Jason S. Bergtold

Farmers’ Willingness to Produce Alternative Cellulosic Biofuel Feedstocks Under Contract in Kansas Using Stated Choice Experiments

Many studies have assessed the technical feasibility of producing bioenergy crops on agricultural lands. However, while it is possible to produce large quantities of agricultural biomass for bioenergy from lignocellulosic feedstocks, very few of these studies have assessed farmers’ willingness to produce these crops under different contracting arrangements. The purpose of this paper is to examine farmers’ willingness to produce alternative cellulosic biofuel feedstocks under different contractual, market, and harvesting arrangements. This is accomplished by using enumerated field surveys in Kansas with stated choice experiments eliciting farmers’ willingness to produce corn stover, sweet sorghum, and switchgrass under different contractual conditions. Using a random utility framework to model the farmers’ decisions, the paper examines the contractual attributes that will most likely increase the likelihood of feedstock enterprise adoption. Results indicate that net returns above the next best alternative use of the land, contract length, cost share, financial incentives, insurance, and custom harvest options are all important contract attributes. Farmers’ willingness to adopt and their willingness-to-pay for alternative contract attributes vary by region and choice of feedstock.

Reliability of Statistical Software

The reliability of several statisitcal software packages was examined using the National Institute of Standards and Technology linear and nonlinear least squares datasets and models. Software tested include Excel 2007, GAMS 23.4, GAUSS 9.0, LIMDEP 8.0, Mathematica 7.0, MATLAB 7.5, R 2.10, SAS 9.1, SHAZAM 10, and Stata 10. While some of these packages have been previously examined, others, including GAMS and MATLAB, have not been extensively examined. Reliability tests indicate improvements in some of the software packages that were previously tested, but some of these packages failed reliability tests under certain conditions. The findings underscore the need to benchmark software packages to ascertain reliability before use and the importance of solving econometric problems using more than one package. Copyright 2010, Oxford University Press.

Risk Analysis of Tillage and Crop Rotation Alternatives with Winter Wheat

The economic feasibility of soybeans, grain sorghum, and corn in annual rotation with winter wheat using reduced tillage and no-tillage systems in the Central Great Plains was evaluated, with continuous wheat and grain sorghum also analyzed. Net returns were calculated using simulated yield and price distributions based on historical yields, two historical annual price series, and 2011 costs. Stochastic Efficiency with Respect to a Function was used to determine the preferred strategies under various risk preferences. The no-till wheat-soybean and reduced-till wheatsoybean systems are the first and second most preferred, regardless of the level of risk aversion.

Economic linkages to changing landscapes.

Many economic processes are intertwined with landscape change. A large number of individual economic decisions shape the landscape, and in turn the changes in the landscape shape economic decisions. This article describes key research questions about the economics of landscape change and reviews the state of research knowledge. The rich and varied economic–landscape interactions are an active area of research by economists, geographers, and others. Because the interactions are numerous and complex, disentangling the causal relationships in any given landscape system is a formidable research challenge. Limited data with mismatched temporal and spatial scales present further obstacles. Nevertheless, the growing body of economic research on these topics is advancing and shares fundamental challenges, as well as data and methods, with work in other disciplines.

Bernoulli Regression Models: Revisiting the Specification of Statistical Models with Binary Dependent Variables

The latent variable and generalized linear modelling approaches do not provide a systematic approach for modelling discrete choice observational data. Another alternative, the probabilistic reduction (PR) approach, provides a systematic way to specify such models that can yield reliable statistical and substantive inferences. The purpose of this paper is to re-examine the underlying probabilistic foundations of conditional statistical models with binary dependent variables using the PR approach. This leads to the development of the Bernoulli Regression Model, a family of statistical models, which includes the binary logistic regression model. The paper provides an explicit presentation of probabilistic model assumptions, guidance on model specification and estimation, and empirical application.

Limited Access to Conservation: Limited- Resource Farmer Participation in the Conservation Security Program in the Southeast

The paper examines the joint adoption of conservation tillage, crop rotations, and soil testing by small and limited-resource farmers in the Southeast. The objectives are to determine the potential eligibility of small farmers for the Conservation Security Program, examine socioeconomic factors affecting adoption, and assess the interdependence between adopting different conservation practices. Results indicate that conservation management, ethnicity, and farm characteristics affect practice adoption. Of the producers surveyed in the study, 7% meet Conservation Security Program eligibility requirements, while the other 93% have less than a 20% likelihood of adopting the needed practices to qualify.

A review of economic considerations for cover crops as a conservation practice

Over the past few decades, farmers have increasingly integrated cover crops into their cropping systems. Cover-crop benefits can help a farmer to achieve sustainability or reduce negative environmental externalities, such as soil erosion or chemical runoff. However, the impact on farm economics will likely be the strongest incentive to adopt cover crops. These impacts can include farm profits, cash crop yields or both. This paper provides a review of cover-crop adoption, production, risk and policy considerations from an economic perspective. These dimensions are examined through a review of cover-crop literature. This review was written to provide an overview of cover crops and their impacts on the farm business and the environment, especially with regard to economic considerations. Through increasing knowledge about cover crops, the intent here is to inform producers contemplating adoption and policy makers seeking to encourage adoption.

Indirect land use change from ethanol production: the case of sugarcane expansion at the farm level on the Brazilian Cerrado

ABSTRACT The expansion of sugarcane production in the Brazilian Cerrado has resulted in indirect land use change (ILUC), occurring when displaced land uses in one location are reallocated to another. Studies, however, usually identify ILUC at the regional or national level far from the original area of a displaced land use. This study examines the occurrence of ILUC due to sugarcane expansion for ethanol production at the farm level in the Brazilian Cerrado. It fills a gap in the literature by examining socioeconomic, policy and farm-level factors that influence ILUC at the farm level in the Brazilian Cerrado using face-to-face enumerated surveys. Results indicate that ILUC did occur at the farm (producer) scale and farmers who undertook ILUC intensified agricultural production on their farms. Results inform policymakers on how the intensification of agricultural practices may make it potentially difficult to keep protected lands out of production, reducing the environmental benefits from sugarcane-based biofuel production.

Revisiting the statistical specification of near-multicollinearity in the logistic regression model

Abstract This paper revisits the statistical specification of near-multicollinearity in the logistic regression model. We argue that the ceteris paribus clause, which assumes that the maximum likelihood estimator of β remains constant as the correlation (ρ) between the regressors increases, invoked under the traditional account of near-multicollinearity is rather misleading. We derive the parameters of the logistic regression model and show that they are functions of ρ, indicating that the ceteris paribus clause is unattainable. Monte Carlo simulations confirm these findings and further show that: coefficient estimates and related statistics fluctuate in a non-symmetric, non-monotonic way as |ρ|→1; that the impact of near-multicollinearity is centered on the estimates of β; and that the impact on substantive inferences does not necessarily follow what the traditional account implies.

The probabilistic reduction approach to specifying multinomial logistic regression models in health outcomes research

The paper provides a novel application of the probabilistic reduction (PR) approach to the analysis of multi-categorical outcomes. The PR approach, which systematically takes account of heterogeneity and functional form concerns, can improve the specification of binary regression models. However, its utility for systematically enriching the specification of and inference from models of multi-categorical outcomes has not been examined, while multinomial logistic regression models are commonly used for inference and, increasingly, prediction. Following a theoretical derivation of the PR-based multinomial logistic model (MLM), we compare functional specification and marginal effects from a traditional specification and a PR-based specification in a model of post-stroke hospital discharge disposition and find that the traditional MLM is misspecified. Results suggest that the impact on the reliability of substantive inferences from a misspecified model may be significant, even when model fit statistics do not suggest a strong lack of fit compared with a properly specified model using the PR approach. We identify situations under which a PR-based MLM specification can be advantageous to the applied researcher.