As a part of the USEPA's concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) final rule, all CAFOs are required to develop and implement a nutrient management plan (NMP). The USEPA's emphasis on better management of nutrients appropriately targets a critical environmental issue associated with animal production. The concentration of animals in livestock feeding operations, often separate from feed gra...

Applying a bio-economic whole farm model we assess the impact of price and weather risk as well as different risk management strategies on the variability of the income in Swiss suckler cow production. We consider different on-farm risk management strategies such as the flexible adjustment of herd size, fodder composition and feed stocks, as well as an income insurance. Our results show that wi...

If farmers are risk averse, greater farm income variability should increase off-farm labor supply. This effect is confirmed for a sample of Kansas farmers. Off-farm employment of farmers and their spouses is also found to be significantly influenced by farm experience, off-farm work experience, farm size, leverage, efficiency, and farm-specific education. In addition, farm operators and spouses...

This paper reports on an interpretive study which explores the influences of socio-cultural factors in the interplay between farm women and technology for farm management purposes on Australian family cotton farms. The study revealed growing support for the theory of individual differences of gender and IT in situations where women and men farm partners perform certain tasks for which they are ...

Farmland is a major land cover type in Europe and Africa and provides habitat for numerous species. The severe decline in farmland biodiversity of the last decades has been attributed to changes in farming practices, and organic and low-input farming are assumed to mitigate detrimental effects of agricultural intensification on biodiversity. Since the farm enterprise is the primary unit of agri...

Simulation modelling is a methodology that appears highly suitable for use in farming systems innovation. However, if the aim is to improve farming systems by supporting farmer behaviour change, model-based approaches seem to have delivered surprisingly little observable benefit to date. This paper identifies the problems underlying this apparent lack of impact, and proposes better approaches t...

Farm restructuring during transition is often defined as a combination of the change of the internal organization of a farm and the change in farm size, following the liberalization of the economy and the privatization of property rights. Following this definition, farm restructuring involves downsizing farm units and reorganizing management-ownership-workforce relationships. This paper tries t...

As demands for more controlled manure management heighten, policy makers seek indicators to assess the environmental impacts of livestock production and to subsequently direct manure management policy. Farm size indicators, based on number of animals per farm, are currently used to target federal manure management policy (USDA-USEPA, 1999). In this way, federal policy is directed toward the nat...

Many past studies into the diffusion of business innovation in the farming community focused on factors associated with the act of adoption. This study attempts to promote the diffusion of computer-based management innovation by gaining a clearer understanding of the evolution of farm management information systems (FMIS). Characteristics of farm businesses, their FMIS, and the factors related ...