Floriculture value exceeds $5.8 billion in the United States. Environmental challenges, market trends, and diseases complicate breeding priorities. To inform breeders’ and geneticists’ research efforts, we set out to gather consumers’ preferences in the form of willingness to pay (WTP) for different rose attributes in a discrete choice experiment. The responses are modeled in WTP space, using polynomials to account for heterogeneity. Consumer preferences indicate that heat and disease tolerance were the most important aspects for subjects in the sample, followed by drought resistance. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to identify breeding priorities in rosaceous plants from a consumer perspective.

We determined how pasture and grazing management practices affected the number of days hay was fed to cattle by season. Data were collected from a survey of Tennessee cattle producers. Days of cattle on hay varied across seasons because of variations in forage production and weather. The number of days hay was fed to cattle varied with pasture-animal management practices such as rotating pastures, forage mixtures, and weed management strategies. Having mixtures of cool- and warm-season grasses reduced the number of days on hay in the winter, spring, and summer months indicating benefits from diversified forages.

We estimated the impact of the Indian tariff on the demand for imported fresh apples from theUnited States. A 1% decrease in the tariff would increase the quantities demanded by 3.83%. If India eliminates the tariff on all imported fresh apples, total consumer welfare in terms of the imported fresh apple market will increase by $120 million yearly, 57% of the value of all fresh apples imported by India in 2015. This study adds evidence on the effects of tariff reduction on trade volume and welfare of consumers in the importing country.

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) renegotiation has resulted in an updated agreement known as the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA). Given the contentious nature of the renegotiation process, we analyze the impacts of the USMCA relative to a “what if” scenario of failed NAFTA renegotiation to examine the economy-wide impacts of USMCA on bilateral trade, production, consumption, prices, and domestic and cross-border labor markets. Our results show that, had NAFTA renegotiation failed, the ensuing economic conditions would have created incentive for more, not fewer, migrant workers to enter the United States. USMCA benefits Mexican and Canadian consumers marginally but harms U.S. consumers slightly.

This study provides a road map for creating and operating a student-managed investment fund (SMIF) as an experiential learning opportunity in commodity market analysis. We describe the reasons for implementing a SMIF and the benefits it offers relative to traditional simulation approaches. We outline the necessary steps for starting a SMIF and explain its organizational structure. We discuss a SMIF’s operation and main activities, which include recruitment, training, trading, and interaction with the client and alumni. The implications of participating in a SMIF are reviewed within a cost-benefit framework.

We examine the relative importance of eight goals U.S. grass-fed beef (GFB) producers have for their farms and the relative importance of nine reasons for selecting the GFB enterprise. We further analyze factors affecting goal structure and reasons for selecting the enterprise. The data used for this study are from a 2013 mail survey of U.S. GFB producers. The most important reasons for selecting the GFB enterprise included “producing healthy beef” and “GFB is good for the environment,” classified in the study as social and environmental sustainability reasons, respectively. Reasons such as “profitability” and “strong demand for GFB” were generally of lower importance.

The study examines the effects of adoption of sustainable land management practices on farm households’ technical efficiency (TE) and environmental efficiency, using household-level data from Ghana. We employ selectivity biased-corrected stochastic production frontier to account for potential bias from both observed and unobserved factors. The empirical results show that adopters exhibit higher levels of TE and output, compared with the nonadopters. However, the results reveal that adopters are found to use excess herbicides that could have adverse environmental consequences. The results also reveal that extension services and access to credit positively and significantly correlate with TE.

We use linear time series and wavelets approach to study the relationships between U.S. and international prices for corn, soybeans, and cotton. We then compare results obtained with each approach and verify that structural breaks discovered with wavelet analysis match those produced with subsequent partial-period cointegration analysis. We find little evidence that short-term fluctuations between domestic and international prices are stable, while long-term relationships for many price pairs experience distinct structural breaks. We further find that even though China is among the largest importers of U.S. agricultural products, its commodity prices share little or no relationship with those prevailing in U.S. markets.

We developed an expensiveness index and used the Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey data set to examine empirically whether Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participants pay higher prices compared with nonqualifying and qualifying, but nonparticipating, households. Purchasers’ ability to minimize food expenditures has significant effects on the program’s effectiveness and on participants’ food security. Using ordinary least squares and two techniques that control for the endogeneity of SNAP participation, we found no significant effect of SNAP participation on food prices. Moreover, we found that SNAP participants pay, on average, lower prices than do nonparticipants. We conclude by providing suggestions for policy improvements and implications for future research.

Consumers prefer bright, cherry-red retail beef. Retailers often mark down the price of discolored beef for quick sale. However, following this practice could result in a net loss of revenue if consumer willingness to pay (WTP) for nondiscolored beef is negatively affected by the presence of discolored beef in the consumer choice set. Through a hypothetical online survey and a controlled in-person experiment, we determine that marketing discolored beef together with nondiscolored beef increases most consumers’ evaluation of, but not their WTP for, nondiscolored beef.