MANAGEMENT PRACTICES ON VIRGINIA DAIRY FARMS

Livestock Production/Industries,

SAEA ENTERPRISE BUDGET SURVEY AND SUMMIT HIGHLIGHTS

Agricultural Finance,

Evaluating Software Development: A Case Study with Pasture Land Management (PLMS) Grazing Software

A process for evaluating and improving public domain software is presented for agents and faculty who author software and Web-based training. Extension, education, and conservation employees participated in workshops to learn about a Pasture Land Management System software program that enables farmers to experiment with alternative grazing methods. Users were questioned at initial workshop training and again 6 months later. The workshop evaluation showed concern about the software complexity. The follow-up questionnaire revealed the respondents\u27 priorities for technical improvements. The authors used the participants\u27 feedback to evaluate existing problems and prioritize improvements in the usability and functionality of the software

CARBON CREDIT POTENTIAL FROM INTENSIVE ROTATIONAL GRAZING UNDER CARBON CREDIT CERTIFICATION PROTOCOLS

Rotational grazing can potentially reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from animal operations. This study investigates potential GHG reductions from rotational grazing farm operations under alternative procedures for defining a carbon credit. As applied to a case study cow-calf operation, GHG emission credits did not differ substantially under different definitions of entity boundaries. The choice of accounting metric used to report credits (mass load versus load per unit of output), however, would dramatically influence whether a farm would benefit financially from a future market in carbon credits

DESCRIBING ORGANIC AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION IN VIRGINIA: RESULTS OF THE 2004 FARM SURVEY

Production Economics,