PER UNIT COSTS TO OWN AND OPERATE FARM MACHINERY

Entropy and jackknife estimation procedures were used to find that custom rates are 20.3% lower than the true cost to own and operate machinery for an average size Kansas farm. A method was then developed to estimate a farms total machinery costs with which to benchmark machinery costs.Farm Management,

The Tip of the Red Giant Branch Distance Ladder and the Hubble Constant

While the tip of the red giant branch (TRGB) has been used as a distance indicator since the early 1990's, its application to measure the Hubble Constant as a primary distance indicator occurred only recently. The TRGB is also currently at an interesting crossroads as results from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) are beginning to emerge. In this chapter, we provide a review of the TRGB as it is used to measure the Hubble constant. First, we provide an essential review of the physical and observational basis of the TRGB as well as providing a summary for its use for measuring the Hubble Constant. More attention is then given is then given to recent, but still pre-JWST, developments, including new calibrations and developments with algorithms. We also address challenges that arise while measuring a TRGB-based Hubble Constant. We close by looking forward to the exciting prospects from telescopes such as JWST and Gaia.Comment: 20 pages, 3 figures, Invited chapter for the edited book "Hubble Constant Tension" (Eds. E. Di Valentino and D. Brout, Springer Singapore, expected in 2024

Silvoarable agroforestry

Introduction: A silvoarable system of land management implies the cultivation of trees and arable crops on the same area of land, a system practised quite commonly in southern Europe and in the tropics. The system comprises two components: tree rows, generally one tree wide, and arable alleys, alternating across the field. The first major development of silvoarable practice in the UK took place during the 1960s and 1970s when Bryant & May established extensive poplar plantations on lowland farmland in southern England to supply their own market for match veneer timber (Beaton, 1987). Since the demise of the Bryant Sr May market for match timber in 1978, interest in the potential for silvoarable systems lay dormant until the advent of food crop surpluses in the 1980s