SABIIA - Sistema Aberto e Integrado de Informação em Agricultura (Sabiia)

SYSTEMIC FAILURE IN THE PROVISION OF SAFE FOOD

Palavras-chave: Crop insurance; Growing degree days; Martingale; Pólya urn; Stochastic process.; Crop Production/Industries; Financial Economics; Production Economics.

Ano: 2010

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/60896

Hennessy, David A.; Roosen, Jutta; Jensen, Helen H..

Many deficiencies in the capacity of a food system to deliver safe products are systemic in nature. We suggest a taxonomy of four general ways in which a systemic failure might occur. One relates to the connectedness, or topology, of the system. Another arises from mistrust on the part of downstream parties concerning signals on product attributes, production processes, and the performance of regulatory mechanisms. A third arises when asymmetric information leads to low incentives for preserving food quality. Finally, inflexibilities in adapting to different states of nature may leave the system vulnerable to failures. Innovations in information technology and institutional design may ameliorate many problems, while appropriate trade, industrial...

Behavioral Incentives, Equilibrium Endemic Disease, and Health Management Policy for Farmed Animals

Palavras-chave: Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety.

Ano: 2002

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/18601

We develop a dynamic capital valuation model in which each farm can take an action with farm-varying cost to increase the probability of not contracting a disease. In the presence of infection externalities, circumstances are identified under which multiple equilibria exist and where the one involving the most extensive set of action takers is socially optimal. It is suggested that costly capital markets are one factor in determining the extent of endemic disease in a region. The introduction of frictions, such as dealing with a cumbersome veterinary public health bureaucracy, can enhance social welfare by encouraging precautionary biosecurity actions. Some technical innovations can reduce social welfare. The model is also extended to study a voluntary...

Feeding and the Equilibrium Feeder Animal Price-Weight Schedule

Palavras-chave: Biosecurity; Continuous time; Multiple equilibria; Nash behavior; Reinfection; Livestock Production/Industries.

Ano: 2005

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/18330

The feeder animal price is a derivative in the sense that its value depends upon the price of animals for the consumption market. It also depends upon the biological growth technology and feed costs. Daily maintenance costs are of particular interest to the husbander because they can be avoided through accelerated feeding. In this paper, the optimal feeding path under equilibrium feeder animal prices is established. This analysis is used to gain a better understanding of feeding decisions, regulation in feedstuff markets, and the consequences of genetic innovations. It is shown that days on feed can increase or decrease with a genetic innovation or other improvement in feed conversion efficiency. The structure of comparative prices for feeder animals at...

Where are the veterinarian shortage areas anyway?

Palavras-chave: Days on feed; Energy use; Feed ban; Growth hormones; Maintenance requirements; Ration energy density; Veal market; Livestock Production/Industries.

Ano: 2005

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/18468

Wang, Tong; Hennessy, David A.; O'Connor, Annette M..

This paper describes an econometric model to evaluate factors associated with a county’s likelihood of being designated as a private practice shortage area under the United States' Veterinary Medicine Loan Repayment Program (VMLRP). Study determinants of equilibrium food animal veterinarian location choices were also evaluated and used as a benchmark to assess the shortage designation process. On the whole the program appears to perform quite well. For several states, however, VMLRP shortage designations are inconsistent with the model of food animal veterinarian shortages. Comparative shortage is generally more severe in states that have no VMLRP designated private practice shortage counties than in states that do.

The Budgetary and Resource Allocation Effects of Revenue Assurance

Palavras-chave: Economic externalities; Food animal veterinarians; Loan repayment program; Agricultural and Food Policy; Livestock Production/Industries.

Ano: 2011

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/103483

Hennessy, David A.; Babcock, Bruce A.; Hayes, Dermot J..

The efficiency of redistribution and the level of government costs of revenue assurance are compared with current farm programs. The results suggest that a revenue assurance program that uses a fixed base acreage and actual or county average yields to assure whole farm revenues could provide a significant improvement over existing policies. The result derives in large part because revenue assurance works only when needed and it works on the component of the objective function (revenue) that is of greatest relevance to producers. Also a fixed base revenue assurance scheme would eliminate resource misallocation costs associated with current programs. A revenue assurance scheme that guaranteed 100 percent of base revenues would provide almost as much...

Crop Yield Skewness under the Law of Minimum Technology

Palavras-chave: Risk and Uncertainty.

Ano: 1995

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/18519

A large empirical literature exists seeking to identify crop yield distributions. Consensus has not yet formed. This is in part because of data aggregation problems but also in part because no satisfactory motivation has been forwarded in favor of any distribution, including the normal. This article explores the foundations of crop yield distributions for the Law of the Minimum, or weakest-link, resource constraint technology. It is shown that heterogeneity in resource availabilities can increase expected yield. The role of stochastic dependence is studied for the technology. With independent, identical, uniform resource availability distributions the yield skew is positive, whereas it is negative whenever the distributions are normal. Simulations show how...

ON MONOCULTURE AND THE STRUCTURE OF CROP ROTATIONS

Palavras-chave: Beta-normal distribution; Crop insurance; Extreme value theory; Liebig technology; Limiting factors; Order statistics; Reliability; Weakest link; Crop Production/Industries; Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies.

Ano: 2007

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/9238

While rotation strategies are important in determining agricultural commodity supply and environmental benefits from land use, little has been said about the economics of crop rotation. An issue when seeking to identify rotation dominance is whether yield and input-saving carry-over effects persist for one or more years. Focusing on length of carry-over, expected profit maximization, and the monoculture decision, this paper develops principles concerning choice of rotation structure. For some rules that we develop, rotations may be discarded without reference to price levels while other rules require price data. We also show how risk aversion in the presence of price uncertainty can alter preferences over rotations. A further consideration in rotation...

AN EQUILIBRIUM ANALYSIS OF THE IMPACT OF ANTIBIOTICS BANS ON INVESTMENT IN APPLE ORCHARDS

Palavras-chave: Dominance; Jointness; Quasiconvexity; Rotation algebra; Specialization; Time rationing; Crop Production/Industries.

Ano: 2004

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/18562

Hennessy, David A.; Roosen, Jutta.

The decision to replant a fire blight-susceptible apple orchard is analyzed. Embedding the problem into an equilibrium framework facilitates the welfare analysis of changes in orchard survival probabilities arising from a ban on antibiotics use. We estimate the structural impacts and welfare changes of the ban.

Land Retirement Program Design and Empirical Assessments In the Presence of Crop Insurance Subsidies

Palavras-chave: Antibiotics; Apple orchard; Dynamics; Equilibrium; Replanting; Resistance; Truncated Poisson process; Environmental Economics and Policy; Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies.

Ano: 1999

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/21698

Hennessy, David A.; Miao, Ruiqing; Feng, Hongli.

The U.S. Federal Government implements environmental, biofuels and crop insurance programs that influence land use. They are not well-integrated in that cost savings from crop insurance subsidies are not acknowledged when screening land for retirement or when calculating the cost of land retirement programs. We identify and evaluate an optimal benefit index for enrollment in a land retirement program that includes a sub-index to rank land according to insurance subsidy savings. All else equal, land ranked higher in the Lorenz stochastic order should be retired first. Empirical analysis based on field level data will be provided.

Buying Ecological Services: Nature’s Harmonies, Fragmented Reserves and the Agricultural Extensification Debate

Palavras-chave: Agro-environmental policy; Budget; Conservation reserve program; Crop failure; Environmental benefit index; Lorenz order; Land Economics/Use; Risk and Uncertainty; Q18; Q28.

Ano: 2011

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/104002

Hennessy, David A.; Lapan, Harvey E..

Growing demand for cropland products has placed intense pressure on the ability of land resources to support nature, straining public budgets to purchase environmental goods. Fixing overall agricultural output, two policy options are whether to promote more extensive and nature friendly farming practices or to produce intensively on some land and leave the rest wild. Microeconomic models of the topic have not accommodated widely recognized complementary spatial externalities in providing ecological services. This article does so, identifying also a third policy possibility. This is that environmental services can follow a smoothly varying spatial path characterized by harmonic functions.

LOCATION, LAND QUALITY, AND RENTAL VOLATILITY

Palavras-chave: Biofuels; Environmental policy; Spatial externalities; Wirtinger’s inequality.; Resource /Energy Economics and Policy.

Ano: 2008

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/45171

Saak, Alexander E.; Hennessy, David A..

It appears to be widely believed that returns on low quality land are more variable than on high quality land. Using Ricardian rent as the measure of returns and sensitivity to output price as the measure of volatility, we investigate this null hypothesis for three different measures of quality. These are proximity to market, output productivity, and cost efficiency. In all cases, we identify precise conditions on the production technology such that rental volatility varies in a monotone manner with land quality. A method of econometric investigation of the relationship between rental volatility and land quality is developed and applied to Iowa cash rents data collected during 1994-2000. Our preliminary findings provide partial empirical support for...

The Budgetary and Resource Allocation Effects of Revenue Assurance: Summary of Results

Palavras-chave: Land Economics/Use.

Ano: 2001

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/20747

Hennessy, David A.; Babcock, Bruce A.; Hayes, Dermot J..

Modeling Stochastic Crop Yield Expectations with a Limiting Beta Distribution

Palavras-chave: Public Economics.

Ano: 1995

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/18306

Economies of Feedlot Scale, Biosecurity, Investment, and Endemic Livestock Disease

The use of plausible stochastic price processes in price risk analysis has allowed advances not seen in crop yield risk analysis. This study develops a stochastic process for yield modeling and risk management. The Pólya urn process is an internally consistent dynamic representation of yield expectations over a growing season that accommodates agronomic events such as growing degree days. The limiting distribution is the commonly used beta distribution. Binomial tree analysis of the process allows us to explore hedging decisions and crop valuation. The method is empirically flexible to accommodate alternative assumptions on the growing environment, such as intra-season input decisions.

Tipo: Journal Article

Palavras-chave: Crop abandonment; Crop insurance; Derivative analysis; Growing degree days; Pólya’s urn; Stochastic process; Crop Production/Industries.

Ano: 2011

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/105548

Infectious livestock disease creates externalities for proximate animal production enterprises. The distribution of production scale within a region should influence and be influenced by these disease externalities. Taking the distribution of the unit costs of stocking an animal as primitive, we show that an increase in the variance of these unit costs reduces consumer surplus. The effect on producer surplus, total surplus, and animal concentration across feedlots depends on the demand elasticity. A subsidy to smaller herds can reduce social welfare and immiserize the farm sector by increasing the extent of disease. While Nash behavior involves excessive stocking, disease effects can be such that aggregate output declines relative to first-best. Disease...

INFECTIOUS DISEASE, PRODUCTIVITY, AND SCALE IN OPEN AND CLOSED ANIMAL PRODUCTION SYSTEMS

Palavras-chave: Agricultural industrialization; Biosecurity; Inefficiency; Nash behavior; Overinvestment; Technology adoption; Livestock Production/Industries.

Ano: 2006

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/18623

Hennessy, David A.; Roosen, Jutta; Jensen, Helen H..

Comparative advantage motivates large trade flows in feeder animals throughout the world. Trade creates externalities when animal diseases can spread beyond the purchasing farm. When growers can choose between open and closed production systems, Nash equilibrium will likely involve socially excessive trading. Supply response to an increase in marginal costs may be positive. While first-best involves marketwide adoption of either an open-trade or closed-farm system, equilibrium may entail heterogeneous systems. If this is the case, then the feeder trade should be banned. Within a farm, we show how risk of infectious disease can create decreasing returns to scale when the technology is otherwise increasing in returns to scale. Control of disease risk...

SEASONALITY, CAPITAL INFLEXIBILITY, AND THE INDUSTRIALIZATION OF ANIMAL PRODUCTION

Palavras-chave: Feeder trade; Industrialization; Information; Nash equilibrium; Vertical integration; Welfare; Livestock Production/Industries.

Ano: 2004

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/18405

Roosen, Jutta; Hennessy, David A.; Hennessy, Thia C..

Among the prominent recognized features of the industrialization of animal production over the past half century are growth in the stock of inflexible, or use-dedicated, capital as an input in production and growth in productivity. Less recognized is a trend toward aseasonal production. We record the deseasonalization of animal production in Northern Hemisphere countries over the past 70 years. Using Irish farm-level data, we provide evidence that low seasonality favors laborsaving investments. We also suggest that (a) lower seasonality can be Granger-causally prior to increased productivity, and (b) productivity improvements can be Granger-causally prior to lower seasonality. Process (a) should be more likely earlier in the industrialization process. For...

Economic Value of Information: Wheat Protein Measurement

Palavras-chave: Capital intensity; Dairy sector; Granger-causality; Regional production systems; Livestock Production/Industries.

Ano: 2004

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/18459

Miao, Ruiqing; Hennessy, David A..

In this paper we study U.S. wheat farmers’ willingness to pay for near infrared (NIR) sensor that can segregates wheat grains according to their protein concentration. We first develop a microeconomic optimization model of wheat farmers’ segregating and commingling decisions. Then we use U.S. wheat prices and stocks to estimate a wheat protein stock demand system. This allows us to establish the effects of changes in the protein profile of wheat stocks on protein premiums. The paper’s simulation section combines the results from the microeconomic optimization model and from the econometric estimations to simulate wheat farmers’ WTP for the sorting technology. Preliminary findings from the simulation show that a typical hard red winter (hard red spring)...

Informed Control Over Inputs and Extent of Industrial Processing

Palavras-chave: Information; Economic value; Wheat; Protein; Market structure; Crop Production/Industries; Production Economics; Q12; Q16; D81.

Ano: 2011

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/103974

Stylized facts regarding the industrial process include emphases on obtaining information about and control over the quality of raw materials. We provide a model that establishes conditions under which informed control involves ensuring uniformity in inputs and increased uniformity encourages more extensive processing. We show when the Boltzmann-Shannon entropy statistic is an appropriate measure of uniformity.

Decisions and tradable production quota when yield is uncertain

Palavras-chave: Entropy; Homogeneous inputs; Industrialization; Information technologies; Sorting; Industrial Organization.

Ano: 2005

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/18580