ANALYSIS OF LABOR USE AND PROFITABILITY IN THREE PASTURE SYSTEMS FOR THE GRASS-FED BEEF PRODUCTION IN THE U.S

Basu Deb Bhandari, Jeffrey Gillespie and Guillermo Scaglia

No 205278, 2015 AAEA & WAEA Joint Annual Meeting, July 26-28, San Francisco, California from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association

Abstract: An experiment to compare three pasture systems was conducted at the Iberia Research Station in Jeanerette, Louisiana, for five consecutive years from 2009/10 to 2013/14. System 1 included of bermudagrass and ryegrass pasture; System 2 included bermudagrass, ryegrass, clover mix (berseem, red and white clovers), rye, and dallisgrass; and System 3 included bermudagrass, ryegrass, sorghum sudan, soybeans, clover mix (berseem, red and white clovers), rye, and dallisgrass. Fifty-four May-weaned steers were divided into nine groups of six based on their body weight and randomly placed into one of the replications of the three pasture systems. Detailed records of daily activities along with various inputs, machinery and labor use, and outputs was collected. Analysis was done using the Kenward-Roger Degrees of Freedom method with and without including labor expenses. Systems 1 and 2 yielded higher profit than System 3 in both cases. System 1 consumed the highest labor inputs among the systems. Simulation and dominance analysis showed that System 1 dominated Systems 2 and 3, and System 2 dominated to System 3 without including labor. With labor, the decision between Systems 1 and 2 was based on the risk preference of the decision maker. Again, Systems 1 and 2 dominated System 3. Sensitivity analysis showed that System 2 would be numerically dominant than System 1 when the labor charge per hour was >$32.

Keywords: Farm Management; Labor and Human Capital; Production Economics; Productivity Analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 21
Date: 2015-05-25
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:aaea15:205278

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.205278

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