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Production Regions (production + regions)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting75%

Selected Abstracts

Small U.S. dairy farms: can they compete?

AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS, Issue 2009
Richard Nehring
Pasture-based system; Technical efficiency; Returns to scale; Dairy Abstract The U.S. dairy industry is undergoing rapid structural change, evolving from a structure including many small farmers in the Upper Midwest and Northeast to one that includes very large farms in new production regions. Small farms are struggling to retain competitiveness via improved management and low-input systems. Using data from USDA's Agricultural Resource Management Survey, we determine the extent of U.S. conventional and pasture-based milk production during 2003,2007, and estimate net returns, scale efficiency, and technical efficiency associated with the systems across different operation sizes. We compare the financial performance of small conventional and pasture-based producers with one another and with large-scale producers. A stochastic production frontier is used to analyze performance over the period for conventional and pasture technologies identified using a binomial logit model. Large conventional farms generally outperformed smaller farms using most economic measures,technical efficiency, various profitability measures, and returns to scale. [source]

Formation of hard very high energy gamma-ray spectra of blazars due to internal photon,photon absorption

MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY, Issue 3 2008
Felix A. Aharonian
ABSTRACT The energy spectra of TeV gamma-rays from blazars, after being corrected for intergalatic absorption in the extragalactic background light (EBL), appear unusually hard, a fact that poses challenges to the conventional models of particle acceleration in TeV blazars and/or to the EBL models. In this paper, we show that the internal absorption of gamma-rays caused by interactions with dense narrow-band radiation fields in the vicinity of compact gamma-ray production regions can lead to the formation of gamma-ray spectra of an almost arbitrary hardness. This allows significant relaxation of the current tight constraints on particle acceleration and radiation models, although at the expense of enhanced requirements to the available non-thermal energy budget. The latter, however, is not a critical issue, as long as it can be largely compensated by the Doppler boosting, assuming large (>10) Doppler factors of the relativistically moving gamma-ray production regions. The suggested scenario of formation of hard gamma-ray spectra predicts detectable synchrotron radiation of secondary electron,positron pairs which might require a revision of the current ,standard paradigm' of spectral energy distributions of gamma-ray blazars. If the primary gamma-rays are of hadronic origin related to pp or p, interactions, the ,internal gamma-ray absorption' model predicts neutrino fluxes close to the detection threshold of the next generation high-energy neutrino detectors. [source]

Spatial Yield Risk Across Region, Crop and Aggregation Method

CANADIAN JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS, Issue 2-3 2005
Michael Popp
A researcher interested in crop yield risk analysis often has to contend with a lack of field- or farm-level data. While spatially aggregated yield data are often readily available from various agencies, aggregation distortions for farm-level analysis may exist. This paper addresses how much aggregation distortion might be expected and whether findings are robust across wheat, canola and flax grown in two central Canadian production regions, differing mainly by rainfall, frost-free growing days and soil type. Using Manitoba Crop Insurance Corporation data from 1980 to 1990, this research, regardless of crop or region analyzed, indicates that (i) spatial patterns in risk are absent; (ii) use of aggregate data overwhelmingly under-estimates field-level yield risk; and (iii) use of a relative risk measure compared to an absolute risk measure leads to slightly less aggregation distortion. Analysts interested in conducting farm-level analysis using aggregate data are offered a range of adjustment factors to adjust for potential bias. Un chercheur qui s'intéresse à l'analyse du risque du rendement des cultures doit souvent composer avec un manque de micro-données provenant de l'exploitation. Bien qu'il soit possible d'obtenir des données sur les rendements spatialement cumulées auprès de divers organismes, ces données peuvent comporter des distorsions importantes dues à l'agrégation des données de base et être trompeuses si elles sont utilisées pour effectuer des analyses à l'échelle de l'exploitation. Le présent article traite de la quantité de distorsion due à l'agrégation à laquelle on doit s'attendre et examine si les résultats obtenus pour le blé, le canola et le lin dans deux principales régions productrices canadiennes, où les précipitations, les jours de croissance sans gel et le type de sol constituent les principales différences, sont robustes ou non. À l'aide des données obtenues auprès de la Société d'assurance-récolte du Manitoba pour la période 1980,1990, la présente étude, sans égard à la culture ou à la région analysée, indique (i) que les profils régionaux en matière de risque n'existent pas; (ii) que l'utilisation de données agrégées sous-estime considérablement le risque de rendement; (iii) que l'utilisation d'une mesure du risque relatif comparativement à une mesure du risque absolu entraîne légèrement moins de distorsion d'agrégation. Afin d'ajuster les données pour minimiser un biais éventuel, nous proposons une gamme de facteurs d'ajustement aux analystes intéressés à effectuer des analyses à l'échelle des exploitations à l'aide de données agrégées. [source]

Quality Measurement and Contract Design: Lessons from the North American Sugarbeet Industry

CANADIAN JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS, Issue 2 2004
Brent Hueth
This paper examines contracts used in the North American sugarbeet industry. Though quite similar in many respects, the contracts we study vary across processing firms in the set of quality measures used to condition contract payments to growers. This is somewhat surprising, given the homogeneous nature of the processors' finished product (refined sugar). It seems unlikely that processors differ significantly in how they value the various attributes of a sugarbeet, and such a difference is perhaps the most natural reason to expect variation in the structure of quality incentives across processors. Previous attempts to explain the observed variation in sugarbeet contracts have focused on differences in organizational form across firms. In this paper, we provide an alternative explanation that relies on variation across production regions in growers' ability to control the relevant measures of sugarbeet quality. Les auteurs se penchent sur les contrats utilisés dans l'industrie nord-américaine de la betterave sucrière. Bien qu'ils se ressemblent à maints égards, les contrats examinés varient d'un transformateur à l'autre quant au jeu de paramètres servant àévaluer la qualité du produit et à déterminer les sommes qu'on versera au producteur. La chose est surprenante étant donné le caractère homogène du produit fini (sucre raffiné). Il est peu probable que les transformateurs recourent à des méthodes fort différentes pour évaluer les paramètres de la betterave. Or, ce facteur constituerait normalement la raison la plus plausible pour expliquer la variation des incitatifs auxquels recourent les transformateurs Antérieurement, on a tenté d'expliquer les écarts relevés dans les contrats par les différences dans l'organisation des entreprises. L'article que voici propose une autre explication s'appuyant sur la compétence variable des producteurs à respecter les critères de qualité de la betterave sucrière selon la région. [source]