ORGANIC ROW CROPS IN A DIVERSIFIED FARM PORTFOLIO

This paper estimates and compares the net returns of an organic row crop rotation to the returns of a conventional row crop rotation in the Midwest, and explores some of the sources of risk associated with organic row crop production. The study concludes modeling the optimal land use of a risk-averse producer assuming a producer is able to grow both organic and conventional row crops. The results indicate that the expected net returns of organic row crop production can be competitive with traditional corn and soybean production, however, the variation in returns can be nearly twice those of conventional production. The land use model indicates that organics is part of an optimal portfolio for producers with low levels of risk aversion. Land use changes to conventional corn and soybean production as risk aversion and farm size increase.Farm Management,

Study of Fluid Experiment System (FES)/CAST/Holographic Ground System (HGS)

The use of holographic and schlieren optical techniques for studying the concentration gradients in solidification processes has been used by several investigators over the years. The HGS facility at MSFC has been primary resource in researching this capability. Consequently, scientific personnel have been able to utilize these techniques in both ground based research and in space experiments. An important event in the scientific utilization of the HGS facilities was the TGS Crystal Growth and the casting and solidification technology (CAST) experiments that were flown on the International Microgravity Laboratory (IML) mission in March of this year. The preparation and processing of these space observations are the primary experiments reported in this work. This project provides some ground-based studies to optimize on the holographic techniques used to acquire information about the crystal growth processes flown on IML. Since the ground-based studies will be compared with the space-based experimental results, it is necessary to conduct sufficient ground based studies to best determine how the experiment worked in space. The current capabilities in computer based systems for image processing and numerical computation have certainly assisted in those efforts. As anticipated, this study has certainly shown that these advanced computing capabilities are helpful in the data analysis of such experiments