Climate change is occurring. Deviations from historic temperatures and precipitation plus increased frequency of extreme events are modifying agriculture systems globally. Adapting agricultural management practices offers a way to lessen the effects or exploit opportunities. Herein many aspects of the adaptation issue are discussed, including needs, strategies, observed actions, benefits, economic analysis approaches, role of public/private actors, limits, and project evaluation. We comment on the benefits and shortcomings of analytical methods and suggested economic efforts. Economists need to play a role in such diverse matters as projecting adaptation needs, designing adaptation incentives, and evaluating projects to ensure efficiency and effectiveness.

Thin markets create challenges for reporting market information by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and for users of the information. This study examines distributions of transactions comprising daily price reports in the U.S. hog market. We determine publicly reported daily prices are sensitive to which packing plants buy hogs. Transaction prices comprising USDA Agricultural Marketing Service price reports are not normally distributed; care must be taken in reporting and interpreting transaction prices. Economically important variations in prices occur because of packer-specific indicators. Daily reported prices are used as base prices in marketing agreements, making variation of even greater importance.

We evaluate the effects of climate change on Vietnam's rice market. Results suggest that under a low-emission scenario and without interventions, rice production would drop by as much as 18% by 2030 relative to the 1980–1999 average. Farm and wholesale prices would increase by 1.86%, causing domestic demand to fall by 0.38%. The export sector would experience a rise of 6.94% in export free-on-board prices and a drop of 55.36% in export quantities. Farmers would experience a sales loss of 16.02%, whereas wholesalers would see a sales gain of 1.48%. For exporters, their sales loss would amount to 48.42%.

In a coastal environment, open space can exist as land set aside by a real estate developer or as tidal marshland. In this article, we determine the relative values of both types of open spaces in a coastal county in Georgia using a spatial hedonic price framework. Results indicate that (1) there is a price premium associated with the marshlands and (2) developers have market incentives to incorporate more open space into their designs of residential subdivisions. Regarding marshlands, we also find that accessibility is an important variable that adds much more value to a property than just the proximity.

This study evaluates optimal investment decision rules for an energy beet ethanol firm to exercise the option to invest, mothball, reactivate, and exit the ethanol market, considering uncertainty and volatility in the market price of ethanol, feedstock, and irreversible investment. A real options framework is used to compute gross margins of ethanol that trigger entry into and exit from the ethanol market. Results show that volatility in ethanol gross margins has much greater effects on exit and entry decisions than investment costs, and it also causes firms to wait longer before entering the ethanol market and, once active, to wait longer before exiting.

This study develops a three-county trade model of the United States, Mexico, and Canada to analyze the effects of the 2013 Suspension Agreement on prices, production, consumption, trade flows, and welfare in each country. Although only the United States and Mexico are signatories to the agreement, Canada was also included because the U.S. minimum price distorts prices across the region. Three tomato categories—field, greenhouse, and cherry and grape—are studied because each has a distinct minimum price. The overall welfare effects are positive for Mexico and Canada, but negative for the United States.