Agricultural Economics Commons^™

Workforce Development In A Post-Covid World: A Grassroots Approach, Cheryl A. Burkhart-Kriesel, Kristina Bayton, Samantha Guenther, Blayne Sharpe

Cornhusker Economics

As the world slowly emerges from COVID 19 both the virus and the lingering effects on the economy will be in the spotlight. There is a real urgency to get businesses up and running and employees working again. Some businesses may be able to "flip a switch" and up to speed while other may need to ramp up more slowly and will only be able to "turn up the dial." In both situations, there are implications for the local workforce and for the community.

North Central Extension Risk Management Education Center, Christine Lockert, Bradley D. Lubben

Cornhusker Economics

Managing through the current economic challenges and accumulating shocks in ag sector will be a major challenge for farmers and ranchers. Educating producers to manage these risks and position their farm or ranch for future growth and success is the fundamental purpose of the Extension Risk Management Education (ERME) program.

Nebraska National Agri-Marketing Association And The Covid-19 Effect, Austin Harthoorn, Rosalee A. Swartz

Cornhusker Economics

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s National Agri-Marketing Association (NAMA) student organization is one of more than 30 student chapters across the U.S. and Canada. The objective of the student NAMA on campus is to learn first-hand about the many career opportunities in agri-marketing from professionals in marketing, advertising, communications, promotion, sales, and public relations. As chapter members, students develop valuable personal contacts and working relations with agri-marketing professionals and have meaningful opportunities to develop and practice their managerial skills and leadership abilities.

The Economics Of On-Farm Rice Drying In Arkansas, Clayton Parker

Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness Undergraduate Honors Theses

Globally, rice producers are faced with the temporal problem of deciding the optimal time to being rice harvest. When harvested, paddy rice is typically at a moisture content (HMC) between 15 and 22%. Upon delivery, the rice is subsequently dried by the mill to a moisture content (MC) of 12.5%. Riceland Foods Inc., the largest miller of rice in the world, uses a stair-step pricing model to charge farmers to dry in price/unit as the MC of grain decreases from a range of +22% to 13.5%. This study estimates an alternative linear relationship in the stair-step model to determine MC …

Evaluation Of The Arkansas Double Up Food Bucks Program, Colton G. Henderson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Fruit and vegetable consumption is particularly low in Arkansas with only a small percentage of residents meeting daily recommendations. Arkansas also has one of the highest percentages of food insecurity and obesity in the United States. Low-income households, such as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients, are at a higher risk of these issues. Financial assistance programs have been implemented to help in aiding these problems. The Double Up Food Bucks program (DUFB) is one of these programs. DUFB provides matching financial vouchers for SNAP benefits recipients spend on fresh local produce at participating grocery stores and farmers’ markets. The …

Alternative Production Practices And The Role Of Consumer Choice: Willingness-To-Pay Analyses, Amanda P. Wecker

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Production choice is often viewed as driven by the resources and methods known to the producers. However, recent discussions focus on the other factors leading to production choice such as consumer preference, measured by factors such as willingness to pay (Tait, Saunders, Guenther, and Rutherford, 2016). This study evaluates the role of diet preference and age in driving a consumer’s willingness to pay for food produced with specific method. The data analyzed are from the 2016 U.S. Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability (LOHAS) Consumer survey. A total of 1042 individuals were asked whether they were willing to pay 10% more …

Financial Implications From Contracting Avian Influenza In A U.S. Broiler Operation, Jordan M. Shockley, Tyler Mark, Kenneth H. Burdine, Levi Russell

Journal of Applied Farm Economics

This essay evaluates the on-farm financial impacts of an avian influenza outbreak on a U.S. commercial broiler operation. It investigates how the timing and length of the outbreak impacts farm financial performance for two different farmers, beginning and experienced. Results indicate that a beginning farmer is more susceptible to significant financial losses. Both farmers are financially impacted more when avian influenza is contracted early in the investment and when the contamination and eradication of the virus was prolonged. Furthermore, this essay highlights the problems of using standard financial measures for analyzing disease outbreaks under production contract arrangements and presents alternative …

Economic Impacts Of Food Fraud, Syed Imran Ali Meerza, Konstantinos Giannakas, Amalia Yiannaka

Cornhusker Economics

When you order seafood at a restaurant, do you get what you pay for? Scientists from Oceana, a non-profit marine conservation organization, conducted one of the largest seafood fraud investigations on 1,215 samples from 674 outlets in 21 states of the United States (U.S.) over the period 2010 to 2012.They found that there is, on average, a 33% probability that you do not actually get what you pay for. The share of mislabeled food was (a quite remarkable) 74% for seafood sold in sushi restaurants and 18% of seafood sold in gro-cery stores with mislabeled “red snapper” and “tuna” accounting …

Some Economic Implications Of The Covid-19 Pandemic In Nebraska, John C. Beghin

Cornhusker Economics

It is now clear that the spread, mortality and morbidity impacts of the coronavirus pandemic are sizeable but extremely heterogeneous across multiple dimensions. Geography shows that places with lower human con-centrations (urban/rural divide) and away from main travel axes, such as major interstate highways and in-ternational airports, have a lower incidence of cases. Large urban centers with high human concentrations have been much disproportionally affected and with much higher mortality rates. Age and health status are equally important. Mortality increases dramatically for people 60 years old and older. People with comorbidi-ties (cardiovascular, obesity, diabetes, and others) are much more likely …

Covid-19, Farm Survival And Decision Making, Cory Walters, Jessica Groskopf, Richard Preston

Cornhusker Economics

COVID-19 is causing us to experience events that have always been possible, just not yet observed. For farmers these events may have a big negative financial impact, or they may not. The impact on each individual farm has to do with how that individual farm has prepared for rare financially devastating events. Preparing for unseen events represents a logical approach. We call this approach stress testing. Just because you have not seen an event, it does not mean it does not exist. Or said another way, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. In this article, we discuss how …

2020 Cares Act – Financial Supports For Small Business, Marilyn R. Schlake

Cornhusker Economics

Whether a business is impacted by weather-related disasters, road construction or sudden economic downturns, having a plan to mitigate the impacts can be crucial to the immediate and long-term survival of the business. Unforeseen circumstances, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, may require owners to re-evaluate their business models, cut operating costs and seek outside financial supports – all to keep cash flowing and the business open. To help small businesses during the pandemic, the Coronavirus Aid Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act was signed into law on March 27. It contains $349 billion in relief for American small businesses and …

2020 Cares Act – Apoyo Financiero Para Pequeñas Empresas, Marilyn R. Schlake, Sandra Barrera

Cornhusker Economics

Ya sea que un negocio se vea afectado por desastres relacionados con el clima, la construcción de carreteras o las recesiones económicas repentinas, tener un plan para mitigar los impactos puede ser crucial para la supervivencia inmediata y a largo plazo del negocio. Circunstancias imprevistas, como la pandemia de COVID-19, pueden requerir que los propietarios reevalúen sus modelos de negocios, reduzcan los costos operativos y busquen apoyos financieros externos, todo para mantener el flujo de efectivo y abrir el negocio. Para ayudar a las pequeñas empresas durante la pandemia, el 27 de marzo se promulgó la Ley de Ayuda y …

Online Shoppers Spending On Fresh Produce; Do Those On Government Assistance Spend Less?, Wyatt Tucker Lucas

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This study applies an Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) model to explain differences in the amount that online shoppers might spend per month on fresh produce, given specific consumer characteristics. It also uses a multinomial logit model to determine the relative probability of online shoppers spending more or less, given specific consumer characteristics. The independent variable of interest in both models is whether or not the respondent is a recipient of a government assistance food program. These analyses used data from a stratified random sample of 1,205 online shoppers residing in the southern region of the United States. “Online shoppers” in …

Sin Acceso A Alimentos Seguros, Saludables Y Económicos: El Modelo Agroindustrial Dominante Y Sus Efectos En Los Consumidores En Salta, Argentina / Without Access To Safe, Healthy, And Affordable Food: The Dominant Agroindustrial Model And Its Effects On Consumers In Salta, Argentina, Sara Paulsen

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This paper analyzes the effects of the hegemonic food system on low income consumers in Salta, Argentina. Results from previous literature indicate a relationship between the dominant agroindustrial model in Argentina and the concentration of power in the food production system. This paper seeks to contextualize the reports of malnutrition in Salta, a province in northwest Argentina, within larger social, cultural, and nutritional trends. To answer the question of how the hegemonic food system affects access to safe, healthy, and affordable food in Salta, I analyzed reports of various health outcomes (including malnutrition, cancer, birth defects, and obesity) and contextualized …

Examining The Role Of The Crop Insurance Selling Agent, Nathan Delay, Hayley Chouinard, Cory Walters, Philip Wandschneider

Cornhusker Economics

The United States Department of Agriculture, Risk Management Agency (RMA) partners with private insurance companies to deliver the federal crop insurance program through agents who sell policies directly to producers. The government subsidizes producers in the form of premium discounts and reimburses private insurance companies for administrative and operating (A&O) costs. The government provides further assistance to the industry by offering a cooperative reinsurance agreement that reduces loss exposure for insurance companies (Appel and Borba, 2009).

Subsidization of private market players may facilitate rent-seeking behavior—efforts to capture larger shares of tax dollars devoted to the program— especially in the settings …

Shifting Landscapes: The Effects Of Male Out-Migration On Food Security And Food Sovereignty In Rural Nepal, Emma Brown

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Rural Nepal is experiencing rapid demographic changes, significantly impacting the socioeconomic and agricultural landscape of these areas. Growing percentages of the male population are migrating out of the country in search of better livelihood opportunities. This is largely a result of poor development processes and governmental policies that have failed to create adequate domestic livelihood opportunities and incentives to work in agriculture, as well as changing ideas on what it means to be successful, spurred by globalization. Further, dominant neoliberal ideology and the commercialization of agriculture is decreasing the profitability of agriculture, making migration a lucrative option. Due to out-migration, …

Pricing Stallion Seasons For An Individual Stallion: The Existence Of Top Tier Pricing And Market Power, Robert L. Losey Ph.D., Thomas E. Lambert 1959-

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

This paper is an academic treatment of the pricing of stallion seasons (a “season” confers the right to breed a mare to a stallion) The commercial stallion seasons market can be represented schematically as a triangle that normally has a single-digit number of stallions offering high-priced seasons in the narrow apex, a moderate number of stallions composing the middle section, and over 150 in the $5,000-$10,000 range. We argue that it is logical for profit-maximizing stallion managers, most especially those in the apex of the stallion seasons triangle, to charge different prices for different groups of buyers of the same …

Nebraska Women In Agriculture Celebrating 35 Years, Jessica Groskopf

Cornhusker Economics

A crowd of almost 300 gathered together February 20 and 21 in Kearney, Nebraska for the Nebraska Women in Agriculture conference, with the theme — Celebrating 35 Years! The conference is one of the longest-running women's conferences of its kind in the country. The goal of the Nebraska Women in Agriculture Conference is for women to build relationships with each other while gaining valuable knowledge about managing risk on their farms and ranches. The event featured 5 general session speakers and 35 workshop sessions.

Nebraska Cooperative Development Center Announces Mini-Grant Funding, Charlotte Narjes

Cornhusker Economics

Since 1999, the Nebraska Cooperative Development Center (NCDC) has provided technical assistance, education and training to groups who are developing or are considering the development of a cooperatively owned business. The primary objective is to improve the economic condition of rural areas through cooperative business development.

Nebraska Farm Real Estate Values Improve Despite Uncertainty In 2020, Jim Jansen, Jeffrey Stokes

Cornhusker Economics

The market value of agricultural land in Nebraska increased by three percent over the prior year to an average of $2,730 per acre according to the 2020 Nebraska Farm Real Estate Market Survey (Figure 1 and Table 1). This improvement provides the first increase in the market value of agricultural land in Nebraska since peaking in 2014 at $3,315 per acre followed by a 20 per- cent decline extending to 2019.

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Department of Agricultural Economics annually surveys land industry professionals across Nebraska including appraisers, farm and ranch managers, and agricultural bankers. Results from the survey are …

Safety First Risk Preferences And Post-Harvest Grain Marketing A Context-Rich Lab Experiment, Stamatina Stamatina, Simanti Banerjee, Cory Walters

Cornhusker Economics

Improving our understanding of the influence of risk- preferences on decision making represents an important objective for understanding behavior, designing policy and decision making theory. A natural place this problem persists is in the marketing of grain (Kastens and Dhuyvetter, 1999). Grain marketing research has primarily focused on the use of different marketing techniques that result in lower price risk and, therefore, lower-income risk (Musser, Patrick, Eckman, 1996). However, the extent to which the theoretical findings from these studies are relevant to real-world applications is not clear (Brorsen and Irwin, 1996; Garcia and Leuthold, 2004). While reducing income risk is …

Analysis Of The Impact Of Central Bank Of Nigeria's Agricultural Intervention Funds On The Economy, E. T. Adamgbe, M. C. Belonwu, E. R. Ochu, I. I. Okafor

Economic and Financial Review

This paper set out to investigate the impact of Central Bank of Nigeria's interventions on the agricultural sector within an economy-wide framework of general equilibrium modelling. The paper adopted a dynamic (recursive), two-sector general equilibrium model of the Nigerian economy with some modifications on the standard model developed by the Centre for Econometric and Applied Research (CEAR) and incorporated the contributions of the CBN's agricultural based interventions as increases in the stock of agricultural capital to have a more robust size of interventions into the agricultural sector. The SAM used for the CGE model analysis was derived from the updated …

2020 Nebraska Property Tax Issues, J. David Aiken

Cornhusker Economics

Nebraska property taxes are the ninth highest in the United States. Nebraska ranks 41st in terms of property taxes (a smaller number means lower property taxes, while a higher number means high- er property taxes). By comparison, Missouri ranks 7th, Colorado is 14th, Kansas is 20th, South Dako- ta is 22nd, Iowa is 35th, and Wyoming is 39th. So Nebraska property taxes are high both regionally and nationally.

Nebraska sales taxes are the ninth-lowest, and both state income taxes and total state taxes are in the middle. Property taxes account for 38% of total state and local tax collections in …

Three Profit Fundamentals Of Agricultural Production, Matthew Stockton

Cornhusker Economics

There is nothing magical or mythical about making a profit. Each ranch/farm business has unique challenges and complexities. This fact makes it easy for operators to become overwhelmed or distracted from the fundamental factors that drive profitability. Each decision made in the farm or ranch business has an impact on profitability through one of three fundamental paths- cost, revenue and their common link productivity. As a result of being involved in the University of Nebraska Testing Ag Performance Solutions (UNL-TAPS) competition in North Platte for the last several years, I have observed some very striking factors that have helped teams …

2020 Nebraska Crop Budgets Review, Glennis Mcclure

Cornhusker Economics

For the 2020 production year, 82 budgets for 15 crops including 2 cover crops are available from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the Department of Agricultural Economics. The budgets are published online in two formats including a printable pdf file version and an Excel file version. cropwatch.unl.edu/budgets

Information on crop budgeting procedures, machinery operation and ownership costs, material and service prices, and a crop budget production cost summary is included in the format of each budget. Two new irrigated corn budgets, Numbers 33 and 34, and two new soybean budgets, Numbers 64 and 65, were added for 2020, which reflect …

Nebraska Agricultural Machinery And Equipment Sales Tax Exemption, Austin Duerfeldt

Cornhusker Economics

Nebraska sales and use tax for farmers and ranchers can be a difficult subject. When purchasing or leasing depreciable agricultural machinery and equipment for commercial agricultural use those purchases are listed as exempt from Nebraska and local sales and use taxes. The purchase of a 200- horsepower tractor or a new 12-row planter often is the first to come to mind when thinking of assets that fall into that category. The question that often arises though is what about other items such as a seed tender, auger wagon, or skid steer? For that answer you have to do research on …

Internships In Nebraska Agricultural Cooperatives, Greg Mckee

Cornhusker Economics

Agricultural cooperatives are prominent employers across Nebraska. Several have developed internship programs. Cooperatives recruit interns to attract fulltime position applicants, to expose interns to various aspects of the cooperative business model as well as addressing short term labor needs. Students participate in internships to develop skills for career planning.

Nebraska agricultural cooperatives offered approximately one 100 internships in 2019. The number of cooperatives offering internships is increasing; at least two offered internships for the first time last year. Others are looking to strengthen their existing programs.

Internship program design varies across cooperatives. Relatively small agricultural cooperatives provide an overall work …

Comparison Of 2018 And 2019 Market Facilitation Program Payments For Nebraska Producers, Anil Giri, E. Wesley F. Peterson, Sankalp Sharma

Cornhusker Economics

In a previous issue of Cornhusker Economics ( October 3, 2018, available at https://agecon.unl.edu/ cornhusker-economics/2018/market-facilitationprogram) we reviewed the sequence of events surrounding the trade war between the United States and China, and, in particular, the response of the Trump administration to the retaliatory tariffs imposed by China on soybeans and other agricultural commodities. The Market Facilitation Program (MFP) has been the main mechanism for compensating farmers for losses associated with the trade war. In the past year, there have been several important changes related to these events:

1. On January 15, 2020, the first phase of a trade deal between …

How Emotions Affect Farm And Ranch Succession, Allan Vyhnalek

Cornhusker Economics

Whenever a family has a discussion about agricultural estate planning, conversations can become emotionally charged. Stakes can be high and feelings can be hurt just by using the wrong words in a sentence. If things go south and parties are upset, they will likely withdraw from the dialogue or leave the gathering altogether.

When communications or negotiations break down, one way to help is to think about the five emotional blocks that need to be overcome if possible. They are: appreciation, affiliation, autonomy, status and role. Let's examine each to see how these blockages can interfere with a family moving …

Celebrating 25 Years Of The Nebraska Rural Poll, Rebecca J. Vogt

Cornhusker Economics

In 2020, the 25th annual Nebraska Rural Poll will arrive in mailboxes across the state. For 25 years, the Poll has examined many topics of concern to rural Nebraskans and accumulated a rich dataset for state and community leaders.

The Nebraska Rural Poll was first conducted by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Department of Agricultural Economics in 1996 under the leadership of Dr. John Allen and Dr. Sam Cordes. Each year since, 7,000 surveys are mailed to randomly selected households located in the nonmetropolitan counties of the state. The goal of the poll is to give rural Nebraskans and their leaders …