Valuing a Test for Nitrogen Status in Rice

Rajinder Pal Singh, Robert L. Williams, John D. Mullen, Khaled Faour and Laurie Lewin

Australasian Agribusiness Review, 2005, vol. 13

Abstract: Nitrogen is a crucial input for the efficient production of rice and is generally applied in two split treatments, before flooding the rice paddocks at sowing time and within a week after the beginning of the panicle initiation stage. There is no pre-sowing test to estimate nitrogen requirements and farmers use cropping history to make this decision. The aim of this study was to first value the information to growers provided by a nitrogen test for soils of rice paddocks and then estimate the returns to the industry from investments in R&D to develop this test. In our approach the information provided by the test allowed growers to revise their expectations about soil nitrogen status according to Bayesian decision theory and consequently to use nitrogen more profitably. We found that the test is likely to provide information potentially valuable to growers at around $2/ha and that research in developing the test has been a profitable investment for the Rice CRC with a benefit cost ratio just above one. As the accuracy of the test is improved to current industry standards, its use will become more profitable.

Keywords: Agribusiness; Agricultural and Food Policy; Crop Production/Industries; Farm Management; Production Economics; Productivity Analysis; Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies; Research Methods/Statistical Methods; Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/126552/files/Singh2_et_al.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:auagre:126552

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.126552

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Australasian Agribusiness Review from University of Melbourne, Department of Agriculture and Food Systems
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().