Agriculture can be defined as the domestication and farming of plant and animal species to produce food and fiber products. Our society is fundamentally dependent on agriculture as it is the primary source of nutrients essential to human activities. Historically, the introduction of agriculture and technological development thereafter drastically changed the way human civilization has evolved into what it is today. New technologies allow farmers to produce more outputs with fewer inputs. Saved resources from agricultural production, such as land, labor and time, were used elsewhere to produce other goods and services that enrich the quality of our life.
The primary focus of my dissertation is how new agricultural technology is adopted by U.S. farmers in the face of risk and uncertainty surrounding todays agriculture. This dissertation contributes to the existing literature by reflecting the important recent trends in U.S. agriculture. In the first essay, I explore the implication of genetically modified crop varieties on farm households income from off-farm sources, which explains approximately 90% of total farm household income in the United States. The second essay studies the relationship between farm operators formal education and technology adoption. It reconsiders the conventional human capital theory and demonstrates that formal education can have a negative impact on technology adoption. The final essay focuses on the impact of farm producers attitude toward risk on their use of various risk management strategies.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LSU/oai:etd.lsu.edu:etd-04242012-215407 |
| Date | 30 April 2012 |
| Creators | Uematsu, Hiroki |
| Contributors | Brian, Marx D., Mishra, Ashok K., Gillespie, Jeffrey M., Kazmierczak, Richard F., Jr, Paudel, Krishna P. |
| Publisher | LSU |
| Source Sets | Louisiana State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-04242012-215407/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached herein a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to LSU or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below and in appropriate University policies, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
Page generated in 0.0021 seconds