes. Discrete choice experiments were employed, and mixed logit and latent class models were used for analysis. Results showed that producers preferred animals that were highly masculine/feminine, had good structure and soundness, and were of the Boer breed, whereas they preferred fewer animals that were older, of Kiko and Spanish breeds, and priced higher. Significant preference heterogeneity was found among the respondents. Larger-scale producers had greater preference for high masculinity/femininity, good structure and soundness, and Boer bucks.

This study evaluates the farmland price forecasts provided by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago's Land Values and Credit Conditions Survey from 1991: quarter 1 (Q1) through 2016: Q1. Prior studies have demonstrated that similar surveys of agricultural bankers provide accurate predictions of the direction of future farm real estate values through qualitative forecast evaluation. This study extends the existing knowledge base by converting the qualitative responses to quantitative expectations. The quantified expectations are then subjected to additional forecast optimality tests, which suggest that the forecasts are unbiased but inefficient.

The paper examines U.S. citizens' attitudes toward the concept of multifunctional agriculture and their perceptions about its various attributes. While the concept has emerged as a major narrative shaping agricultural policies and WTO trade rules, there are considerable disagreements among researchers and policy-makers about what should be considered legitimate attributes of multifunctional agriculture, preventing WTO negotiations from moving forward. Results show that U.S. citizens rated national food security and environmental services as the most important multifunctional roles of U.S. agriculture, and national food security makes the largest contribution to explaining U.S. citizens' attitudes toward multifunctional agriculture.

Both schools and industry members are concerned about wages in the veterinary profession that are low relative to the years of schooling and tuition costs. This study examines the differences in starting salaries for the 2009–2014 graduates of the 28 schools accredited by the American Veterinary Medicine Association. Findings show relatively small (less than $4,000) but statistically significant differences in starting salaries related to school choice. A larger differential effect is present among the different practice types of veterinary medicine, with equine practitioners and private industry veterinarians (e.g., pharmaceutical researchers) representing the least and greatest average starting salaries, respectively.

We examined the cross-national adoption of six major private food safety standards, focusing on the role of certifiers and international trade. Results show that the number of certification bodies existing in the domestic country, food exports, and the proportion of food exports to North America had positive effects on a country's adoption of food safety standards. Distance leads to product differentiation for the standards and therefore disadvantages developing countries in Africa and Asia for adopting the standards, which are all based in the United States or Europe. Providing these countries with better access to certifiers can alleviate this geographic disadvantage.

Consumers implicitly incorporate their perceptions of products into their decision processes, yet little research has explicitly focused on how those perceptions influence demand for meat. This study incorporates taste, health, and safety perceptions into a discrete choice experiment for meat products at a grocery store. Our results indicate that taste is the most important perception as a 1-unit increase in the perceived tastiness (on a −5 to +5 scale) of a food product leads to a $0.60 increase in willingness to pay, whereas equivalent increases in perceived health and safety lead to $0.31 and $0.21 increases, respectively.

This study reports the findings for an analysis using the computer program NAADSM (North American Animal Disease Spread Model) and a supply-driven social accounting matrix to examine the impact of a hypothetical foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) outbreak in a relatively isolated part of the United States, Utah, under various levels of livestock traceability. The analysis demonstrates that a significant regional economic impact in Utah would result from an FMD outbreak but that improved levels of traceability would be very important in helping to reduce the negative economic consequences of the outbreak.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) beef grading system plays an important role in marketing and promoting beef. USDA graders inspect beef carcasses and determine a quality grade within a few seconds. Although the graders are well trained, the nature of this grading process may lead to grading errors. Significant differences in the USDA graders’ “called” and “camera-graded” quality grades were observed, as well as variations in quality grades across seasons and years. Under grid pricing, producers gained financially from grades called by USDA graders rather than grades measured by cameras.