Master of Science / Department of Agricultural Economics / John A. Fox / The United States has been inspecting commercial meat processing for over 100 years. Currently there is a push to increase the number of bacteria that meat processors are responsible to test for, which would lead to an increase in the costs of production. The goal of this thesis was to investigate antimicrobial practices used in small beef processing facilities across the Great Plains and the costs associated with those practices. A survey instrument was constructed and administered resulting in a total of 39 usable surveys for analysis. Preliminary analysis of the data was followed by an ordinary least squares regression to determine cost increasing or decreasing practices and attributes of the small processors. It was determined that on average small meat processors face a per ton variable cost of $914.71 or $0.46 per pound. Regression analysis indicated that plants can benefit from economies of scale. It was also determined there are no cost savings from being a state inspected as opposed to a federally inspected plant. Certain practices such as dry aging beef to increase quality and decrease bacterial load were found to increase the variable cost per pound. Microbial testing accounted for only 0.5% of the total variable cost of production.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Agricultural Economics / Ted Schroeder / Food recalls have been an issue of great concern in the food industry. Stakeholder responses to food safety scares can cause significant economic losses for food firms. Assessing the overall impact that may result from a food recall requires a thorough understanding of the costs incurred by firms. However, quantifying these costs is daunting if not impossible. A direct measurement of a firm’s total costs and losses of revenue associated with a food recall requires firm-level data that is not available. The method utilized in this study overcomes this severe limitation. Using an event study, the impact of meat and poultry recalls is quantified by analyzing price reactions in financial markets, where it is expected that stock prices would reflect the overall economic impact of a recall. A unique contribution of this study is evaluating whether recall and firm specific characteristics are economic drivers of the magnitude of impact of meat and poultry recalls on stock prices. Results indicate that on average shareholders’ wealth is reduced by 1.15% within 5 days after a firm is implicated in a recall involving serious food safety hazards. However, when recalls involve less severe hazards, stock markets do not react negatively. Also, reductions in company valuations return to pre-recall levels after day 20. Firm size, firm’s experience, media information and recall size are drivers of the economic impact of meat and poultry recalls. That is, firms recalling a larger amount of product perceive greater reductions in company valuations. Additionally, recalls issued by larger firms are less likely to present negative effects on stock prices, compared to smaller firms. Moreover, firms that have recently issued a recall are less harmed by a new recall compared to those firms issuing a recall for first time. Thus, suggesting that investors take into consideration the past performance of a company when dealing with food recalls. Furthermore, media information has a negative impact on shareholder’s wealth. Findings from this study provide essential information to the meat industry. In particular, understanding the likely impact of such “black swan” events is critical for firm’s investing in food safety technologies and protocols.

Master of Science / Department of Agricultural Economics / Glynn T. Tonsor / The purpose of this analysis is to examine two aspects of price analysis in the stocker industry in order to better assist producers making purchasing decisions. One analysis looks at forecasting value of gain, while the second looks at drivers of price differentials between calves and yearlings. When analyzing forecasts on value of gain, weekly data was collected to compare a naïve approach and futures market implied basis-adjusted approaches that include one to five years of historical average basis. This allowed for the assessment of five different models for nine scenarios. The conclusions from this were inconsistent with what was hypothesized and the naïve approach was either worse or no better when compared to using the futures market implied basis-adjusted approaches to forecast value of gain. The drawback to this analysis was that it was solely influenced by error on forecasting the selling price and in future work a forecasting horizon will be incorporated on the buying price. In order to analyze the price premiums and discounts between calves and yearlings, a confirmation, update and expansion were completed following monthly models by Marsh (1985). Three elements are considered when predicting price premiums and discounts between two weight classes; cost of gain (proxied by corn price), slaughter price, and seasonality. Estimated models in the confirmation for years 1972 to 1982 and the update for years 1973 to 2013, show that premiums and discounts are influenced by expected changes in corn price and/or slaughter price, but not highly affected by seasonality. However, in the expansion for years 1993 to 2013, corn price, slaughter price, and seasonality were all significant to the models and in higher magnitude when compared to those results in the confirmation and update. Understanding the relationships between all variables in these models allows producers in the cattle-feeding industry to make management decisions based on current marketing conditions and trends.

Master of Science / Department of Agricultural Economics / Glynn Tonsor / This decade has seen movements in commodity futures markets never seen before. There are many factors that have intensified price movements and volatility behavior. Those factors likely altering supply and demand include governmental policy within and outside of the U.S, weather shocks, geopolitical conflicts, food safety concerns etc. Whatever the reasons are for price movements it is clear that the volatility behavior in commodity markets constantly change, and risk managers need to use current and efficient tools to mitigate price risk. This study identified market structural breaks of realized volatility in corn, wheat, soybeans, live cattle, feeder cattle and lean hogs futures markets. Furthermore, this study analyzes the forecasting performance of implied volatility, historical volatility, a composite approach and a naïve approach as forecasters of realized volatility. The forecasting performance of these methods was analyzed in the full period of time of our weekly data from January 1995 to April 2014 and in each identified market regime for each commodity. Previous research has analyzed forecasting performance of implied volatility, a time series alternative and a composite method. However, to the best of my knowledge, they have not worried about market structural breaks in the data that might influence the performance of the mentioned forecasting methods in different periods of time. Overall, results indicate that indeed there are multiple market structural breaks present in the volatility datasets across all six commodities. We found differences in the forecasting performance of the analyzed methods when individual market regimes were analyzed. There seems to be evidence that corroborates the idea in the literature about the superiority of implied volatility over a historical volatility, a composite approach and a naïve approach. Additionally, implied volatility encompassed all the information contained in the historical volatility and the naïve measure across each identified market regime in all six commodities. Our results show that when both implied volatility and historical volatility are available, the benefit of combining those measures into a composite forecasting approach is very limited. Our results hold true for a short term 1 week ahead realized volatility forecast. It would be of interest to see how results vary for longer forecasting time horizons.

Master of Science / Agricultural Economics / John A. Fox / Hard Red Winter Wheat is an extremely important part of the Kansas agricultural industry. In Kansas, this type of wheat is planted in the fall and harvested in mid-June. After harvest, producers have the option to either store or sell their wheat. If they decide to store, the wheat can be stored on-farm or in a commercial facility. Another storage decision is whether to store the wheat hedged or unhedged (speculative) storage. Hedging is a technique to limit the price risk associated with selling or buying commodities. This study compared hedged and speculative decisions for both on-farm and commercial storage scenarios for 108 locations geographically dispersed across Kansas. Wednesday prices were gathered for each location during the 10-year time period from 2004 to 2013. All monthly storage period possibilities from July to May were examined to determine the storage returns potential. All results are displayed as the profit or loss achieved compared to selling in June at harvest. Averages for Kansas were negative or slightly positive for all storage scenarios, but hedged returns showed much less variability in results compared to speculative returns. Regional differences showed that North Central Kansas displayed the highest level of basis improvement over the 10-year period followed by South Central Kansas. A regression analysis using nearby basis in June, harvest price, and futures contract spreads as independent variables and storage returns as a dependent variable showed emphasis on the futures spread having the biggest influence on storage profits.

Master of Agribusiness / Department of Agricultural Economics / David Barton / The main objective of this thesis is to aid Ag Valley Cooperative’s board of directors in the construction of a superior income distribution and equity redemption strategy. The key information provided is a detailed financial analysis and pro forma financial projections. Ultimately, this study focuses on increasing patron value by returning retained patronage refunds in an equitable and timely manner. This paper examines the benefits of eliminating Ag Valley Cooperative’s current equity redemption program, age of patron, and replacing it with a revolving fund. Chapter 1 introduces Ag Valley Cooperative and gives a brief description of the cooperative’s business model. The chapter concludes with the study’s methodology. Chapter 2 briefly examines cooperatives and people who use them. This chapter introduces Cooperative Performance Profile, the financial analysis used in the study. The chapter concludes with a look at cooperative finance theory and equity management. Chapter 3 describes key points of the Cooperative Performance Profile and separates it into five groupings: profitability, liquidity, solvency, efficiency, and size. Analyses are conducted in each category on Ag Valley Cooperative’s historic trends and comparisons to other Nebraska cooperatives. In Chapter 4 Ag Valley Cooperative’s current equity redemption strategy is defined along with four pro forma analyses. The first strategy, S0, assumes the cooperative continues business as normal with estate and age of patron redemption methods. Strategies S1 and S2 interject balance sheet management constraints and revolving fund redemption into the projection. In S1, revolving fund equity redemption is added to distribute any excess equity redemption budget, in S2 the revolving fund method is phased in. Strategy S3 builds upon S2 with a look at the effects and tax consequences of distributing non-qualified equity or retained patronage refunds instead of qualified retained patronage refunds.

Master of Agribusiness / Department of Agricultural Economics / Jason Bergtold / Efficiency and technology are increasingly important selling points for combine harvesters. Diesel-electric hybrid drives have taken hold in the construction equipment industry, and are providing marketable efficiency benefits for some heavy equipment customers. This thesis explores the technical and economic feasibility of utilizing diesel-electric hybrid drives on AGCO combine harvesters. To determine the technical feasibility of utilizing diesel-electric hybrid drives on AGCO combine harvesters, a search was conducted for prior literature relating to the use of electric drives on other heavy, off-highway equipment. This information, coupled with data provided by experts in the field, was used to determine if electric drives could fulfill the unique requirements of combine harvesters, and be practically utilized for this application. To determine the economic feasibility of utilizing diesel-electric hybrid drives on AGCO combine harvesters, an optimization model was constructed to seek out the most economically viable configuration of electric drives for this application. The model takes in to consideration the different use-cases in which this equipment is expected to perform, as well as the component costs and operating efficiencies of both the drives in place currently and the proposed electric drives. The outcome of the model was then utilized to compare the best-case configuration to the minimum requirement for economic feasibility. The technical feasibility assessment conducted for this thesis led to the conclusion that it would be technically feasible to utilize electric drives on a combine harvester. There are commercially available electric drive components which are suitable for use in the environment that this equipment is expected to operate in, and a prototype combine harvester having electric drives has previously been constructed. The economic feasibility assessment conducted for this thesis revealed that it is not economically feasible to utilize electric drives on AGCO combine harvesters at this time. Under the current circumstances, the most economically viable configuration would take nearly twice the machine’s usable operating life to provide a benefit to a customer from fuel savings. Sensitivity analysis revealed that significant changes in the price of fuel or electric drive components would be necessary to change the outcome of this study.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Agricultural Economics / Hikaru H. Peterson / The U.S. wool demand has declined since 1950s due to the increasing demand for synthetic fibers. This research aims to study U.S. consumers' preferences for wool attributes to help the wool industry developing marketing strategies targeting certain groups of consumers. This research can be divided into two parts: 1) examining consumers' willingness-to-pay for wool attributes including country-of-origin, organic, animal-friendly, environment-friendly, and 2) investigating whether or not the consumer segments can be identified from consumers' demographic and psychographic characteristics on product purchasing behavior with respect to the wool attributes. In order to achieve the purpose of this research, the choice experiment was applied to examine consumers' preferences for wool attributes. Both mail and on-line surveys were conducted. The mail survey included three versions: basic version, version with definitions of attributes, and version with both definitions and information about wool attributes, with ## responses received (a 29 percent response rate). The on-line survey contained the basic version and the version with both definitions and information about wool attributes, with 514 responses received. Conditional logit and multinomial logit models were used to examine willingness-to-pay for wool attributes and consumer segments, respectively. Results indicated that a certain portion of U.S. consumers preferred wool over acrylic products. Findings also suggested that it is likely beneficial for wool producers to differentiate their products by promoting products' attributes, such as organic, animal-friendly, and environment-friendly. Further, brief information on product attributes provided with labels could increase consumers' WTPs. Results here revealed that to increase wool producers' revenues effectively, it is necessary to advertise their value-added wool products to different consumer segments.

Master of Science / Department of Agricultural Economics / Ted C. Schroeder / Hedonic pricing models have long been used to evaluate prices in high-end segments of the equine industry. However, the lower end markets, including most of the recreational and pleasure horses, have yet to be studied in the economic literature. This study evaluates characteristics affecting the price of recreational horses advertised online, and provides a framework for future market studies on various segments of the equine industry. Data were collected in both the spring and fall of 2008, in addition to a survey being conducted in the fall to collect more accurate pricing information. Three different functional forms were used and their outcomes discussed to determine which one best fit the data. Results show that the semi-log functional form appeared to best fit the data. Characteristics that consistently showed statistical significance included the horse being advertised using a photo ad, the age of the horse, and whether or not the horse was registered. Gender variables and the state which the horse was sold from showed statistical significance in most of the models; although the variables denoting breed were statistically significant as a group, no model consistently found statistical significance in any of the variables individually. Color characteristics did not demonstrate statistical significance consistently in any model. Finally, suggestions for future research are discussed. Data issues could be avoided with larger or more specific data sets; various data sources could be examined or created such as live equine auctions; regions could be examined by show or rodeo circuit instead of by state. There are political issues in the industry that need to be addressed, but a lack of available data needs to be examined and corrected before many issues can be thoroughly examined. The equine industry is often overlooked in economic literature and is a multi-billion dollar agricultural industry which deals with legislative and taxation issues just like the rest of the agricultural world and is deserving of attention.

Masters of Science / Department of Agricultural Economics / Hikaru H. Peterson / Concerns about environmental degradation due to agriculture have gained importance as it is associated with soil erosion, health hazards, and ground water pollution. Environment-friendly land use practices have been developed to gain a wide range of environmental benefits including reduced soil erosion, reduced nutrient runoff from crop and livestock facilities, increased biodiversity preservation efforts, and restoration of wetlands and other native ecosystems. No-till is one such practice where soil erosion, nutrient runoff and environmental degradation can be reduced to a certain extent. This study evaluated the factors affecting the adoption of tillage systems in Kansas. A survey was conducted with a total of 135 participants from four different locations in the state of Kansas between August 2006 and January 2007. The adoption process was modeled as a two-step econometric models consisting of perception and adoption equations to estimate the impacts of demographic variables and farmers’ familiarity with and participation in certain conservation programs. The results for the perception models showed that the farm operators’ perceptions regarding whether BPM installation and management is unfair to producers or not and whether environmental legislation is often unfair to producers do not vary systematically across farm size, producers’ familiarity and participation in conservation programs, or other demographics considered in the study. On the other hand, their perceptions regarding how polluted their water supplies varied by their thoughts on relative profitability across various tillage practices, their primary occupation, and their familiarity with conservation programs. Specifically, the results suggested that those who regarded no-till practices to be more profitable than other tillage practices or whose primary occupation was farming-related tended to believe that ground water was not polluted, and those who were less familiar with available conservation programs tended to believe that surface waters were not polluted. The adoption model results suggested that farmers with greater operating acreage, those who perceived that no-till was more profitable than other tillage systems, and those with greater familiarity with and participation in existing conservation programs were more likely to adopt more conservation tillage systems, all else equal. Further, perceptions of fairness of environmental regulations or the level of pollution did not impact the tillage choices.