The general purpose of this study was to conduct a spatial analysis of the dynamics of rural land values in Louisiana. Specifically, spatial econometric procedures and hedonic price analysis were used to evaluate the impact of land characteristics on land prices across rural land markets in Louisiana. Initially, hedonic models were estimated by ordinary least squares (OLS) procedures to test for the presence of spatial autocorrelation using Lagrange Multiplier tests. Results suggested that there was spatial autocorrelation in the error terms. Hedonic models were then estimated using maximum likelihood (ML) spatial error techniques. Log likelihood numbers and likelihood ratio tests where used to compare OLS and ML model estimation, and the ML was better for these data. Information for this study includes sales that were collected for the time period January 1, 1993 through June 30, 1998, and data collected as a part of this study for the period July 1, 1998 through June 30, 2002. Data on 3,542 Louisiana rural land sales were collected during the two periods using mail survey techniques. Geo-reference of these sales indicated that sales were evenly dispersed throughout the state. Results from the data indicate that there is a substantial variation in rural real estate prices across the state. Results from hedonic model estimation showed that cropland, pastureland, government program cotton base acreage, month of sale, value of improvements, paved road access, reasons for purchase residential, commercial and investment; residential, commercial, and highway influences; statistical metropolitan areas, and inverse of travel time had statistically significant positive influences on per acre land values. Meanwhile, size of tract, distance to nearest town, travel time to nearest town, flood influence, and reasons for purchase farm expansion and recreational had a statistically significant inverse relationship with per acre rural land values. Marginal implicit prices were estimated using the results from models estimated by OLS and ML spatial procedures. Results indicated that, in several instances, marginal implicit prices were overestimated or underestimated when using results from OLS estimation. In general, spatial econometric techniques can be used to improve the accuracy of rural land value estimates.

This paper provides case studies on the structure of six strategic alliances in the beef industry. Strategic alliances are identified whose structure could conceivably be used in Louisiana. Strategic alliances are compared and contrasted on the basis of development and performance. The main objective of this study was to determine the organization and operation of six strategic alliances in the beef industry. The study examines strategic alliances in the U.S. beef industry using multiple exploratory case studies. The exploratory type, allows the researcher to better understand critical points in the beef industry and how the use of strategic alliances can lead to better performance. The alliances are chosen within four different categories of strategic alliances in the beef industry; in this case, six alliances are chosen as commercial beef carcass type. As a research technique, the exploratory case study attempts to answer "what" questions, and provides the researcher an opportunity to develop hypotheses. Five hypotheses are formulated in the study. Based on the hypotheses, personal interviews take place with the application of a questionnaire that contains fifty-seven open-ended type questions on production, economic and general characteristics about the alliances. The information gathered will support or refute the hypotheses formulated in order to establish precise criteria on strategic alliance formation. A comparison between the six strategic alliance structures will be describe based on the hypotheses formulated and information collected throughout the application of the questionnaire. The hypothesis test revealed that strategic alliances serve, with no doubt, to reduce transaction cost along the production chain but it is not the case for the issue of price variability. As well, strategic alliances serve to increase the flow of information and to provide alternative market outlets but do not serve to increase producers' access to capital.

This study of the Caribbean Sugar Industry summarizes its sugar trading activities and evaluates the potential impact of changes in preferential trading arrangements with the European Union (EU) on the six countries that makes up the Sugar Association of the Caribbean, namely: Jamaica, Barbados, Belize, Guyana, St. Kitts-Nevis, and Trinidad & Tobago. The trading policies that govern sugar trade between these countries and developed countries such as the EU, the United States of America (US) and to a limited extent trade among them is discussed. The report briefly describes how the Caribbean sugar industry is organized, including supply and demand determinants, marketing of its sugar via the EU Sugar Protocol, and the US tariff rate quota system, and safeguards within the Caribbean Common Market (Caricom) from extra-regional sugar producers. The study then analyses the impact of price changes based on different price scenarios that may occur after preferential prices disappear. Data and estimated model specifications are described, elasticities of dependent variables responses to independent variables changes are calculated, and these results, in addition to different price simulations are presented. The analysis shows that modest decreases in prices to Caribbean sugar producers would not result in huge changes in the structure of the Caribbean sugar industry since responses of production, consumption, imports and exports are inelastic to prices changes in the short-run. This could be due of asset fixity within the industry. This industry requires huge capital investments, thus, after these investments are made producer are forced to operate at full capacity to minimize fix costs. Secondly, the industry within this region is a mass employer of labor and a huge contributor to their country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP), therefore, any major changes with this industry could result in massive social instability.

Crop insurance has received a great deal of attention over the past several years. The main interest and focus of analysis on crop insurance has been to evaluate its use and performance as a risk management tool for agricultural producers. Several different types of crop insurance policies are currently available, ranging from minimal yield coverage to revenue coverage. Cost of production crop insurance has been proposed recently as a low cost, safety net type of insurance policy for agricultural producers. This study evaluated the performance of cost of production crop insurance for cotton and rice producers in Louisiana. Crop income and production expenses were simulated on a per acre basis for representative cotton and rice production situations in Louisiana. Cotton yields and production costs for Franklin and Tensas Parishes in Northeast Louisiana and rice yields and production costs for Acadia and Vermilion Parishes in Southwest Louisiana were used to model per acre income and expenses under various insurance coverage levels. Gross income, production expenses, and net income were simulated over a five-year period. Crop yields and market prices were stochastically simulated for 1,000 replications. Results were evaluated by comparing mean net present value of net returns, the percent of time net returns were negative, and the percent of time cost of production crop insurance generates an indemnity payment. General conclusions of the study were that cost of production crop insurance is a low cost, safety net type of insurance which can help support farm income during times of extremely low prices or yields. Farms with below average yields tended to benefit more from the program because of lower average net returns. One of the practical challenges for this type of insurance program would involve the collection of yield and production cost data necessary to operate it at the individual farm level.

This thesis examines the use of Precision Agriculture technologies to define Management Zones within a multicrop production system. It further evaluates the economic feasibility of implementing spatially variable insecticide applications against conventional blanket treatments with respect to insect pest management in cotton production. The use of geographical information systems was critical in the development of the different yield maps established to determine the level of consistency of management zones across crops over time. Several important concepts, such as data normalization, yield grid maps, inverse distance weighted and stability, were introduced throughout this research to: set the scale of measures to the same basis, facilitate comparison across crops, manipulate the data, and establish a level of confidence, respectively, concerning the use of management zones in crop production. Furthermore, the basic notion behind this study was that if fields can be divided into high/low yielding management zones, the use of variable rate technology, through an ON/OFF prescription application, offers the potential to reduce costs and increase productivity of the field. The capital recovery method was used to evaluate the per acre cost of investing in a precision farming system for gathering site-specific information and performing SVI applications. Results from this study show that the use of yield-based management zones can reveal annual cost reductions and increased profitability for the producer.

A case study framework was used to study the competitiveness of Honduran coffee with major importing partners, along with an import demand analysis. Several important points summarize the findings. First, trends in green coffee supply and consumption continue to depress world coffee prices, making the production of coffee less attractive. Since small coffee producing countries, like Honduras, cannot affect the international price, they must improve efficiency, productivity, employ cost reduction techniques, and rely on the promotion of specific product attributes to remain competitive. Second, increased market share of Honduran coffee in major importing markets, Germany, Japan, and the U.S. was found. A significant improvement of the Honduran market share of coffee in Germany and Japan was found. Third, because of a significant response of import demand of Honduran coffee with respect to a positive shock in income of Japan and the U.S., Honduras has the potential to capture an increased percentage of its partner's imports. Additionally, price strategies to gain market share in Germany can be implemented. Fourth, product quality is currently a key element in improving the competitiveness of Honduran coffee. Production, distribution, and marketing tactics are not well developed and resources are not used in an advantageous way. Therefore, the probability that Honduran coffee can be viewed as a superior product from other producing countries of the region is very low. Export demand for Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Panama were estimated to determine the effects of changes in income and relative export price when trade occurs among Central American countries (CAC). Results indicate that trade among CAC can be a powerful engine of growth, as indicated by significant positive responses of value of exports to a positive shock in income levels. However, relative export price plays an important role in promoting export revenues for El Salvador and Honduras only. The export response to a shock in income for El Salvador and Honduras lasted fewer periods and was lower compared to those from Costa Rica, Guatemala and Panama.

Hedonic models estimate the marginal effect of land characteristics and factors that contribute to a purchase decision on rural land values in submarkets of north Louisiana. While size of tract and mix of land use have expected impacts on rural land values, forces that motivate the buyer also affect price. The natural resource endowment of each of the three submarkets in this study differs significantly from one another. Topography has clearly identifiable impacts on crop selection and income in each submarket. Additionally, the relative location of the submarkets to major metropolitan areas is influential on rural land values in one submarket, and in the others the socioeconomic conditions within the submarket are more influential on rural land values. As a result, the factors that contribute most to the value of rural land in each submarket differ. This study successfully demonstrates that these differences are statistically significant in explaining the value of rural land.

The United States Department of Agricultures Foreign Agricultural Service (USDA/FAS) administers two primary promotion programs for rice exports: the Foreign Market Development Program (FMDP) and the Market Access Program (MAP). Based on the literature, a single equation framework is specified to estimate the rice import demand model. Three major U.S. rice importing countries are selected: Mexico, Costa Rica, and Honduras. Single equation analysis methods are applied. The effectiveness of the two programs for rice exports to the Latin American markets is evaluated. Promotion programs and the competitors exchange rate as primary explanatory variables for the U.S. rice import demand in the targeted markets are evaluated. The results show that promotion programs are effective in Mexico and Honduras, with an average return of $10 and $40 per dollar during 1989-2003. However, promotion programs were not significant for Costa Rica. Estimated own price elasticities are considerably less elastic in the Mexico and Honduras market than in the Costa Rica market. The exchange rate fluctuation of two primary rice competitors, Uruguay and Argentina, show a significant effect to the market demand for U.S. rice.

This thesis examines the validity of the export-led growth (ELG) hypothesis in Honduras and compares the Honduran experience to that of other Central American countries, specifically Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua. It further evaluates the ELG hypothesis for the agricultural sector of Honduras. The conceptual model incorporates exports into a Cobb-Douglas production function and formulates dynamic econometric models of real gross domestic product (GDP), real gross fixed capital formation (GFCF), labor and real exports for the 1970-2000 period. To test for the validity of the ELG hypothesis, Granger-causality was tested on the export coefficients of the growth equation of the vector autoregressive (VAR) or error correction (ECM) model for each country in the short run, long run and in both (in totality). The results indicate that, in El Salvador, evidence supporting the ELG hypothesis was found in the short-run and in totality, it was also found that the ELG hypothesis holds in the long-run for Guatemala and for the non agricultural sector of Honduras. In Nicaragua, exports were found to Granger cause economic growth in the long-run and in totality. No evidence was found to support the ELG hypothesis for Costa Rica, Honduras and the Ag-GDP sector of Honduras. The results imply that efforts being put forth by the government of Honduras to promote total agricultural exports are not sufficiently strong to lead to economic growth over the study period. The strong emphasis in the promotion of maquila exports in recent years, however, seems to have contributed to economic growth from export expansion. Honduras has experienced an expansion of non-traditional agricultural exports over the past two decades. Yet, agricultural exports continue to be dominated by traditional commodities (bananas and coffee). The 1990's brought along low world prices for these traditional products, thus contributing to a slow down in growth of the dollar value of agricultural exports. The efforts by the Honduran government to diversify agricultural exports are a recent experiment, but it seems that contributions of such exports to economic growth are not significantly detected from the 1970-2000 data.

Louisiana strawberry production has decreased over a period of years while national production has increased, leading to concern that Louisiana's strawberry industry might disappear. California, the leading producer state, has exploited its production advantages and marketing efficiency to increase production. The objectives of the study were (1) to identify strawberry attributes preferred by consumers in the selected market area, (2) to analyze key demographic factors that influence the decision about sources of and preferences for strawberries, and (3) to identify key steps that the Louisiana strawberry industry might take to improve marketability of product and profitability of its production. Conjoint analysis (CA) was used to examine consumer preferences for selected product attributes of fresh strawberries in Louisiana. Conjoint designer was used to develop nine hypothetical strawberry products, and two holdout products were created from the attributes (container, pesticide strategy, price, and origin/brand) and their levels. The two container levels were a clear plastic clamshell design and the traditional plastic basket. Pesticide strategy's levels consisted of conventional control strategy and reduced pesticide strategy. Price's levels considered were $2.99, $2.49, and $1.99. Origin/brand's levels were California private company brand or label, Florida private company brand or label, and 'Louisiana produced' strawberries. Data were collected through mail surveys sent to 2,000 randomly selected consumers in Louisiana, the southern half of Mississippi including Jackson, and the metropolitan area of Mobile, Alabama. An Ordinary Least Squares model was used to analyze consumer preferences. The estimated part worth utility values were calculated and used in a cluster analysis to segment consumers based on their preferences. In addition, demographic categories were used to identify preferences among various socioeconomic groups. The results of the aggregate conjoint analysis indicated consumers put highest relative importance on origin/brand and, to a lesser degree, on price. Pesticide strategy and kind of retail container were rated much lower. CA results also were compared by demographics categories. The cluster analysis identified two clusters that exhibited high importance for origin/brand, one for price, and another for container and pesticide strategy. A standard marketing management model consisting of positioning, pricing, distribution, and promotional strategies was used as an outline for marketing implications. The results suggest that the Louisiana strawberry industry should market more through retail grocery chains and promote local origin/brand. The industry can differentiate itself from competitors by building on the quality, taste, and convenience of the Louisiana strawberry product in local grocery stores. In addition, there is an important segment of price-conscious consumers that might be tapped later in the growing season when prices have already dropped because of market saturation.