A regime-switching vector error correction model is applied to monthly price data to assess the impact of BSE outbreaks on price relationships and patterns of transmission among farm and retail markets for bovine in Spain. To evaluate the degree to which price transmission is affected by BSE food scares, a BSE food scare index is developed and used to determine regime-switching. Results suggest...

Bumper crops have quickly turned the corn and soybean price boom into a bust. Newcrop corn and soybean futures contracts are down 40 percent and 35 percent respectively in just a few short months. Of course, those farmers that had the foresight to lock in at high prices are completely unaffected by the drop in price. For them, market volatility has created profit opportunities. But all is not l...

The Australian Government‘s proposal to put a price on carbon is likely to have a significant impact on the price of farm inputs (diesel, fertiliser, water and electricity). Furthermore, offsets (reduction or removal of greenhouse gas emissions that counterbalances emissions elsewhere in the economy) are a potential area of expansion of interest to the agricultural sector. Agrichar is one of th...

Despite the resurgence of parastatal marketing boards and strategic grain reserves over the last decade in eastern and southern Africa, there is little empirical evidence about how their activities affect smallholder input use and cropping decisions. This paper uses panel survey data from 1997-2007 on Kenyan smallholders to investigate the effect of Kenya’s National Cereal Produce Board activit...

demand for farm output is theoretically consistent with consumer demand and marketing performance. many studies have focused on demand interrelationships at the retail level, but not on the demand for farm output. in this study, derived demand elasticities of sheep, beef and chicken were estimated in a complete system of demand functions by seemingly unrelated regression estimator (sure) for th...

The paper examines the effectiveness of the price stabilization mechanism for the broiler and poultry industry in Taiwan during the period 1999 to 2008. After presenting some background information on the domestic marketing system and price stabilization mechanisms for the broiler and pork industry in Taiwan, the paper discusses the smooth transition autoregressive (STAR) methodology. Monthly h...

The present study examined the perception of smallholder pineapple farmers on Global GAP standard compliance, assessed compliant farmers’ rate of adherence to standard requirements, and compared the average farm profit of Global GAP compliant and non-compliant pineapple farmers in Akuapem South Municipal Area of Ghana. The study used mainly farm level data solicited from 150 randomly selected p...

An important step in farm planning is the development of a gross margin budget. A gross margin is calculated from a crop's gross income less the variable costs incurred in growing and marketing that crop. The gross margin indicates the potential financial gain or loss of the crop being produced. Gross margins are usually expressed in units related to resources such as land, labour or irrigation...