| The analysis is based on an integrated climatic, agronomic and economic model of grain production in the midwestern region of the U.S. The model represents a typical farm and the objective is to select an optimum combination of cultivars for four crops (maize, soybean, wheat and sorghum) conditionally on climate, soil characteristics and the prices of the four crops. The first part of the analysis uses a complete two-way factorial design to estimate the effects of five climatic and agronomic variables and the four prices on yields, total production and net return. With this design, variability can be allocated uniquely to individual explanatory variables. As expected, prices have little effect on yields. For total production and net return, temperature and... |
