| This study evaluated the impacts of farm size and stochastic return variability on no-till (NT) rice profitability at the whole-farm level. Mixed integer programming was used to determine optimal machinery complements, fuel consumption, and machinery labor requirements for conventional till (CT) and NT rice-soybean farms of 1200, 2400, and 3600 acres in size. Crop yields, market prices, and prices for key production inputs were simulated to construct stochastic whole-farm net returns for each farm size under CT and NT management, and both first and second degree stochastic dominance analysis were used to rank cumulative distribution functions of whole-farm returns according to specified risk preferences. The results indicate NT farms exhibit second degree... |
