determinants of off farm work and its effects on farm performance the case of norwegian grain farmers limited attention has been given in the literature to the impact of off farm work on farm performance more knowledge about the determinants of part time farming and its effects on farm performance could help policymakers to introduce better targeted rural development policies the aim in this article is to fill part of the above mentioned gaps by analyzing factors that influence the choices of off farm work by either the farmer alone or jointly by both the farmer and partner and simultaneously examining how off farm work influences farm performance these analyses were based on an unbalanced panel data set from norwegian grain farms during 1991 to 2005 among the determinants of off farm work hours we found that in addition to demographic time trend and some regional effects there was a significant negative effect of farm output on farmers off farm work hours the production function results revealed that off farm work had a positive effect on farm output at first increasing but then decreasing with increase in hours spent in off farm work furthermore our analysis revealed no systematic effect of off farm work on farm technical efficiency

estimating permanent income and wealth of the us farm households farm households are unique in the way they derive income when compared to nonfarm households farm operators and spouses have dual income sources from farm and off farm activities further farm households on an average possess higher wealth than nonfarm households this article estimates permanent income for the us farm households using data from a large national farm level survey the estimated income is then used to identify the determinants of wealth accumulation by the us farm households results confirm that permanent income is closely related to age of the operator education occupation farm size location and number of earners in the household along with age permanent income is a significant determinant of household wealth it was also found that the wealth income curve is nonlinear upward sloping and convex hausman s specification test indicates that variations in farm household wealth is better explained by estimated permanent income than observed total household income off farm income

nonpecuniary benefits to farming implications for supply response to decoupled payments we develop a household model wherein farmers allocate labor to maximize utility from leisure consumption and nonpecuniary benefits from farming the model shows that farmers with decreasing marginal utility of income respond to higher decoupled payments by decreasing off farm labor and increasing farm labor resulting in greater agricultural output we then estimate the difference between farm and off farm returns to labor using data from three nationally representative farm household surveys the finding of a large on farm off farm wage differential provides compelling evidence of substantial nonpecuniary benefits from farming

farming efficiency and the determinants of multiple job holding by farm operators the extent to which farm families engage inoff farm employment activities is a topic ofcentralimportancetounderstandingthe nan cial well being of farm households the degreeof nancial stress experienced by u s farmfamilies is always a concern to policy makers yet policyconsiderationsoftenignorethesub stantial involvement of most farm householdsin nonfarm labor markets it has been shownthat whentheentirefarmhouseholdisconsid ered the average u s farm household hasa higher total income and much greater assetholdings than is the case for nonfarm house holds see e g goodwin mishra et al pre sented data for 2000 suggesting that when allfarms are considered 92 of total householdincomecamefromnonfarmsources ofcourse such gures depend on how one chooses to de neafarm whenoneconsiderslargeandverylarge commercial farms the share of farm in come in total household income ranges from50 to 75

enterprise diversification in us dairy impact of risk preferences on scale and scope economies enterprise diversification has recently become a prominent feature of us dairy farms scope economies and risk aversion are two forces that simultaneously determine diversification we jointly estimate scope economies and determine risk preferences under price uncertainty we reject risk neutrality in favour of increasing absolute risk aversion iara and increasing relative risk aversion irra scope economies are significant but diminish with farm size increasing returns to scale exist in the production of multiple enterprises and diminish with size large farms operate under decreasing returns to scale ignoring risk preferences a common practice in empirical work results in an underestimate of the effect of scope economies for large farms

off farm work decisions of husbands and wives joint decision making theoretical and econometric models are developed to examine joint wage labor participation and hours decisions of a husband and wife in farm households the econometric model is multiple equation and recursive the specification of the off farm labor supply equation of the husband wife depends on whether his her wife husband does or does not work off the farm and this structure is endogenous the model is fitted to data for iowa farm households the main conclusion is that the off farm labor supply equation of a married individual differs significantly depending on whether his or her spouse also works for a wage copyright 1989 by mit press

household composition and food expenditures a cross country comparison abstract in the analysis of food expenditures use of household member counts as an explanatory variable assumes each member has the same marginal food expenditure impact in our analysis of latin american food expenditures we reject this assumption via the estimation of endogenously determined adult equivalence scales that vary by household member gender and age a series of hypothesis tests indicate significant differences not only in the male versus female equivalence scales but also across country with the use of such equivalence scales in the definition of per capita expenditures we find significant differences in the distributions implying substantially different poverty rankings

effects of farm size education and off farm income on productive efficiency of dairy farmers in utah a stochasitc frontier approach this study is primarily concerned with investigating the technical allocative and scale inefficiency of owner operators of dairy farms in utah a stochastic production frontier has been applied to analyze these inefficiencies the results indicate that there is positive association between years of education and productivity of labor and capital productivity is also found to be negatively related to off farm income regarding the effects of farm size on efficiency it is found that large farms are the most efficient of all sizes considered separate estimates of technical allocative and scale inefficiencies indicate that large and medium sized farms are technically more efficient than small farms large farms on average are found to be performing much better than medium sized and small farms so far as allocative and scale inefficiency are concerned copyright 1989 by mit press

technical efficiency of us dairy farms and federal government programs in this article technical efficiency te of dairy farms is estimated and analysed with two methodologies data envelopment analysis dea and stochastic frontier analysis sfa using dea the te scores for different states are determined further logistic regression is applied to te scores to explain how known technical and policy variables affect a farm s probability of being efficient the second methodology employs sfa to estimate and analyse te scores two federal milk policies are considered in this research marketing policy and milk income loss policy federal milk marketing program has shown a significant and negative impact on te with both methods payments under the milk income loss program have shown a positive significant impact in sfa analysis both methodologies produced similar outcomes on regional impacts and on the significance of several considered variables categorical representation of some variables in graphs provided some additional insights of their effects on te

agritourism and off farm work survival strategies for small farms this study considers agritourism and off farm work as income diversification choices simultaneously and analyzes factors influencing such choices further the study assesses the impact of agritourism off farm work and both on gross cash farm income and total farm household income we utilized large set of nationwide farm survey data and selectivity based multinomial choice model an important finding of our study is that small farms have higher household income if they choose both income diversification strategies rather than a single strategy results suggest that education age of the operator financial condition and location of the farm are important factors driving income diversification alternatives finally our study indicates that accounting for selectivity is essential to ensure unbiased and consistent estimates

sub therapeutic antibiotics and the efficiency of u s hog farms antimicrobial drugs are frequently fed to hogs at sub therapeutic levels to promote feed efficiency and growth however in response to concerns that sub therapeutic antibiotics stas are promoting the development of antimicrobial drug resistant bacteria the u s food and drug administration recently adopted a strategy to phase out antibiotics for such production uses this study uses a stochastic frontier model to estimate the costs to u s hog producers of a ban on stas for growth promotion to address potential sample selection issues we employ a recently developed empirical approach that corrects for biases from both observed and unobserved variables

the effects of oil price shocks on output and inflation in china crude oil price shocks derive from many sources each of which may bring about different effects on macro economy variables and require completely different designs in macro economic policy thus distinguishing the sources of oil price fluctuations is crucial when evaluating these effects this paper establishes an open economy dynamic stochastic general equilibrium dsge model with two economies china and the rest of the world to assess the effects of oil price shocks the ces production function is extended by adding oil as an input based on the model the effects of four types of oil price fluctuations are evaluated the four types of oil price shocks are supply shocks driven by political events in opec countries other oil supply shocks aggregate shocks to the demand for industrial commodities and demand shocks that are specific to the crude oil market simulation results indicate the following oil supply shocks driven by political events mainly produce short term effects on china s output and inflation while the other three shocks produce relatively long term effects in addition demand shocks that are specific to the crude oil market contribute the most to the fluctuations in china s output and inflation

farm income variability and the supply of off farm labor if farmers are risk averse greater farm income variability should increase off farm labor supply this effect is confirmed for a sample of kansas farmers off farm employment of farmers and their spouses is also found to be significantly influenced by farm experience off farm work experience farm size leverage efficiency and farm specific education in addition farm operators and spouses who receive significant income support through government farm programs are less likely to work off the farm this may suggest that policy changes reducing farm income support payments may increase off farm employment of farmers and their spouses

econometric estimation of technical and environmental efficiency an application to dutch dairy farms in this article we estimate the technical and environmental efficiency of a panel of dutch dairy farms nitrogen surplus arising from the application of excessive amounts of manure and chemical fertilizer is treated as an environmentally detrimental input a stochastic translog production frontier is specified to estimate the output oriented technical efficiency environmental efficiency is estimated as the input oriented technical efficiency of a single input the nitrogen surplus of each farm the mean output oriented technical efficiency is rather high 0 894 but the mean input oriented environmental efficiency is only 0 441 intensive dairy farms are both technically and environmentally more efficient than extensive farms

scale economies and inefficiency of u s dairy farms this study employs data drawn from the 2000 agricultural resource management survey a u s department of agriculture sponsored farmers survey the article estimates returns to scale relationships across dairy farms of different sizes and across different regions incorporating variables hypothesized to influence farm performance results point to significant scale economies in u s dairy farms and underscore the importance of taking account of inefficiency when estimating scale economies contrary to previous research the preferred cost function specification does not show a region of decreasing returns to scale this finding helps explain why the average size of dairy farms has been increasing

determinants of nonfarm earnings of farm based husbands and wives in northern ghana the nonfarm work participation decisions of married men and women in rural northern ghana were jointly and separately estimated for married couples through a bivariate probit using recent survey data selectivity bias was corrected for in estimating wage offer and labor supply equations using heckman s procedure education experience infrastructure distance to the capital and population density as well as interactions between education and infrastructure and between education and distance to the city were found to be significantly related to the probability of nonfarm labor market participation wages and the amount of nonfarm labor performed with significant differences by gender

off farm work and technical efficiency on u s dairies in this study we investigate the impact of an increase in farm households off farm work on technical efficiency te of u s dairies we present a theoretical framework that implies that an increase in farm household off farm work decreases te we use two nationally representative samples of u s dairies 2010 and 2005 agricultural resource management surveys and a parametric approach stochastic frontier analysis to empirically test the hypothesis results are generally consistent with the hypothesis and show that an increase in off farm work by the farm household is associated with a significant decrease in te in addition results show that there is a statistically significant difference in te between small medium and large farms small farms are associated with significantly higher off farm work and have lower te than large farms which implies that less off farm work by households with larger farms is at least partially responsible for the evidence of economies of scale in the u s dairy industry

can the small dairy farm remain competitive in us agriculture smaller dairy farms in the us are observed to have higher costs than larger farms and whether those higher costs are due to technology or inefficiency has implications for policy to address the small farm if high cost of production on smaller farms is due to a higher cost frontier then to make small farms competitive would require research to devise and design technology that is suitable for small farms if instead high cost is due to inefficiency then educational approaches are needed to ensure small dairy farms use technology efficiently to determine the cause of higher costs on small farms the cost of milk production by farm size was decomposed into frontier and efficiency components with a stochastic cost curve using data on usa dairy farms although the frontier cost of production decreases with farm size that cost reduction is not as pronounced as a cost curve that includes inefficiency the higher cost of production on many smaller farms is caused by inefficiency rather than technology

the impact of coupled and decoupled government subsidies on off farm labor participation of u s farm operators with the 1996 farm act the united states introduced payments that were designed to be decoupled labor allocation choices are likely to be affected by receipt of payments and income from off farm jobs has been the major source of income for most farm households for sometime this article examines whether the 1996 change has affected the off farm labor participation of farm households we conclude that the observed increase in off farm participation of farm operators who received payments was not the result of the 1996 policy change government payments whether coupled or decoupled have a negative effect on off farm labor participation