Management Implications from the Scientific Journals

by: Brian E. Roe, Van Buren Professor, AED Economics, Ohio State University Leader, Ohio State Food Waste Collaborative

Sometimes good management advice is difficult to parse from cutting edge academic research.  Below I share a few articles I’ve run across from my reading of the journals that might have some ready implications for managers across the state

Marketing your food locally, and looking for another angle to enhance that ‘local’ premium?

David Willis and colleagues found that consumers were willing to pay nearly twice the premium for local (versus non-local) produce and animal products if the farmer made a donation to a local food bank as part of the sale price. This created a win-win – for the farmer with the enhanced price premium and the local food bank with the donation

Ever wonder if those commercials telling you to drink milk or eat beef are worth the check-off dollars?

It’s tough to tell for sure unless the advertising totally stops, like it did for orange growers a few years ago. Oral Capps and colleague at Texas A&M found that when generic orange juice promotion essentially stopped for a few months during 2001, it resulted in more than a $50 million drop in sales.

 Better to shift to fall calving for beef cow herds?

According to Gavin Henry and colleagues from the University of Tennessee, fall calving was better in their simulations based on the last 20 years of data. Fall calving was more profitable than the spring calving for all feed rations and weaning months. Fall calving was also preferred because it was less risky in terms of profits than spring calving.

How often is it economically optimal to test your soil?

For cotton producers, when considering Potassium, it turns that about every other year makes the most sense, though not much is lost if an every third year schedule is followed instead. Check out these results from Xavier Harmon and colleagues from the University of Tennessee.

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