Managing the Economics of Soil Salinity

Saline soils result in decreased crop growth and yield with the potential for losing productive farm land. Enterprise budget analysis was extended to include the fixed costs of installing tile drainage to manage soil salinity in the Red River Valley of North Dakota for corn, soybeans, wheat, sugar beets, and barley. Installing tile drainage to manage soil salinity decreased per acre crop profitability from 19-49% due to the large upfront capital investment of tile drainage. These losses can be decreased to zero with more consistent and predictable yields from tile drainage in the intermediate to long run. With no salinity management lost revenues were estimated to be $150 million due to 1.2 million acres of slightly saline soils and 275,000 acres of moderate soil salinity.Crop Production/Industries, Land Economics/Use,

Understanding Citizen Complaints Regarding Michigan Agricultural Operations

citizen complaints, environmental compliance, livestock farms, manure management, Environmental Economics and Policy, Farm Management, Q24, Q53, Q58,

Confirmatory Factor Analysis of Farm Size and Performance

Replaced with revised version of poster 08/03/10.Farm size, farm performance, SEM models, Agricultural Finance, Farm Management,

Managing Dairy Heifer Growth Investment

Accelerated prepubertal growth rates can lower heifer raising costs but may put heifers at risk for impaired mammary development and have been found to be detrimental decreased to milk production in the first lactation. The tradeoff between heifer raising costs and milk production loss is examined in a capital budgeting model. Monthly annuity net present value of a heifer investment through the first lactation is assessed for heifers calving at 20, 22, 24, 26 and 28 months of age. A 24 mo AFC base case strategy with 9009.5 kg subsequent first lactation milk yields $7.34 in returns per month. Accelerated growth resulted in higher returns ($12.77/mo for 20 mo AFC; $9.86/mo for 22 mo AFC) when milk production is not affected as total raising costs decline relative to the base case. Slower growth resulted in lower returns ($5.12/mo for 26 mo AFC; $3.15/mo for 28 mo AFC). When milk production declines, revenues decline as do feed and marketing costs which are a function of milk produced. Adjusting for factors, breakeven milk production losses were 10.6 % for 20 mo AFC and 5.3 % for 22 mo AFC relative to the 24 mo AFC base. These results were not sensitive to the assumed discount rate, heifer feed costs or discount rate. Other operation-specific heifer management factors including calving season, reproduction, herd size/expansion considerations and, in the longer-term, heifer facilities investments may be more significant economically than the differences found in this analysis.Heifer growth, Economics, Investment, Livestock Production/Industries,

Dairy Farm Revenue Insurance: Is the Application Viable?

Risk and Uncertainty,

Incorporating Environmentally Compliant Manure Nutrient Disposal Costs into Least-Cost Livestock Ration Formulation

Livestock rations are formulated to minimize feed cost subject to nutritional requirements for a target performance level, which ignores the potentially substantial cost of disposing of nutrients fed in excess of nutritional requirements. We incorporate nutrient disposal costs into a modified least-cost ration formulation model to arrive at a joint least-cost decision that minimizes the sum of feed and net nutrient disposal costs. The method is demonstrated with phosphorus disposal costs on a representative dairy farm. Herd size, land availability and proximity, crop rotation, and initial soil phosphorus content are shown to be important in determining phosphorus disposal costs.environmental compliance, linear programming, livestock rations, manure disposal, Agribusiness, Environmental Economics and Policy, Livestock Production/Industries, C61, Q12, Q52,

Manure Handling System Attributes Impact on Manure Management Investment Decisions: A Random Utility Model Approach

Replaced with revised version of paper 07/22/08.Farm Management, Livestock Production/Industries,

Optimal livestock diet formulation with farm environmental compliance consequences

The current method to derive livestock diets is to optimize cost performance subject to animal performance and resulting nutritional requirements via a linear programming model. In contrast, we examine the livestock diet formulation problem as a multi-criteria decision model with the criteria being cost performance, feed efficiency, and environmental compliance costs. We find that there are many situations where farm financial situations are improved by feeding products with higher costs per unit of protein but lower phosphorus levels.Environmental Economics and Policy,

Combinación varias Características para evaluar el contenido del resumen de texto

In this paper, we propose a method that evaluates the content of a text summary using a machine learning approach. This method operates by combining multiple features to build models that predict the PYRAMID scores for new summaries. We have tested several single and "Ensemble Learning" classifiers to build the best model. The evaluation of summarization system is made using the average of the scores of summaries that are built from each system. The results show that our method has achieved good performance in predicting the content score for a summary as well as for a summarization system.En este artículo proponemos un método que evalúa el contenido de un resumen de texto utilizando un enfoque de aprendizaje automático. Este método funciona combinando múltiples Características para construir modelos que predicen las puntuaciones PYRAMID para nuevos resúmenes. Hemos probado varios clasificadores individuales y "Ensemble Learning" para construir el mejor modelo. La evaluación del sistema de resumen se realiza utilizando el promedio de las puntuaciones de los resúmenes que se construyen a partir de cada sistema. Los resultados muestran que nuestro método ha logrado un buen rendimiento en la predicción de la puntuación de contenido para un resumen, así como para un sistema de resumen

Détection automatique de l'ironie dans les tweets en français

International audienceCet article présente une méthode par apprentissage supervisé pour la détection de l'ironie dans les tweets en français. Un classifieur binaire utilise des traits de l'état de l'art dont les performances sont reconnues, ainsi que de nouveaux traits issus de notre étude de corpus. En particulier, nous nous sommes intéressés à la négation et aux oppositions explicites/implicites entre des expressions d'opinion ayant des polarités différentes. Les résultats obtenus sont encourageants