Search

Family farm management is often transferred separately from farm ownership. This article determines the impact of variables affecting management transfer decisions. Agricultural Resource Management Survey data are used to investigate variable impacts. Results indicate operator demographics, business planning practices, and value of farm and non-farm assets impact management transfer decisions.

Texas High Plains (THP) is a major cotton producing region in the US with low rainfall and decreasing irrigation water availability. Hence stochastic rainfall poses considerable production risk in the region and developing strategies to maximize the average profit and minimize the year to year variability in profits is an important concern. In this study, Cotton2K, which is a process based cotton growth simulation model, was used along with an economic optimization model to identify the optimal strategies for temporal allocation of irrigation water for center pivot irrigated cotton in THP. The study analyzed different strategies to allocate irrigation water during one growing season among three different growth stages of cotton (planting to first bloom, first bloom to first open boll, and first open ball to 60% open boll) at four different sub-optimal levels for irrigation water availability (6, 9, 12, and 15 acre-inches). The results showed that the profit and utility maximizing strategy was to apply all available irrigation water during stage II when six, nine, and twelve acre-inches of irrigation water were available. When fifteen inches of irrigation water was available, the optimal strategy was to use 90% of the available irrigation water in stage II and the rest in stage III. The sensitivity analysis indicated that these optimal decisions were not sensitive to variations in price of cotton lint and farmer’s attitude towards risk.

Currently, with the enhancement of self-protection awareness and the faultiness of the medical System and medical education, the medical education is under the intense impact. It is very difficult that the students in the practice clinical skills on patients. With the renewal of the technology and material, the model of medical education was changed. The students can practice the clinical skills on the advanced simulation equipment. Through the use of advanced simulation equipment, it can avoid the emergence of some legal or ethical issues, and improve the quality of medical students' training.

China’s industrial development has had profound impacts on its rural economy. While the resource flows between the urban industrial and rural agricultural sectors are well studied, little attention has been paid to the interactions of industrial and agricultural development within rural areas. Using a nationally representative panel data, we find a strongly significant association between rural industrial development and agricultural productivity. Further, we ascertain that, while rural enterprises do withdraw labor out of agriculture and dampen productivity, the productivity loss is negligible in comparison with land productivity improvement brought by added infrastructure capital financed through tax revenue from rural enterprises.

With the fast development of the smart grid technology in china, more and more attentions were paid to the condition-based maintenance of the high voltage equipment. To realize the objectives, the standardizations of the online monitoring system hierarchy structure and function are the key steps in the development of the online monitoring system in pilot smart substation project. According to the relevant published online monitoring standards, technical guides and solutions, this paper first introduces the basic structure and function of the high voltage online monitoring system of the smart substation. After that, the detail terms about the monitoring device, comprehensive monitoring unit, substation monitoring unit and communication protocols were covered respectively. To implement the design solution of the online monitoring system, based on a newly built pilot 500kV smart substation project, a pilot transformation equipment online monitoring system and its features were presented.

This paper discussed the application of online monitoring system based on IEC61850 standard in the smart substation. Firstly, the functions and performance requirements of online monitoring system have been discussed, and the functional model and interface model of online monitoring based on IEC61850 have been established; Secondly, the application schema of online monitoring system has been designed for smart substation. Furthermore, according to the practical application in the pilot project, the validity of the models and the schema has been verified, and a summary of the application has been given.

Using a unique panel of rice-producing Chinese households, this paper tests off-farm employment’s effects on agricultural production. We find the sizable rural out-migration in the past two decades has had negligible effects on China’s rice production. This cannot be explained by farm labor market perfection or any technological improvements financed by off-farm income; rather, evidence points to the persistence of disguised unemployment in 21st century China.

Developing groundwater management plans requires a good understanding of the interdependence of groundwater hydrology and producer water use behavior. While state-of-the-art groundwater models require water demand data at highly disaggregated levels, the lack of producer water use data has held up the progress to meet that need. This paper proposes an econometric framework that links county-level crop acreage data to well-level hydrologic data to produce heterogeneous patterns of crop choice and irrigation practices within a county. Together with agronomic data on irrigation water requirements of various crops and irrigation practices, this model permits estimation of the water demand distribution within a county. We apply this model to a panel of 16 counties in the Southern Texas High Plains from 1972 to 2000. The results obtained not only are consistent with those from the traditional multinomial logit land use model, but also indicate the presence of large intra- and inter-county heterogeneity in producer water use behavior.

Although evidence abounds that the development of rural non-farm activities have increased rural household income and contributed to rural development, the underlying structure and mechanism of the linkage between agricultural productivity and non-farm activities is poorly understood. Using a unique panel dataset of Chinese villages, this article examines the mechanism by which non-farm activities influence agricultural productivity. I find that Chinese villages’ non-farm revenue has a significant positive effect on agricultural land productivity. Although non-farm activities do withdraw labor out of agriculture and therefore dampen land productivity, that negative effect is negligible in comparison with the land productivity improvement brought by nonfarm revenue-financed infrastructure capital investment.

A nested logit model was applied to the 2009 Southern Cotton Precision Farming Survey to study the influence of farmer and farm characteristics on the adoption of Variability Detection Technologies (VDTs) and Variable Rate Application Technology (VRT). The results reveal that farm size, ownership of the land, and exposure to Extension activities are important factors affecting the choice of VDTs. Also, the farmers adopting both soil- based and plant-based VDTs were found to be more likely to adopt VRT. The probability of adoption of VRT was found to be lower for Texas cotton farmers compared to those in other surveyed states, regardless of the type of VDT adopted.

A nested logit model was used to analyze the 2009 Southern Cotton Precision Farming Survey to study the impact of farmer and farm characteristics on the adoption of Variability Detection Technologies (VDT) and the adoption of Variability Rate application Technology (VRT) conditioned on the type of the VDT chosen. The results showed that the farm size and exposure to extension activities are important factors affecting the choice of VDTs. The farmers adopting both soil and plant based VDTs are more likely to adopt VRT. The probability of adoption of VRTs was lower for Texas cotton farmers irrespective of the type of VDT adopted. In general, younger, more educated farmers who use computers for farming operations are more likely to adopt VRT when they choose soil based or both soil and plant based VDT.

Precision Farming by Cotton Producers in Twelve Southern States: Results from the 2009 Southern Cotton Precision Farming Survey

The organic cotton market has been growing internationally and presents a potential opportunity for producers. This article evaluates prices and returns for organic cotton production in Texas using a stochastic frontier approach. Organic producers were found to be more profitable relative to conventional production, but the analysis showed that organic producers were relatively less technically efficient.

This paper studies the optimal management of groundwater resources when agronomic and hydrologic constraints bind the use of groundwater for irrigation. The binding constraints lead to a perfectly inelastic demand for groundwater. In the case of symmetric agents the social and private rates of groundwater extraction coincide with one another and commonality is completely innocuous; in the case of asymmetric agents the rate of extraction remains the same in the social and private setting, yet irrigation is abandoned by the same agent at different times. The model offers one way to rationalize the empirically found peculiarities of sticky water demand and Gisser-Sanchez Effect which defy conventional theory. The situations described in the model also challenge conventional corrective measures for management of groundwater as a common property resource. Policy recommendations are provided.

A new densification method of chemical manganese dioxide (CMD)-NaMnO4 densification has been developed. This MnO2 produced by NaMnO4 oxidation possessed γ-type structure. After the crude MnO2 was densified, the tap density of the MnO2 powder could be increased from 1.2 to 2.0 g/cm3. The discharge capacity is higher than that densified by other oxidizers.

The article presents a dynamic model of research investment. This model allows us to examine three important channels through which public investment policy can affect the private sector's research investment, that is, the productivity, replacement, and wage effects. Two alternative empirical approaches are introduced to implement the model. Through a unified examination of the productivity, replacement, and wage effects, the empirical estimation of this model will provide insight into whether public-sector research investment crowds in or crowds out private-sector research investment.