The goal of this research was to analyze the barriers to adoption of methane digesters on California dairies. Methane digesters have long existed as a technology in the dairy industry, both in the United States and abroad. Much research has been done to attest to the viability and economic sustainability of methane digesters; however in 2014, there were 26 dairies in California that have methane digesters installed, and of these, only 17 of those were still in operation, according to the USEPA AgStar Anaerobic Digester Database. Hence, the question remains, as to why this technology has not been widely adopted at the farm level. Of the 12 interviews conducted, four were with dairies which housed operational digesters. Four more assessed dairies where digesters were no longer operational and an additional four were conducted with dairies that were considering implementing this technology. Results from the interviews were analyzed using qualitative methods to categorize and interpret the textual data collected. The study found a low level of understanding or competence in the amount of training and technical support necessary for dairy farmers in the installation, operation and long-term maintenance of methane digesters. The study identified initial costs of implementing combined with low negotiated energy prices and changing emissions regulations were among the main reasons for a lack of adoption in California. In addition, the study found geographic location and changing emissions regulations were main factors in the success or failure of this technology. Furthermore, the studies observed those dairies with a third party management contract were the most successful with their digester systems. Most participants of this study view the widespread adoption at the farm level as unlikely at this time.

The goal of this research was to analyze the economic impact of the Williamson Act and the agricultural industry in San Luis Obispo County, and to assess the changes in agriculture and the County’s economic structure if a significant proportion of Williamson Act contracts were not renewed. Williamson Act enrollment and agriculture data were analyzed on a zip code level using IMPLAN v. 3.0, an input-output modeling program. The first round of analysis assessed the baseline economic impact of the agriculture industry in San Luis Obispo County. Then, four regions of the county were established based on Williamson Act enrollment and similarities in agricultural production to provide a more accurate reflection of the potential changes to the local economy. The results were reflected in changes to direct sales, total sales, total income, total value added and number of jobs lost. The study concluded that removing the Act’s funding would have very little impact on land use in the county because of the strict agricultural zoning, but may affect the financial strength of agriculture operations depending on their reliance on the tax incentive. Although this study predicts minor decreases in agricultural output if the Williamson Act was removed, the anticipated economic impacts of the lost output are far greater than the costs to maintain the funding for the Act. The direct cost of the Williamson Act to San Luis Obispo County is roughly $3 million per year, yet if the Act is eliminated, it is estimated $14 to $39 million will be lost in county-wide agricultural output.

The purpose of this study is to identify a target market of the “I Love Farmers…They Feed My Soul!” (ILF) organization and establish marketing techniques for the organization. ILF is a non-profit organization committed to connecting the younger generations with information about agriculture and how food is produced. This study thoroughly investigated the markets in three geographic areas throughout California. Surveys were administered to three high school’s English classes to gather data for analysis. The analysis identified the target market of the ILF organization and the associations between each target market and responses to questions regarding their agricultural knowledge, social media use, and grocery shopping preferences that will identify marketing strategies for the organization. The survey results have determined the preferences of the target market and associated marketing techniques that will help the ILF organization. The survey results also provided the ILF organization with data regarding the high school students’ general knowledge of agriculture. This information will help the organization better connect to the young audience and start a conversation about agriculture and how food is produced.

Agriculture receipt data were obtained from USDA Agriculture Statistics on four prominent tobacco producing states-North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia--for the period of 1946 through 1995. The data were adjusted for inflation according to the Consumer Price Index and averaged for five-year periods beginning with 1946-1950 and continuing through 1991-1995. There were four objectives of the study. The first objective was to compare these states for annual agriculture receipts, crop receipts, and livestock receipts. State total agriculture receipts ranged from 1.8 to 3.2 billion dollars in 1946-50 and from 1.4 to 4.1 billion dollars in 1991-95. For total agriculture receipt, rankings were as follows: North Carolina highest, Kentucky intermediate, and Tennessee and Virginia lowest and about equal. State rankings for crop and livestock receipts were the same as those for total agriculture receipts except the North Carolina ranking for livestock receipts went from lowest to highest among the states during the period of study. In Kentucky and Tennessee, crop and livestock contributions were approximately equally throughout the study. Crop receipts exceeded livestock receipts in NC until the 1980s, while in Virginia livestock receipts consistently exceeded crop receipts. The second objective was to determine the contribution of tobacco receipts and their relationships to the receipts of other agriculture commodities. Average state tobacco receipts in dollars ranged from 254 million to 1.8 billion dollars in 1946-50 and from 129 to 723 million dollars in 1991-95. State rankings for tobacco receipts were as follows: North Carolina highest, Kentucky intermediate, and Tennessee and Virginia lowest and approximately equal. Tobacco receipts (dollars) for Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia were relatively consistent over the 50-year period; however, the tobacco receipts for North Carolina decreased from 1.8 billion to 723 million dollars during the period. When tobacco receipts were considered as a component of total agriculture receipts, the tobacco contribution decreased from 54% to 18% in North Carolina and from 35% to 26% in Kentucky, whereas the proportion remained rather consistent in the 10% to 15% range for Tennessee and Virginia. When tobacco receipts were expressed as a percentage of crop receipts, the percentages were highest in Kentucky, intermediate in North Carolina, and lowest in Virginia and Tennessee. Correlations between tobacco and total agriculture receipts were positive and significant for each state except North Carolina. The third objective of the study was to examine the contribution of specific crop and livestock enterprises to agriculture receipts during the 1981-1995 period. Total agriculture receipts increased in North Carolina but decreased in the other states. The increase in North Carolina resulted from increases in livestock receipts (collectively), swine, poultry, vegetables, and other crops. The decrease in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia resulted from decreases in livestock (collectively), dairy, swine, crops (collectively), fruit and tobacco receipts. North Carolina agriculture income has increased and reflects more contribution from livestock (collectively), swine, poultry and less from tobacco. Kentucky agriculture income has decreased and reflects decreases from livestock and crops. Kentucky agriculture receipts are more dependent upon tobacco than are the receipts in the other states. The fourth objective was to relate diversification patterns from the other states to Kentucky's present status and future opportunities. In 1995, tobacco contributions to agriculture receipts were North Carolina (15%), Kentucky (21%), Tennessee (11%), and Virginia (8%); poultry contributions were North Carolina (29%), Kentucky (4%), Tennessee (10%), and Virginia (31%). Although considered minor contributors at present, hay and other crops (greenhouse and nursery plants) show promise for further diversity of Kentucky agriculture.

This paper offers three different regional output-by-industry forecasting techniques (time series, Social Accounting Matrix (SAM)-based, and Computable General Equilibrium (CGE)-based) and two different occupation-by-industry matrices (national and state geographies) for use in the creation of industry/occupation employment forecasts. Estimates are compared to actual data from eight years from 2001 to 2010. OLS regressions are run to determine how well modeled employment estimates fit actual employment for the state of Louisiana. A meta-analysis style regression of the R-sqaured values on model characteristics (accounted for using Boolean dummy-variables) determines that industrial output forecasting techniques do not provide statistically different R-squared values, but that models which use the state level occupation-by-industry matrix constructed for this paper should expect a statistically higher (by about 3.5%) R-squared value.

An American company that supplies premium quality hybrid vegetable seed to commercial growers in the southern part of the US, Mexico, and Central America sought an assessment of the market potential in the Northwest region of Mexico by identifying land area and production concentrations of vegetables by location, crop, and cultivation method, whether open-field, greenhouse, or shade house. Data on the cultivated area of four states in the Northwest region of Mexico was collected for 12 crops of interest for the period of 2003-2012 from secondary sources. Data was entered into a statistical software program to complete frequency distribution charts of each state by crop and cultivation method to determine crop concentrations. Trend data of cultivated area was also analyzed to see changes in cultivation methods over a 10 year period and estimates were made by for NW Mexico through 2017. An analysis of vegetable production in Northwest region of Mexico showed open-field cultivated area was heavily location specific with near monocultures present, especially in the state of Sinaloa. Two-thirds of the crops had a substantial portion of their cultivated area (35-80%) occurring in one place, with bell pepper, onion (green), spinach, and cucumber having a dominant percentage (80-100%) of their cultivation occurring only in Sinaloa. Although it made up a small percentage of overall cultivated area, the majority of protected culture cultivation was also located in Sinaloa, and was shown to have grown rapidly since being introduced or first appearing in government data sources in 2003. With open-field cultivation giving way to more technologically advanced cultivated methods of protected culture, and with the majority of protected culture and open-field export farming taking place in Sinaloa, further input suppliers’ marketing efforts should be concentrated there.

The markets facing nursery producers have changed dramatically in the past decade. These changes in nursery markets have outdated previous research. New research into nursery marketing will assist nursery producers in making marketing decisions. Nursery producers can market their plants to five different marketing channels: Mass-merchandisers, garden centers, other retailers, landscapers and re-wholesalers. This study described the 1998 Louisiana nursery industry, analyzed nursery market changes over the past decade in Louisiana and the Southeast and analyzed characteristics of Louisiana and Southeastern nurseries to estimate marketing channel choice. Data was collected via mail using the third Trade Flows and Marketing Practices survey. Non-respondents to the mail survey were contacted by telephone to obtain survey information. The resulting data set was compiled and tabulated to form a description of the 1998 Louisiana nursery industry. Data from the 1998 TFMP survey was compared with data from the 1988 and 1993 surveys. An analysis of variance for each of the marketing channels was performed to determine if and how marketing channel use had changed over the decade. In order to estimate marketing channel use, a model was designed with the proportion of sales through each channel as a function of a set of market oriented variables such as sales, acreage, age, contract sales, transaction methods, in-state sales and sales to four or more marketing channels . A system of five equations was designed to estimate marketing channel use, one equation for each marketing channel. Analysis of the Louisiana nursery market over the past decade showed that Louisiana nurseries have increased sales to retailers and re-wholesalers at the expense of landscapers. Analysis of nursery marketing channel choice revealed that nurseries have little market power to make marketing decisions. It appears that the retailers and the market dictate marketing decisions in the nursery industry.

As a result of the Uruguay Round (UR), the impact on the international rice market is profound. In addition, another round of the WTO trade negotiations has started and the impacts of potential policy changes on rice trade are unknown. The major U.S. benefit of the UR has been the access to the Japanese market. However, the U.S. share of this import market has been unstable and the share of Korean rice market is zero percent. Therefore, this study attempts to analyze the potential implication of U.S. rice exports to Japan and Korea. The Japanese and Korean rice economies as well as U.S. export demand are analyzed using empirical supply and demand models. This study captures the dynamics inherent in supply and demand of the Japanese and Korean rice sectors. For the study, the supply parameters are estimated using two stage least squares (2SLS), and the demand equations are estimated using ordinary least squares (OLS). Since rice is a political commodity, this study incorporates the political influence of various interest groups in the policy-making process. The analysis measures the pattern of the implicit political weights given to the interest groups, considering a Political Preference Function (PPF). In the final stage, the estimated elasticities and political weights are incorporated in a noncooperative dynamic game framework to analyze the possible impacts of policy changes in the three countries. This study analyses various policies, including several reasonable scenarios regarding changes in Japanese and Korean tariff equivalents from 2% to 8% with respect to U.S. export programs, such as credit guarantee and market development programs. The results show that the best export policy option from the U.S. perspective is obtained at a 4% tariff reduction for Japan and Korea under a combination of U.S. market access program and foreign market development program. The results suggest that the U.S. policy makers might focus more on the U.S. export policy options than the tariff reduction of Japan and Korea. However, it depends on how the policies are implemented, given the state trading enterprises and implicit trade barriers in both countries.

The general objective of this research project was to study the consumption behavior of U.S. Hispanics for meat products. A comprehensive review of literature on the studies of U.S. Hispanic consumers was performed by means of a systematic survey; different sources of information useful in studying Hispanic consumers were documented. The simultaneous increase in population and income of Hispanics in the United States is attractive to food companies, and makes more relevant the study of their consumer behavior patterns for discovering future market opportunities. Censored incomplete demand systems of the LinQuad form were used for recognizing the consumption patterns by Hispanics with those of Whites, African Americans, and households of other minorities. The analyzed dataset was extracted from the Consumer Expenditures Survey released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The estimation of elasticities required two steps; in the first step, the decision to purchase was modeled and in the second step demand equations using instrumental variables were estimated to eliminate selectivity bias. Both steps used a concatenated forward stepwise modeling approach. It was found that Full Information Maximum Likelihood (FIML) under a high level of censoring produces inconsistent own price elasticities and bigger standard errors, due to violations of multivariate normality of the error terms and high level of censoring. The discussed results come from Iterative Seemingly Unrelated Regression since it was able to produce a greater number of significant parameters and more consistent elasticities compared to FIML. The role of ethnicity in the consumption of meat products in the U.S. marketplace was evaluated by means of a demand system that had dummy variables for comparing patterns of Hispanics with the rest of the ethnic groups. Hispanics on average allocated more for total food expenditures, consumed more at home, and spent 21.5%, 8.1%, 5.4% more on meat products than Whites, African Americans, and households of other minorities, respectively. Three sets of demand systems are presented. The first set includes elasticities from demand systems that only included prices and income; the second set is augmented with household size in Amsterdam scale; the third set uses the complete proposed set of demographics.

Farm firm decision making processes have long been of concern to agricultural economists. The concept of maximizing utility rather than profit is an important concept in multidimensional goal research. The prevalence of low or negative net returns in Louisiana beef and dairy production leads to the hypothesis that goals other than profit maximization compete strongly in producers' decisions. The objective of this study is to determine the hierarchy of goals that motivate beef and dairy producers and evaluate them in a multi-dimensional framework. Seven goals were evaluated in producer decision making: Maintain and Conserve Land, Maximize Profit, Increase Farm Size, Avoid Years of Loss / Low Profit, Increase Net Worth, Have Time for Other Activities, and Have Family Involved in Agriculture. Each goal's weight is its importance in the measurement of the farmer's utility. Weights were elicited using the fuzzy pair-wise comparison and simple rank ordering procedures. Using the fuzzy pair-wise comparison method, the goal weight ranged between 0 and 1 and the errors for each of the goal equations were contemporaneously correlated. Thus, logistic seemingly unrelated regression was appropriate to use in regressing the weights of goals on explanatory variables such as production characteristics, risk preference, social capital, environmental attitudes and others. Goal hierarchies of producers were elicited via mail survey. Of 13,100 Louisiana beef producers, 1,472 were surveyed. For producers with less than 100 animals, Maintain and Conserve Land and Increase Farm Size were the most and least important goals, respectively. Producers with more than 100 animals weighted Avoid Years of Loss / Low Profit as the most important goal and Increase Farm Size as the least important goal. The entire population of dairy producers (428) was surveyed. Avoid Years of Loss / Low Profit was slightly more important than Maximize Profit. Increase Farm Size was the least important goal. Overall, dairy producers placed more emphasis on profit related goals such as Maximize Profit, Avoid Years of Loss / Low Profit, and Increase Net Worth. The most important goal of beef producers was Maintain and Conserve Land.