A stochastic cost equation was estimated for US dairy farms using national data from the production year 2000 to determine how farmers might reduce their cost of production. Cost of producing a unit of milk was estimated into separate frontier (efficient) and inefficiency components, with both components estimated as a function of management and causation variables. Variables were entered as im...

The economic well-being of most U.S. farm households depends on income from both onfarm and off-farm activities. Consequently, for many farm households, economic decisions (including technology adoption and other production decisions) are likely to be shaped by the allocation of managerial time among such activities. While time allocation decisions are usually not measured directly, we observe ...

The overall aim of this study was to analyze what drives and restrains efficient dairy production, based on data from dairy farms in Sweden. Key back ground factors of the study was that Swedish farms are getting larger and fewer, the Mid Term Review which changes the market situation and the evidence from several international studies that dairy farms can become more efficient than they are. T...

in many european states such as spain and italy there has been a significant growth of organic utilizable surface as a consequence of both a change in the model of agricultural production and also in order to satisfy arising demand of organic food. the purpose of this research was to investigate the level of technical, allocative and economic efficiency in italian olive farms with two different...

The need to adapt to decrease farm vulnerability to adverse contextual events has been extensively discussed on a theoretical basis. We developed an integrated and operational method to assess farm vulnerability to multiple and interacting contextual changes and explain how this vulnerability can best be reduced according to farm configurations and farmers' technical adaptations over time. Our ...

If farmers are risk averse, greater farm income variability should increase off-farm labor supply. This effect is confirmed for a sample of Kansas farmers. Off-farm employment of farmers and their spouses is also found to be significantly influenced by farm experience, off-farm work experience, farm size, leverage, efficiency, and farm-specific education. In addition, farm operators and spouses...

the objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of weaning age on dry matter intake (dmi), average daily gain (adg), feed efficiency (fe), feed cost (fc) and benefit index (bi) of holstein calves reared under organic farming system. thirty two holstein calves were divided into two treatments: early weaning (ew) vs. late weaning (lw). calves in the both groups were provided with whole mi...