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The results presented in this WSU publication serve as a general guide for evaluating the feasibility of producing organic Honeycrisp apples in Washington in 2022. The primary use of this publication is in identifying inputs, costs, and yields considered typical of well-managed organic Honeycrisp apple orchards. This publication is not intended to be a definitive guide to production practices, but it is intended to be helpful in estimating the physical and financial requirements of comparable plantings. Cost estimations in the enterprise budget also vary depending on its intended use. To avoid drawing unwarranted conclusions for any particular orchard, readers must closely examine the assumptions made in this guide and then adjust the costs, returns, or both as appropriate for their own orchard operation.

The results presented in this WSU publication serve as a general guide for evaluating the feasibility of producing organic Gala apples in Washington in 2022. The primary use of this publication is in identifying inputs, costs, and yields considered typical of well-managed organic Gala apple orchards. This publication is not intended to be a definitive guide to production practices, but it is intended to be helpful in estimating the physical and financial requirements of comparable plantings. Cost estimations in the enterprise budget also vary depending on its intended use. To avoid drawing unwarranted conclusions for any particular orchard, readers must closely examine the assumptions made in this guide and then adjust the costs, returns, or both as appropriate for their own orchard operation.

The results presented in this WSU publication serve as a general guide for evaluating the feasibility of producing fresh-market Anjou pears in the Wenatchee River Valley, Washington State, in 2022. The primary use of this report is in identifying inputs, costs, and yields considered typical of well-managed Anjou pear orchards. This publication is not intended to be a definitive guide to production practices, but it is intended to be helpful in estimating the physical and financial requirements of comparable plantings. To avoid drawing unwarranted conclusions for any particular orchard, readers must closely examine the assumptions made in this guide and then adjust the costs, returns, or both as appropriate for their own orchard operation.

The results presented in this WSU publication serve as a general guide for evaluating the feasibility of producing fresh-market Bartlett pears in South Washington in 2022. The primary use of this publication is in identifying inputs, costs, and yields considered typical of well-managed Bartlett pear orchards. This publication is not intended to be a definitive guide to production practices, but it is helpful in estimating the physical and financial requirements of comparable plantings. To avoid drawing unwarranted conclusions for any particular orchard, readers must closely examine the assumptions made in this guide, and then adjust the costs, returns, or both as appropriate for their own orchard operation.

The results presented in this WSU publication serve as a general guide for evaluating the feasibility of establishing and producing conventional and organic hops in the Pacific Northwest as of 2020, with a capital and machinery endowment suited to a 660-acre hop enterprise. This publication is not intended to be a definitive guide to production practices but is helpful in estimating the physical and financial requirements of comparable plantings. To avoid drawing unwarranted conclusions for any particular farm, readers must closely examine the assumptions made in this guide and then adjust the costs, returns, or both as appropriate for their own hop operation.

The results presented in this publication serve as a general guide for evaluating the feasibility of producing Sweetheart sweet cherries in Washington State in 2021-2022. This publication is not intended to be a definitive guide to production practices, but is intended to be helpful in estimating the physical and financial requirements of comparable plantings. To avoid drawing unwarranted conclusions for any particular orchard, readers must closely examine the assumptions made in this guide, and then adjust the costs, returns, or both as appropriate for their own orchard operation.

The results presented in this WSU publication serve as a general guide for evaluating the feasibility of producing Chelan sweet cherries in Washington State in 2021-2022. This publication is not intended to be a definitive guide to production practices, but is intended to be helpful in estimating the physical and financial requirements of comparable plantings. To avoid drawing unwarranted conclusions for any particular orchard, readers must closely examine the assumptions made in this guide, and then adjust the costs, returns, or both as appropriate for their own orchard operation.

We conduct a series of economic games among spouses in farm households to explore measurement and correlates of disparities in preferences, household efficiency, and women’s empowerment in the household. We match data from the game to a survey in which data is collected from both men and women.

The results presented in this WSU publication serve as a general guide for evaluating the feasibility of producing Coral Champagne sweet cherries in Washington State in 2021-2022. This publication is not intended to be a definitive guide to production practices, but is intended to be helpful in estimating the physical and financial requirements of comparable plantings. To avoid drawing unwarranted conclusions for any particular orchard, readers must closely examine the assumptions made in this guide, and then adjust the costs, returns, or both as appropriate for their own orchard operation.

The results presented in this WSU publication serve as a general guide for evaluating the feasibility of producing Bartlett pears for canning in Washington State as of 2020. This publication is not intended to be a definitive guide to production practices, but it is helpful in estimating the physical and financial requirements of comparable plantings. To avoid drawing unwarranted conclusions for any particular orchard, readers must closely examine the assumptions made in this guide, and then adjust the costs, returns, or both as appropriate for their own orchard operation.

High tunnels are being used by specialty crop producers to enhance production yields and quality, extend growing seasons, and protect crops from extreme weather. The tunnels are unheated, plastic-covered structures under which crops are planted directly in the soil, and they provide greater environmental protection and control than open-field production. This study uses field-level experiments to evaluate high-tunnel production. The results suggest that investments in high tunnels can provide increased profits and superior protection against adverse risks relative to crop insurance.

The Environmental Protection Agency declared the pesticide azinphos-methyl must not be used in apple production after September 2012. We use this ban to contribute to the debate on environmental regulation versus industrial output. We use a computable general equilibrium model to estimate the change to sales, price, and employment in the Washington apple industry and the statewide economy had this ban existed in 2007. We estimate the ban decreases profit per acre by $101; changes sales by -0.8%, prices by 0.2%, and employment by 0.1% in the apple industry; but has negligible impacts on the Washington economy.

Protective covers, such as high tunnels, are being used by specialty crop producers to enhance production quality and yields, expand or growing seasons, and protect crops from some extreme elements. While growing in popularity, one barrier to larger utilization includes the uncertainty regarding their practices and benefits. This paper recognizes that high tunnels can be used as a form of risk management and examines the relationship with crop insurance in order to better define optimal risk management strategies.

This paper provides empirical estimates of the impacts of natural disasters on different forms of capital (with a focus on human and intangible capital and natural capital), and on real gross domestic product per capita. The types of disaster considered are droughts, earthquakes, floods, and storms and their impacts are measured in terms of the number of people affected or people affected per capita. The authors find statistically significant reductions on the values of human and intangible capital and land capital as a consequence of the disasters, and these reductions are greater when the impacts last for longer periods. Based on the assumption that natural disasters indirectly affect the level of income via losses in capital, the authors estimate a Cobb-Douglas production function using the different forms of capital as inputs. The losses in income are found to vary across different countries and the type of natural disaster studied. However, a common finding is that the losses in income depend generally on two factors: the relative magnitude of impacts of a natural disaster and the values of different forms of capital. The estimates in this paper are national level figures and cannot be useful in predicting the cost of damages at the local level, where much larger amounts can be experienced per capita. Nevertheless, the estimates provide some indication of magnitudes for different disasters and for different groups of countries. More work and more data are needed to get a dynamic profile for the losses of capital and income. But given the study's results, the time profile is estimated to range typically between two and five years.

One of the recurring themes in the sustainability literature has been the legitimacy of using an economic framework to account for natural resources. This paper examines the potential for substituting between different inputs in the generation of income, where the inputs include natural resources such as land and energy resources. A nested constant elasticity of substitution (CES) production function is used to allow flexibility in the estimated elasticities of substitution. Also, with this specification, natural resources and other inputs are combined in different levels of the function, thus allowing for different levels of substitutability. Institutional and economic indicators are also incorporated in the production function estimated. Results show that the elasticities derived from functions involving land resources were generally around one or greater, implying a fairly high degree of substitutability. Furthermore, changes in trade openness and private sector investment have a statistically significant and direct relationship with income generation. No statistically significant relationship between income and any of the institutional indicators was found.