For Whom is the Rural Economy Resilient? Initial Effects of Drought in Western Sudan

This discussion piece addresses two recent debates: entitlement theory and the resilience of rural systems. The authors find that in western Sudan entitlement theory provides a specific and useful framework for understanding the nature of the crisis confronting the society. Arguments about the resilience of rural systems, however, need to be more closely examined and will depend on site-specific factors. The rural economy and society of western Sudan were not found to be resilient

Strategy Constancy Amidst Implementation Differences: Interaction-Intensive Versus Memory-Intensive Adaptations To Information Access In Decision-Making

Over the last two decades attempts to quantify decision-making have established that, under a wide range of conditions, people trade-off effectiveness for efficiency in the strategies they adopt. However, as interesting, significant, and influential as this research has been, its scope is limited by three factors; the coarseness of how effort was measured, the confounding of the costs of steps in the decision-making algorithm with the costs of steps in a given task environment, and the static nature of the decision tasks studied. In the current study, we embedded a decision-making task in a dynamic task environment and varied the cost required for the information access step. Across three conditions, small changes in the cost of interactive behavior led to changes in the strategy adopted for decision-making as well as to differences in how a step in the same strategy was implemented

Risk Sharing and Transactions Costs in Producer-Processor Supply Chains

Industrial Organization,

Restructuring of the Ag Lending Markets: The FCS Dilemma

Agricultural Finance,

the Growth Potential for the Indiana Livestock Industries

Feed, processing capacity, population density versus animal density, and environmental capacities are the four different dimensions of livestock location and growth potential analyzed for Indiana. These four dimensions provide livestock producers, government officials, and livestock associations a valuable perspective on the constraints that could limit Indiana’s livestock growth potential. Comparisons among 21 states on these dimensions indicated that Indiana is a second choice of states for livestock growth; Kansas and Iowa are the only first choices. Indiana’s strength in the state comparison is its ability to assimilate the phosphorus produced by livestock and commercial phosphorus. As environmental regulations continue to tighten and shift from nitrogen to phosphorus based application standards for manure, the ability to assimilate phosphorus will continue to be one of Indiana’s strengths, along with its abundance of feed and swine processing capacity. Population density is the key dimension that is a disadvantage for Indiana. Within the state of Indiana, the West Central district has key advantages compared to other districts of the state. This district has an abundance of feed, the second lowest population density in the state, and excess phosphorus assimilation capacity. This district does not have processing capacity for any species, but the adjoining districts do have adequate processing capacity. Overall, the results show that Indiana has the potential to grow the livestock sector. However, there will be constraints such as population density that require more in-depth study to determine how to address this potential limitation on growth.Livestock Growth, Animal Waste, Feed Capacity, Livestock Processing Capacity, Animal Density, Population Density

THE INDUSTRIALIZATION OF AGRICULTURE: IMPLICATIONS FOR FUTURE POLICY

Farming is in the midst of a major transformation—not only in technology and production practices, but also in size of business, resource (land) control and operation, business model and linkages with buyers and suppliers. This paper describes the fundamental drivers of today’s structural change in U.S. agriculture. The impact of the drivers are illustrated by describing some illustrations of the kinds of innovative farming operations that are developing in agriculture, not the typical farms but those who appear to be leading and shaping the new agriculture. Finally, farm policy implications of the transformation of farming to an industrial manufacturing model are discussed.Farm policy, industrialization of agriculture, structural change, biological manufacturing

Impact of Home Field Advantage: Analyzed Across Three Professional Sports

We examined the impact of home-field advantage in the NFL, NBA, and MLB. We defined home-field advantage as winning more than 50% of the home games. Additionally, we took into consideration how season length could act as a moderator and influence the impact of home-field advantage. We collected data from the 2015 NBA and MLB seasons and the 2015 and 2016 NFL seasons to determine statistical significance. In total, we got data from 4,141 games to analyze. We found that there is statistical significance that the home team has a better chance of winning than the away team across the NFL, NBA, and MLB. We also found that season length has a significant impact on home team winning percentage