Masters Theses

Date of Award

12-2004

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Major

Agricultural Economics

Major Professor

Burton C. English

Abstract

Soil erosion is a major environmental problem in the United States and worldwide. Eroded soils carry nutrients, pesticides, and some harmful chemicals into rivers, streams, and ground water resources. No tillage practices can reduce soil degradation by leaving the soil surface covered with residue and may result in higher economic returns from increased or stable yields and lower input costs and also improve environment quality. In this study, probability analysis is used to explore relationships between no tillage and herbicide-tolerant crops and a geographically weighted regression (GWR) model is developed to analyze local factors influencing no tillage adoption and results suggest that different local factors, such as rainfall, temperature, percentage of highly erodible land, have different effect on the adoption of no tillage production practice. A time serial logit model is used to quantify the effect of fuel price and chemical price on the adoption of no tillage and diffusion rate and elasticity of fuel price and chemical price are determined.

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