Stock price responses on the German suspension of genetically modified maize

This note investigates the effect of the German governments' decision to suspend the cultivation of genetically modified maize on the stock returns of involved companies. Moreover, the first announcement to investigate a ban as well as a court decision rejecting Monsanto's lawsuit against the suspension are considered. This study is motivated by the expectation that these decisions have consequences beyond the small German market for genetically modified maize. An event study is used to evaluate the economic impacts on stock returns of Monsanto, Bayer and BASF. We find slight evidence that stock prices of Monsanto and BASF responded negatively to the German suspension of genetically modified maize.Event study, Bt maize, Monsanto, Bayer, BASF, GM crops

Evidence of slowing yield growth – the example of Swiss cereal yields

We analyze trends in yield growth and yield variability of barley, maize, oats, rye triticale and wheat in Switzerland from 1961 to 2006. In contrast to linear trends in cereal yield growth that are usually assumed for Europe, cereal yields have leveled off due to widespread extensive cereal production in Switzerland since the early 1990’s. This might also indicate prospects for future crop yield developments in other countries if similar farming practices are widely-used. Even though we find increasing yield variability for barley and rye, no increasing trend in relative yield variability (relative to yield levels) is found for all analyzed crops. Furthermore, this study emphasizes the importance of robust regression methods to ensure reliable results in trend estimation.climate change, crop yield development, detrending, robust regression, Switzerland, crop yield variability, agri-environmental policy

1 EVIDENCE OF SLOWING YIELD GROWTH – THE EXAMPLE OF SWISS CEREAL YIELDS

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The Application of Robust Regression to a Production Function Comparison – the Example of Swiss Corn

The adequate representation of crop response functions is crucial for agri-environmental modeling and analysis. So far, the evaluation of such functions focused on the comparison of different functional forms. The perspective is expanded in this article by considering an alternative regression method. This is motivated by the fact that exceptional crop yield observations (outliers) can cause misleading results if least squares regression is applied. We show that such outliers are adequately treated if robust regression is used instead. The example of simulated Swiss corn yields shows that the use of robust regression narrows the range of optimal input levels across different functional forms and reduces potential costs of misspecification.production function estimation, production function comparison, robust regression, crop response

Modeling agricultural production risk and the adaptation to climate change

A model that integrates biophysical simulations in an economic model is used to analyze the impact of climate change on crop production. The biophysical model simulates future plant-management-climate relationships and the economic model simulates farmers' adaptation actions to climate change using a nonlinear programming approach. Beyond the development of average yields, special attention is devoted to the impact of climate change on crop yield variability. This study analyzes corn and winter wheat production on the Swiss Plateau with respect to climate change scenarios that cover the period of 2030-2050. In our model, adaptation options such as changes in seeding dates, changes in production intensity and the adoption of irrigation farming are considered. Different scenarios of climate change, output prices and farmers' risk aversion are applied in order to show the sensitivity of adaptation strategies and crop yields, respectively, on these factors. Our results show that adaptation actions, yields and yield variation highly depend on both climate change and output prices. The sensitivity of adaptation options and yields, respectively, to prices and risk aversion for winter wheat is much lower than for corn because of different growing periods. In general, our results show that both corn and winter wheat yields increase in the next decades. In contrast to other studies, we find the coefficient of variation of corn and winter wheat yields to decrease. We therefore conclude that simple adaptation measures are sufficient to take advantage of climate change in Swiss crop farming.climate change, robust estimation, yield variation, corn, winter wheat, market liberalization, Environmental Economics and Policy, Production Economics, Risk and Uncertainty,

Spatial Analysis of Income Inequality in Agriculture

We investigate the spatial dimension of farm household income inequality as well as the importance of spatial considerations for its development over time using data for the period 1990-2009 on Swiss agriculture. To this end, Gini coefficients are estimated and non-parametric bootstrap is used to construct confidence intervals. We find significant differences between Gini coefficients across space, even though most cantons are characterized by homogeneous farm household income inequality. No significant change of Gini coefficients over time is found at the national level. In contrast, the analyses at the cantonal level show a heterogeneous development of income inequality. We find both increases and decreases in cantonal Gini coefficients.income inequality, agriculture, Gini coefficient, spatial analysis

The Impact of Climate Change on the Profitability of Site Specific Technologies

Site Specific Technologies (SST) can reduce environmental pollution caused by common agricultural practice. Using a case study for corn yields, we investigate the impact of climate change (CC) on profitability of SSTs. We find CC to increase spatial variability of soils with respect to optimal input application and yield variability. This leads, ceteris paribus, to higher incentives for SST adoption in the future.Climate Change; Site Specific Technologies; Adaptation; Crop Production Function

THE IMPACT OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON THE PROFITABILITY OF SITE SPECIFIC TECHNOLOGIES

Site Specific Technologies (SST) can reduce environmental pollution caused by common agricultural practice. Using a case study for corn yields, we investigate the impact of climate change (CC) on profitability of SSTs. We find CC to increase spatial variability of soils with respect to optimal input application and yield variability. This leads, ceteris paribus, to higher incentives for SST adoption in the future.Climate Change, Site Specific Technologies, Adaptation, Crop Production Function., Environmental Economics and Policy,

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A propagandistic center for aids, where an organization can raise awareness to the community in Abingdon Square, NYC. Britton Award Winner, Thesis Board

Risk management strategies to cope with climate change in grassland production: an illustrative case study for the Swiss plateau

In this paper, we assess climate change impacts on an intensively managed grassland system at the Swiss Plateau using the process-based grassland model PROGRASS. Taking the CO2 fertilization into account, we find increasing yield levels (in the range of 10-24%) and sharp increases in production risks for an illustrative climate change scenario that suggests a marked increase in temperature and decrease in summer rainfall. Climate change-induced increases in the coefficients of variation of grassland yields are in the range of 21 and 50%. This finding underpins that additional risk management strategies are needed to cope with climate-change impacts on grassland production. The outputs from the grassland model are evaluated economically using certainty equivalents, i.e., accounting for mean quasi rents and production risks. To identify potential risk management strategies under current and future climatic conditions, we consider adjustments of production intensity and farm-level yield insurance. The impact of climate change on production intensities is found to be ambiguous: farmers' will increase intensity under unconstrained production conditions, but will decrease production intensity in the presence of a cross-compliance scheme. Our results also show that the considered insurance scheme is a powerful tool to manage climate risks in grassland production under current and future conditions because it can reduce the coefficients of variation of quasi rents by up to 50%. However, we find that direct payments tend to reduce farmers' incentives to use such insurance schem