An Analysis of Farm Profitability, Exit Decision, and Price Supports in the Maine Dairy Industry

This paper is separated into three distinct chapters investigating different aspects of the Maine dairy industry. First, the paper provides a broad overview of the United States dairy industry with an emphasis on New England dairy farms. Structural industry changes, dairy legislation, and milk prices are topics of focus. The second chapter considers farm profitability and economies of scale among Maine dairy farms and compares the findings with similar studies from other states and previous studies of Maine dairy farms. The third chapter seeks to estimate the benefits of Maine’s Dairy Relief Program in terms of industry sustainability. The first chapter provides elaborate background about the United States dairy industry. First, technological advancements in dairy farming in the past 100 years are discussed. The changing distribution is explained, as the number of farms in the past several decades has declined substantially. The apparent trend is that farms remaining in business are getting larger, while small farms are exiting the industry more frequently. Further, milk prices are explored in terms of consumer demand, and price asymmetry between producers, processors, and retailers. Lastly, a brief overview is provided of risk management programs for dairy farms over the past few decades. In the second chapter, 79 total farms from the 2010 and 2013 dairy cost-of- production studies were used to assess farm profitability and economies of scale. Estimation of a per-unit cost function indicates that costs fall at a decreasing rate with output and eventually increase. Further, estimation of a Cobb-Douglas production function suggests increasing returns to scale exist in the Maine dairy industry. These two findings reinforce the hypothesis that small farms have higher per-unit costs, as was indicated in the raw data and in similar cost-of-production studies. The third chapter uses simulations to assess the benefits of Maine’s Dairy Relief program. A sample of 204 total farms from four cost-of-production studies was used to estimate Average Variable Cost (AVC). The AVC function was then used in combination with milk price and output data for all Maine dairy farms to estimate variable profit per cwt for all farms in the state from June 2004 to May 2015, which was necessary to run the simulation program. In each iteration, these estimated variable profits were used to establish a rule-of-thumb filter for removing observations for a probit regression. After removal of filtered observations, a binary probit was estimated with exit decision modeled as a function of seasonality, price lags in the previous six months, and AVC lags in the previous six months. Based on the corresponding probit probabilities of exit, a stochastic exit decision was forecasted without price supports for each farm-month combination. The results suggest that approximately 30% more farms would have exited and exits would have occurred sooner if the price floors had not been enacted in 2004. Though tier 1 farms observe the greatest difference in number of exits, the three tiers representing larger farms are substantially impacted as well

Cité créative et économie sociale culturelle: étude de cas de Montréal

Suivant en cela le thème de la « cité créative » développé par Richard Florida (2002), la culture est vue par les décideurs publics comme pouvant s’inscrire dans une volonté accrue de rendre attractifs certains territoires. Dans ce cadre, l’économie sociale, représentant une part majoritaire des organisations culturelles, a un rôle majeur à jouer en raison de ses rapports particuliers au territoire. À partir d’une étude de cas de Montréal, nous soulignons les potentialités du développement de l’économie sociale culturelle ainsi que les enjeux soulevés à propos des politiques publiques

Alien Registration- Bouchard, Mrs. Joseph D. (Kittery, York County)

https://digitalmaine.com/alien_docs/3657/thumbnail.jp

Religion and Theatrical Drama, an Introduction

Often, a lonely light bulb illuminates the edge of a stage outside of working hours. Part safety mechanism against falling in the dark and part theatrical tradition, the “ghost light” keeps the living alive and brightens up the place for any spirits still hoping to practice an old monologue. Stages juxtapose worlds, or fragments of worlds. The ghost light, then, would illuminate juxtaposed worlds, of the living and of the possibly otherwise. In some ways, this Special Issue of Religions takes theatrical juxtaposition as its premise. We invited papers working at intersections between studies of religious history, thought, and practice and studies of theatrical drama

Plant community structure mediates potential methane production and potential iron reduction in wetland mesocosms.

Abstract Wetlands are the largest natural source of methane to the atmosphere, but factors controlling methane emissions from wetlands are a major source of uncertainty in greenhouse gas budgets and projections of future climate change. We conducted a controlled outdoor mesocosm experiment to assess the effects of plant community structure (functional group richness and composition) on potential methane production and potential iron reduction in freshwater emergent marshes. Four plant functional groups (facultative annuals, obligate annuals, reeds, and tussocks) were arranged in a full-factorial design and additional mesocosms were assigned as no-plant controls. Soil samples from the top 10 cm were collected three times during the growing season to determine potential methane production and potential iron reduction (in unamended soils and in soils amended with 200 mM formate). These data were compared to soil organic matter, soil pH, and previously published data on above and belowground plant biomass. We found that functional group richness was less important than the presence of specific functional groups (reeds or tussocks) in mediating potential iron reduction. In our mesocosms, where oxidized iron was abundant and electron donors were limiting, iron reducing bacteria outcompeted methanogens, keeping methane production barely detectable in unamended lab incubations. When the possibility of re-oxidizing iron was eliminated via anaerobic incubations and the electron donor limitation was removed by adding formate, potential methane production increased and followed the same patterns as potential iron reduction. Our findings suggest that in the absence of abundant oxidized iron and/or the presence of abundant electron donors, wetlands dominated by either reeds or tussocks may have increased methane production compared to wetlands dominated by annuals. Depending on functional traits such as plant transport and rhizospheric oxygenation capacities, this could potentially lead to increased methane emissions in some wetlands. Additional research examining the role these plant functional groups play in other aspects of methane dynamics will be useful given the importance of methane as a greenhouse gas