Does risk matter for farm businesses? The effect of crop insurance on production and diversification.

We use a large increase in Federal crop insurance subsidies as a natural experiment to identify the impact of risk on acreage and diversification decisions. Subsidy increases induced greater crop insurance coverage, which reduced farmers' financial risks. Did this change in the risk environment alter production decisions? We merged crop insurance participation data with farm-level Agricultural Census data from 1992 and 1997 to examine how harvested acreage and diversification changed in response to the policy-induced change in insurance coverage. The difference in differences empirical approach controls for unobservable heterogeneity and our results are robust across multiple definitions of our key variables and various fixed effects. We find that changes in the risk environment caused larger farms to expand while smaller farms shrank. Regardless of size, producers showed some evidence of using diversification as a method to mitigate risk. However, risk does not seem to have large overall effects.Risk and Uncertainty,

THE IMPORTANCE OF INCOME RISK IN LABOR ALLOCATION DECISIONS

Previous research has found that on-farm income variability helps determine off-farm labor supply. However, unobserved heterogeneity of farms or regions may have biased earlier results. In this study, we use an exogenous increase in Federal crop insurance subsidies as a natural experiment to identify the importance of risk in off-farm labor supply. The subsidy increases induced greater participation in crop insurance programs and thereby reduced farmers' financial risks. By merging county-level crop insurance participation data with farm-level Agricultural Census data from 1992 and 1997 we can compare the off-farm labor decisions of individual farms before and after the subsidy and thereby control for unobserved heterogeneity. Unlike previous studies, we find that on-farm risk does not affect the labor allocation decisions of farm households.Labor and Human Capital,

Near-bed hydrodynamics and turbulence below a large-scale plunging breaking wave over a mobile barred bed profile

Funded by The research presented in this paper is part of the SINBAD project. Grant Number: STW (12058) and EPSRC (EP/J00507X/1, EP/J005541/1)Peer reviewedPublisher PDFPublisher PD

Farm Growth, Consolidation, and Diversification: Washington Dairy Industry

Farm Management, Q12,

An expanded phylogeny of the Entodiniomorphida (Ciliophora : Litostomatea)

The Entodiniomorphida are a diverse and morphologically complex group of ciliates which are symbiotic within the digestive tracts of herbivorous mammals. Previous phylogenies of the group have exclusively considered members of one family, the Ophryoscolecidae, which are symbiotic within ruminants. We sought to improve understanding of evolution within the entodiniomorphs by expanding the range of ciliates examined to include the Cycloposthiidae and Macropodimidae (symbionts of equids and macropodids respectively). The entire SSU-rRNA gene was sequenced for 3 species, Cycloposthium edentatum, Macropodinium ennuensis and M. yalanbense, and aligned against 14 litostome species and 2 postciliodesmatophoran outgroup species. Cycloposthium was consistently grouped as the sister-taxon to the Ophryoscolecidae although support for this relationship was low. This suggests that there is more evolutionary distance between the Cycloposthiidae and Ophryoscolecidae than previously inferred from studies of gross morphology, cell ontogeny or ultrastructure. In contrast, Macropodinium did not group with any of the entodiniomorphs, instead forming the sister group to the entire Trichostomatia (Entodiniomorphida + Vestibuliferida). This early diverging position for the macropodiniids is concordant with their morphology and ontogeny which failed to group the family with any of the entodiniomorph suborders. The currently accepted classification of the Trichostomatia is thus deficient and in need of review

Profits, Costs, and the Changing Structure of Dairy Farming

U.S. dairy production is consolidating into fewer but larger farms. This report uses data from several USDA surveys to detail that consolidation and to analyze the financial drivers of consolidation. Specifically, larger farms realize lower production costs. Although small dairy farms realize higher revenue per hundredweight of milk sold, the cost advantages of larger size allow large farms to be profitable, on average, even while most small farms are unable to earn enough to replace their capital. Further survey evidence, as well as the financial data, suggest that consolidation is likely to continue.Dairy farming, economies of scale, economies of size, dairy farm structure, milk costs, Farm Management, Industrial Organization, Livestock Production/Industries,

Incidental finding of a microsporidian parasite from an AIDS patient

Light microscopic examination of feces from a human immunodeficiency virus-positive patient with chronic diarrhea, anorexia, and lethargy revealed the presence of numerous refractile bodies resembling microsporidian spores. They were subsequently identified as belonging to the genus Nosema on the basis of their ultrastructural characteristics. However, the microsporidia were enclosed within striated muscle cells, suggesting that they were probably ingested in food; thus, this represented an incidental finding rather than a true infection