The current market demand and price for organic milk is encouraging dairy producers, particularly those on smaller farms, to consider organic production as a means for improving the economic viability of their operations. Organic production systems vary widely in scale, in practices, and across agroclimatic settings. Within this context, case studies of 4 actual organic dairy farms were used to...

Readers may make verbatim copies of this document for non-commercial purposes by any means, provided that this copyright notice appears on all such copies. Abstract This paper attempts to improve the ability of farm managers and lenders to forecast expected financial performance of farm businesses using a neuro-fuzzy inference system. Ex-ante farn financial performance is examined to identify t...

The output supply and input demand are closely interlinked to each other. Therefore, any change in input and output prices affect the input demand and output supply simultaneously. The present study used cross sectional cum time series data of Vidarbha region of Maharashtra state for cotton crop for the ten years from 1999-00 to 2008-09 were collected from the Agricultural Prices and costs Sche...

Informal land markets, particularly land rental markets, are emerging rapidly in many parts of subSaharan Africa (SSA). Land rental markets have the potential to contribute to structural transformation if, for example, such markets facilitate the transfer of land from less productive to more productive farming households. Although there is a growing literature on the determinants of smallholder...

Family farming, crop science and ‘globalisation’ together largely determine progress against poverty. Faster in 1960-90 than at any time in world history, such progress has slowed down. So have ‘land reform’ and science-based rises in small farmers’ staples food productivity, while aid to agriculture has fallen by over two-thirds and farm prices have been further forced down (and farm science d...

In this paper, the risk profile of two pastoral production systems in New Zealand are examined. All farmers must manage and mitigate a multitude of risks. Traditionally, a farm budget is solely undertaken to satisfy a lending institution. Limited variance analysis takes place, usually for output prices and inputs such as: interest rates, energy costs, and fertiliser. The authors of this paper u...

Since late 2006, biofuel policies have caused high grain/oilseed prices by creating a link between crop and biofuel policies. The value of agricultural trade has increased sharply, mostly because of high prices, not increased trade volume. Biofuel policies have little to do with the agenda of the Doha trade negotiations but have had indirect effects in that production subsidies and import barri...