Return to search

The Effects of Ethanol Production on the U.S. Catfish Sector

The overall purpose of this study is to estimate how the rise in grain prices (especially corn prices) induced by ethanol production impacts U.S. catfish industry. Using monthly data from January 1996 to December 2007, an ARDL model and bounds testing procedure were used. The existence of cointegration between the feed price and its regressors and between the farm price and its regressors was found. Results show that the short- and long-run feed price elasticity with respect to corn prices were 0.224 and 0.075, respectively. It was found that energy is more important to catfish feed production than to farm level catfish production, and is more important to processor level production than to farm level production. Results further showed that catfish farmers will lose net returns because the estimated farm price elasticity with respect to feed prices was smaller than the necessary change that would keep net returns the same. The overall purpose of this study is to estimate how the rise in grain prices (especially corn prices) induced by ethanol production impacts catfish feed prices and catfish prices at the farm level. Using monthly data from January 1996 to December 2007, an ARDL model and bounds testing procedure were used to test the existence of cointegration between the variables of interest. The existence of cointegration between the feed price and its regressors and between the farm prices and its regressors was found. Estimation results show that the short- and long-run feed price elasticity with respect to corn prices were 0.224 and 0.075, respectively. Feed and farm price elasticities with respect to energy prices were highlighted. The results show that energy is more important to catfish feed production than to catfish production at the farm level, and energy is more important to catfish production at the processor level than to production at the farm level.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:MSSTATE/oai:scholarsjunction.msstate.edu:td-5403
Date08 August 2009
CreatorsZheng, Hualu
PublisherScholars Junction
Source SetsMississippi State University
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
SourceTheses and Dissertations

Page generated in 0.0022 seconds