We use a combination of primary and secondary data to investigate and quantify the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the California specialty crop sector. We demonstrate that the specialty crop sector was highly resilient during the pandemic and aftermath in terms of output. For many crops, production fell somewhat between 2019 and 2021, but not to an extent that is outside of normal annual variation for fruits and vegetables. However, prices increased dramatically for many commodities. Contrary to conventional wisdom, most input costs did not surge during the pandemic, and some fell. But both the primary and secondary data identify labor and truck transportation as the major issues facing producers and driving up prices. Trade associations played a vital role in disseminating solutions to growers throughout the pandemic.

Capital and credit constraints limit the small farm’s ability to adequately use resources for optimum performance. Farmers’ access to capital is constrained in multiple ways, including price factors, risk factors, and transaction factors, as well as access to and ease of rural agricultural financing. Using a primary survey data of small farms in Tennessee, we analyzed factors influencing credit constraint and its impact on farm performance. Farm operators’ gender, off-farm work, land acreage holdings, farm specialization, and the use of smart phone with Internet significantly influenced credit constraint. We found that the financial performance of credit constrained small farmers was significantly lower than that of unconstrained small farmers—an adverse impact of constrained capacity to credit could result in up to $51,000 lower in gross farm sales. Additionally, our reason-specific results within credit constraint suggested that around $32,000 to $39,000 lower performance in gross sales can be attributable to the constrained borrowing with deficit to obtain agricultural loans at required or desired level.

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.

The agricultural sector has operated in a period of high real interest rates for over half a decade. Some are concerned that this has limited capital availability and stagnated the historic capital for labor substitution occurring in the sector. This study proposes new procedures for estimating the aggregate production function of United States agriculture. Improvements include incorporation of total returns and revised measures of both durable and nondurable capital inputs. Results indicate increasing capital productivity has occurred, but encouraging further capital substitution may not benefit agricultural producers.

Risk analysis continues to emphasize price and yield variability as the principal components of the decisionmaker's risk environment. This research demonstrates the relative importance of financial risk for a representative cotton farm in Arizona. For highly leveraged operations, financial risk may account for 70 percent of the total risk faced by the producer. Implications for future risk analysis are discussed in light of these findings.

A discrete stochastic programming model is formulated to study the gains from diversification when farming operations are augmented with off-farm financial assets that are not highly correlated with returns from farming. We extend past research by considering the dynamics of accumulating these financial assets and the farm's leverage and tenure position. Results show that farmers' income level and stability can be improved by including nonfarm financial assets in their portfolios.