Technical Efficiency among Organic and Conventional Farms in Sweden 2000-2002: A Counterfactual and Self-Selection Analysis

Technical efficiency and its determinants among organic and conventional farms in Sweden are analyzed for time-period 2000-2002. In addition, we address the issues that arise when comparing performance measures among the two groups of producers (conventional and organic) due differences in their technologies and the potential presence of self-selection in the farmer's choice of using conventional or organic production methods. If the choice of production method is based on, or at least in part based on, the farms expected productivity in organic and conventional farming respectively there is self-selection present that must be considered. We apply an endogenous switching regression model suggested by Lee (1978) to compare efficiency measures between the two groups that also allows for testing for the presence of self-selection. The results suggest that organic producers have a lower average technical efficiency which is expected because they use a more restricted technology. Moreover, the results suggest that the organic farmers are on average more efficient in organic production than the average conventional would have been in organic production.technical efficiency, self-selection, organic farming, Farm Management, O390, Q120,

Targeting Consumers by Store - The Basis of Increased Sales with Less Advertising

Conditional Logit approach was used to analyze the Choice Experiment data obtained from the grocery stores and supermarket of Tbilisi, Georgia. Results show that customers' preferences for selected pork attributes in different stores are not the same. So, targeting customers by store can be beneficial marketing tool for pork suppliers.Willingness-to-Pay, Choice Experiment, Pork Attributes, Marketing, D120, D190, M390, Q130, Q180,

INDIRECT UTILITY FUNCTIONS AND TESTABLE CONDITIONS

We develop testable hypotheses for utility maximization given risk averse producers based on a general specification of the utility function. This is a direct expansion of the model posed by Pope (1978). Empirical tests using production data with a translog specification indicate that utility maximization does not always hold.Research Methods/ Statistical Methods,

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,

Certification of Pork Products

The objective of this paper is to provide insights on the welfare distributional impact on consumer and producer welfare resulting from the development and implementation of a credence certification program in the U.S. pork sector. The certification program can provide various levels of tracking and tracing in the marketing chain. The modeling framework follows that of Nilsson (2005), which encompasses product differentiation and substitution across meat products at the consumer level and across live animal types at the farm level. Processors and retailers have potentially bilateral market power and can supply either or both certified and conventional meat products. One of the key findings is that while as the conventional market contracts and the certified market expands as expected, the magnitude depends on whether suppliers are single-or multiproduct providers. On aggregate, total welfare increases by 15 to 24 percent depending on industry structure.Marketing,

ASSESSING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MARKET FACTORS AND REGIONAL PRICE DYNAMICS IN U.S. CATTLE MARKETS

Regional live cattle prices are decomposed into two components: (a) a trend common to all regional cattle price series and (b) regional deviations or price dynamics around that trend. Tests are developed to determine if market factors are related to the regional price deviations around a common trend. Slaughter volume, distance between a market and the next closest, and forward contract deliveries are significantly related to price deviations from the estimated common trend.Livestock Production/Industries,

Production Structure, Technological Change and Scale Economies in the Saw and Planing Mills Industry in New Brunswick, Canada

The translog cost function approach is employed to characterize the production structure and to estimate the rate of technical change and technical bias in the saw and planing mills industry (SPM) in the New Brunswick Province. The findings are that the production structure of the saw and planing mills in Canada is neither homothetic nor homogenous implying potential scale induced distortion in the input mix. Morishma elasticity of substitution estimates show that in the existing technology of the saw and planing mills in New Brunswick, labor can more easily be substituted by capital than capital by labor. Moreover, the amount of round wood that is required to complement labor is higher than that required to complement energy and capital, which indicates that a labor intensive technology choice in the SPM industry is more round wood consuming than the capital and energy intensive technologies. These results coupled with the increasingly stringent environmental regulations indicate that the relative use of labor compared to other inputs is likely to decline in the saw and planing mills industry. Hence, in view of their cost minimizing behavior, the saw and planing mills in New Brunswick will sooner or latter start to replace labor with energy or capital. The saw and planing mills in New Brunswick exhibited fairly high economies of scale during the period 1965-1995, but the rate of technical change has been found to be negative.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF PHOSPHORUS - REDUCING TECHNOLOGIES IN PORK PRODUCTION

Soil phosphorus levels have increased as pork production has become concentrated. Phosphorus-based manure management regulations for land application have been proposed by policy makers. The objective of this study is to determine benefits/costs of adopting two alternatives for reducing phosphorus: synthetic amino acids or phytase. An optimization model is constructed to determine optimal excreted nitrogen and phosphorus from alternative feed ingredients. Results are derived using different manure storage and application systems. While the two alternatives are not least-cost ingredients, they become profitable when producers are constrained by land. An important result is that the net cost of manure is negative.Livestock Production/Industries,

DOES RURAL JOB GROWTH LEAD THE ECONOMY OUT OF RECESSION?

This paper explores the dynamics of rural and non-rural job growth to investigate if job growth starts in rural places, making it one of the leading indicators of economic growth. Empirical results provide mixed evidence. The mixed results of the Granger non-causality tests could be sensitive to the non-rural area definition. The relationship between rural job growth and non-rural job growth is not restricted to post-recession periods. Analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data suggests the spillover effects of non-rural growth are larger than the spillover effect of rural growth on non-rural areas. But this positive response of rural growth disappears over time and turns sharply negative. In the long run, "backwash" effects outweigh "spread" effects.Community/Rural/Urban Development,

NUTRITION AND THE ECONOMICS OF SWINE MANAGEMENT

Current methods of formulating animal rations lead to excess nutrient excretion which can potentially lead to excess manure nutrients and an increase in economic costs. These methods do not recognize the impact of diminishing returns. The objective is to simultaneously optimize feed ration composition and replacement. The results, when compared against results from a survey of feed companies, indicate that using a profit maximization rather than live weight growth maximization criterion targets nutrients to an animal's actual needs and, hence, fewer nutrients are excreted and higher returns for producers are obtained.nonlinear growth modeling, pigs, replacement, swine, Livestock Production/Industries,