A Component Methodology to Assess The Impact of Protein Imports on the U.S. Dairy Industry

This paper provides an assessment of the protein content of U.S. trade in dairy products and their potential impact on U.S. milk prices. The protein in imports of MPC, Casein & Albumins accounted for 5-6 percent of protein in total U.S. consumption during the period 1997-2002.Livestock Production/Industries,

Dynamic Decomposition of Total Factor Productivity Change in the EU Food, Beverages, and Tobacco Industry: The Effect of R&D

The main objective of this paper is to generate measures of TFP change for the food, beverages, and tobacco industry in the EU. Explicitly taking into account the fact that some of the inputs used in the industry are fixed in the short run, the generated measures of TFP change reflects the dynamic nature of the problem. The second objective is to analyse TFP change into its components and explicitly examine the effect of Research and Development (R&D) effort on TFP growth. Data are collected from EU KLEMS and the OECD Structural Analysis database. The data contain country-level information on output volume, input prices and capital stock, as well as R&D expenditure for the food, beverages, and tobacco industry for the 15 “old” EU Member States. They cover the 1970-2005 but most series contain gaps. The results show that for the period under consideration TFP in the industry grew on average at an annual rate of almost 2%. TFP growth was much faster in the 1970s and 1980s, with a considerable slowdown in the 1990s. This growth is driven primarily by growth in output and secondly by the reduction in labour input. Expenditure on R&D has a positive but relatively small effect on TFP.TFP change, Food Industry, R&D., Agricultural and Food Policy,

Dutch, Hungarian and German dairy farms technical efficiency comparison

The abolishment of the dairy quota system in the EU is expected to increase competition across dairy farms in Europe. Assuming a common price for milk in the EU, only the most efficient farms will survive in the new environment. The main objective of the paper is to compare dairy farms in Germany, The Netherlands and Hungary about their technical efficiency. In the first part of the research, the efficiency is measured by partial efficiency indexes using one dimensional efficiency measuring. In the second part, the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) have to be used to measure efficiency in a multidimensional space, using six inputs and two outputs. It appears from the results that the highest efficiency farms are in the Netherlands, and then Germany and Hungary follow. If we want to eliminate the low sample size effect, we can assume a common frontier, which decreases the efficiency scores a bit, and makes the Hungarian results more reliable. With respect the abolishment of the dairy quota system, our results suggest that the Dutch farms are the most efficient, thus probably they will increase their production after the quota system. But because the size of the country we cannot expect dramatic changes in the European Dairy market. The Germans farms efficiency is lower, but their efficiency is also lower, so we won’t expect high increase about the dairy supply. The Hungarian dairy sector is not so efficient like the Dutch, and the size of the sector has also small among the European countries, thus if they want to survive the quota system demolishing, they have to increase their technical efficiency

Environmental performance and shadow value of polluting on Swiss dairy farms

Better understanding the trade-offs/synergies between desirable and environmentally harmful (undesirable) farm outputs is relevant for future targeting and tailoring of agri-environmental policy measures. We use a hyperbolic distance function to represent the production technology employed by Swiss dairy farms in mountainous regions, thus allowing for simultaneous expansion of desirable outputs (milk and non-milk) and contraction of undesirable output (nitrogen surplus). We calculate the farm-specific shadow price of the undesirable output. The obtained shadow prices (mean value with respect to milk output was equal to 28 Swiss francs per kg of nitrogen) provide quantitative information on farmers’ costs of reducing nitrogen pollution

The Impact of Agri-Environmental Policies and Production Intensification on the Environmental Performance of Dutch Dairy Farms

This study examines the impact of policies and intensification on the environmental performance of Dutch dairy farms in the period 2001-2010 using a hyperbolic distance function. The results indicate that the change from the Mineral Accounting System to the combination of the Application Standards Policy with decoupled payments has not significantly changed farms’ hyperbolic efficiency. Farms receiving agri-environmental and animal welfare payments are less hyperbolically efficient than those that do not, highlighting greater decreases in desirable outputs than decreases in undesirable outputs. Finally, intensification increases hyperbolic efficiency, suggesting that intensive practices may increase production without harming the environment

Adoption of innovation in agriculture:A critical review of economic and psychological models

Two main models have been used to analyse farmers’ decisions toadopt an innovation; the first is based on the concept of utility maximisation(UM) and the second is based on the theory of planned behaviour (TPB). Thisstudy uses a vote-count method to identify the effect of different variables onfarmers’ adoption decisions in 36 studies using either UM or the TPB. Resultsfrom the UM studies show that the explanatory variables mostly have aninsignificant effect on the adoption decision. When the effects are significant,the sign of the effect is inconsistent across studies. Results from the TPBstudies show that correlations between the psychological constructs used in thistype of model are significant in most cases. However, most variables are onlyused in one or two studies and it is therefore no