Choice experiments addressing outcome uncertainty (OU) typically reframe continuous probability densities for each risky outcome into two discrete categories, each with a single probability of occurrence. The implications of this simplification for welfare estimation are unknown. This article evaluates the convergent validity of willingness-to-pay (WTP) estimates from a more accurate multiple-outcome treatment of OU, compared to the two-outcome approach. Results for a case study of coastal flood adaptation in Connecticut, United States, suggest that higher-resolution OU treatments increase choice complexity but can provide additional information on risk preferences and WTP. This tradeoff highlights challenges facing the valuation of uncertain outcomes.

Fruit producers in the Eastern United States face a wide range of weather-related risks that have the capacity to largely impact yields and profitability. This research examines the economic implications associated with responding to these risks for sweet cherry production in three different systems: high tunnels, revenue insurance, and weather insurance. The analysis considers a distribution of revenue flows and costs using detailed price, yield, and weather data between 1984 and 2013. Our results show that the high tunnel system generates the largest net return if significant price premiums exist for earlier and larger fruit.

This study explores how participation in direct and intermediated marketing channels and key operational factors influence agricultural producers’ financial performance. Accordingly, we divide the sample of local and regional food marketers into quartiles segmented by profitability performance as an initial exploration of how strong and weak performance may vary across scale, location, and choice of direct and intermediated channels. Moreover, other financial metrics that vary across types of producers and performance-based quartiles are analyzed. This paper provides initial evidence that participation in direct and intermediated markets may allow farms of any scale of sales volume to be financially viable.

Organic food products, which have been sold traditionally at natural food stores, have become increasingly available through mass marketing channels. This study estimated an almost ideal demand system (AIDS) model using 2008–2010 retail scanner data to examine consumer demand for organic fluid milk products sold at conventional and natural marketing channels. Asymmetric cross-price elasticities were found suggesting relative stickiness in demand to switch from organic milk to conventional milk and from natural stores to food, drug, and mass merchandiser stores. More generally, demands shifting toward products with higher expenditure elasticities in a differentiated market can be explained by relative budget shares and expenditure elasticities.

The dairy industry is of much interest worldwide because it has been subject to heavy government intervention. Central to the analysis of any dairy policy is a quantitative empirical understanding of the economic relationships in the industry. This paper models and measures the input demand relationships—especially, derived demand for farm milk as a processing input—and the rate and biases of technical change in the U.S. dairy manufacturing industry. Our estimates indicate that the Marshallian own-price elasticity of demand for farm milk is between −0.43 and −1.20. Estimates also indicate that technical change has been capital using and labor saving.

Controlling for spatial heterogeneity and spatial dependence in farmland valuation models has gained substantial attention in recent literature. This paper proposes to derive the spatial structure of farmland values endogenously and semiparametrically based on the spatial competition theory. The paper assembles panel data of Pennsylvania county level farmland values between 1982 and 2012. A spatial autoregressive panel data model with spatial weights matrix endogenously incorporated is estimated. Out of sample predictions and non-nested statistical tests for model selection suggest that the fit and the predictability of hedonic farmland valuation models can be greatly improved.

Agritourism is a consumer-driven innovation that producers are exploring as a means to diversify and grow farm-based revenues. In order to help guide management and policy decisions, we conduct an exploratory spatial data analysis and find that travel infrastructure, region and rurality, characteristics of the local economy, and proximity to outdoor attractions are all significantly associated with the probability of a county being an agritourism hot spot. Mapping our primary spatial analysis’ residuals, we further identify counties with unique agritourism market conditions as a starting point to identify best practices that other regions interested in agritourism development might follow.

New wheat-breeding techniques, such as hybridization and genetic modification, show increasing yield potential. This study involves estimating multi-output multi-input production technology by stochastic frontier techniques to evaluate the economic value of this yield potential. An input-oriented distance function is formulated and applied to European Farm Accountancy Data of 23 European countries. Based on the analysis, an average shadow value is derived for the increase in the marginal yield of wheat that corresponded to 18.87 €/ha. Further, technical change, technical efficiency, and returns to scale are measured for different European regions.

We study changes in farming in the Marcellus region associated with unconventional natural gas drilling activity. Due to concerns raised by the popular press, we consider 18 different county-level agricultural variables. While we find no significant changes in the number of farms or land in farms in drilling counties relative to non-drilling counties, there is an increase in median farm sizes, indicating potential consolidation in drilling counties. Despite anecdotal evidence suggesting a transition away from dairy farming to either beef or hay production, we find no support for this at the county level.