PRODUCT AND PROCESS CERTIFICATION IN IMPERFECTLY COMPETITIVE MARKETS

Consumers, policy makers, and business decision makers are increasingly concerned about food safety and security. In the U.S. meat industry, certification programs could address some of these problems. This study builds a three-sector partial equilibrium model to analyze the distributional effects of implementing a certification program for meat product.Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

THE CAPSTONE EXPERIENCE COURSE IN AGRICULTURAL CURRICULUM

Capstone courses are being developed in colleges of agriculture in response to demands from agribusiness firms, students, and other university stakeholders. With data from a faculty survey, the factors affecting the success of capstone courses in agricultural economics as well as other agricultural disciplines are identified.Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,

Price Pooling and the Gains from Hedging: Application to a Swedish Grain Cooperative

Optimal hedging strategies are analyzed for a cooperative operating a price pooling system in the presence of price and quantity risk. A three-period model, accounting for default risk and storage, is developed. Hedging allows the cooperative to increase the pool price offered to farmers by 2.8 - 4% for moderate risk parameters.Agribusiness, Marketing,

KIMOD 1.0 Documentation of NIER´s Dynamic Macroeconomic General Equilibrium Model of the Swedish Economy

KIMOD 1.0 is an annual large-scale macroeconomic model2 of the Swedish economy and is the result of a project that started in 2002 at the National Institute of Economic Research (NIER) in Sweden. In 2003, the model was used for the first time in policy analysis (see NIER, 2003) and from 2004 onwards it has also been applied for forecasting purposes. In November 2005, the time had come to document the first official version of the model, KIMOD 1.0. This document is a resulting part of the documentation project.

DIFFERENCES IN U.S. CONSUMER PREFERENCES FOR CERTIFIED PORK CHOPS WHEN FACING BRANDED VS. NON-BRANDED CHOICES

Consumers' preferences for credence attributes of a product may differ from each other, when facing the choices between branded and/or non-branded products. We test this hypothesis with conditional and mixed logit regression using data obtained by choice experiment surveys. The results suggest that, on average, consumers are willing to pay more for a certification attribute when the product is branded. Additionally, greater variation in consumer willingness-to-pay is observed in the non-branded case. This latter characteristic of the results may represent the increased uncertainty some consumers internalize concerning quality consistency when brand information is not provided. These results have interesting implications for producers, processors, retailers, and policy makers.Consumer/Household Economics,

Canadian Consumer Attitudes and Purchasing Behaviour of Omega-3 Products

The development of innovative functional food products is a major trend in today's food industry. The growth of this industry is driven by increased consumer awareness of their own health deficiencies, increased understanding of the possible health benefits of functional foods, development in formulation technologies, a positive regulatory environment and changing consumer demographics and lifestyles. While there has been a proliferation of omega-3 products such as milk, eggs, yogurt, and margarine in the Canadian food market, very little is known about consumers of omega-3 products. In our study we use ACNielsen HomescanTM data combined with ACNielsen Panel TrackTM survey data to develop profiles of omega-3 consumers in Canada. The focus of the study is on consumers of four products: omega-3 milk, omega-3 yogurt, omega-3 margarine and omega-3 eggs. We investigate whether there are significant differences between consumers and non-consumers of omega-3 products based on their age, income, education, and household composition. We also investigate whether a household's knowledge of the Canadian food guide, knowledge of nutrition labels, and consideration of health benefits influences the decision to purchase omega-3 products. The results from the ordered probit model estimation show that an aging (baby boomer) population is the most frequent purchaser of omega-3 products, the presence of children in the home increases the purchasing frequency of omega-3 yogurt and omega-3 margarine, and reading the Nutrition Facts panel and health benefits are important factors that affect the purchase of omega-3 products.omega-3 fatty acids, nutritional labelling, health benefits, ordered probit model, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, C81, D12, I19, Q19,

Early and repeated nutrient additions support far greater stemwood production in Norway spruce than traditional late-rotation fertilisation

Silvicultural techniques aimed at promoting forest biomass production can help meet the growing demand for renewable materials and mitigate climate change. One-time nitrogen (N) addition late in the rotation is a wellestablished method to stimulate growth in coniferous forests in northern Europe, but the potential gains from earlier and repeated fertiliser application remain uncertain. Here, we tested the impact of repeated fertilisation in juvenile Norway spruce stands across 9 sites covering a wide range of growing conditions over a 700 km stretch from central to southern Sweden. We tested the fertilisation effects using two separate studies: i) an interval trial with a fertilisation frequency of one (F1), two (F2), or three years (F3) performed at plot-level across five sites (2002-2014), and ii) a practice-oriented trial with a two-year fertilisation interval (F2) applied at stand-level and replicated at four sites (2003-2013). The composition of the nutrient mix in each plot was optimised based on foliar nutrient analyses. In the interval trial, all three fertilisation schedules strongly increased periodic annual increment (PAI) (F1: 105 %, F2: 93 %, F3: 79 %) relative to the unfertilised control, resulting in more than a doubling of stem volume yield in the F1 and F2 treatments (110 % and 120 %, respectively) and a significantly smaller but still sizeable yield stimulation of 82 % in the F3 treatment. Nitrogen use efficiency (NUE, stemwood volume increase per unit mass of N added) was similar among fertilisation intervals (on average 130 m3 ha-1 1000 kg N-1), indicating that the extra N provided through yearly fertilisation (F1) is redundant given the similar stemwood yields in the F2 treatment. In the practice-oriented trial, the sole F2 treatment increased PAI by 95 % over the control, translating into a yield stimulation of 114 % and an almost identical NUE to that of the interval trial. NUE greatly exceeded the figures typically observed with traditional late-rotation fertilisation and correlated inversely with baseline site productivity (using site index as a proxy) in the F1 and F2 treatments (the latter pooled across the two trials). Our results clearly indicate that nutrient limitation restricts growth and carbon (C) capture in young Norway spruce plantations in northern Europe to less than half of their potential, highlighting repeated fertilisation at nutrient-poor sites as an effective management tool to support a growing bioeconomy and enhance C sequestration

Treatment with Unlabeled mAb BR96 After Radioimmunotherapy with (177)Lu-DOTA-BR96 in a Syngeneic Rat Colon Carcinoma Model.

Metastatic disease after successful treatment of the primary tumor continues to be a therapeutic challenge. Enhancement of therapeutic effects by the administration of unlabeled monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) after radioimmunotherapy (RIT) may provide a means of preventing or delaying the development of metastatic disease. In the present study, Brown Norway rats with syngeneic grafted colon carcinomas were administered the minimal effective therapeutic dose of 400 MBq/kg lutetium-177 ((177)Lu)-DOTA-BR96. After 2 weeks, half of the animals were given 15 mg/kg unlabeled mAb BR96 as consolidation therapy. Treatment response and toxicity were monitored 100 days after the treatment with unlabeled BR96. The treatment with unlabeled mAb after RIT resulted in a complete response (CR) in 19 of 19 animals, while RIT alone resulted in a CR in 17 of 19 animals. The additional treatment did not affect the number of animals with metastatic disease or the time to clinical symptoms of metastases. RIT resulted in reversible myelotoxicity. The unlabeled mAb BR96 did not cause any additional toxicity, making it possible to repeat the consolidation therapy