pYue Lu and Octavio Ramirez are former Graduate Research Assistant and Professor and Head, respectively, in the Department of Agricultural Economics and Agricultural Business at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Roderick Rejesus is Assistant Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, North Carolina. Thomas Knight is Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas. Bruce Sherrick is Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in Urbana, Illinois./p pThis paper was presented as a selected paper at the Crop Insurance and Risk Management Workshop, sponsored jointly by the NortheasternAgricultural and Resource Economics Association, the Risk Management Agency, the Farm Foundation, the Food Policy Institute at Rutgers University, and Cornell University, in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, on June 12-13, 2007. The workshop received financial support from the Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development. The views expressed in this paper are the authors' and do not necessarily represent the policies or views of the sponsoring agencies./p pThis research was funded in part by the National Research Initiative (NRI) of the Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service (CSREES), U.S. Department of Agriculture, Grant No. 2004-35400-14194, and by the Agricultural Experiment Station of New Mexico State University./p
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pResearch was supported by the New Mexico State University Agricultural Experiment Station./ppCorrespondence: L. Allen Toreil, Dept of Agricultural Economics, New Mexico State University, PO Box 30003, MSC 3169, Las Cruces, NM 88003, USA. Email: atorell@nmsu.edu/ppManuscript received 30 September 2009; manuscript accepted 29 March 2010./p
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pOctavio Ramirez and Sukant Misra are associate professors and James Field is a former graduate student at the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics, Texas Tech University./p pThe authors acknowledge the helpful comments and suggestions of Don Ethridge, Eduardo Segarra, Michael Livingston, two anonymous reviewers, and the feedback and guidance of Spiro Stefanou and an anonymous Associate Editor during the process of reviewing this research./p
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pOctavio A. Ramirez is professor, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM. Samarendu Mohanty is associate professor, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX. Carlos E. Carpio is graduate research assistant, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC. Megan Denning was a former graduate student at Texas Tech University./p pThis work was supported by a USDA-CSREES grant. The authors thank two anonymous reviewers of the Journal for their useful comments and insights./p
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pOctavio A. Ramirez is Professor and Head of the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics at the University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia. Carlos E. Carpio is Assistant Professor in the Department of Applied Economics and Statistics at Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina. Roderick M. Rejesus is Associate Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina./ppThis research was supported by the Agricultural Experiment Stations of the University of Georgia, Clemson University, and North Carolina State University. The authors would also like to thank Bruce Sherrick and Jonathan Norvell for graciously sharing the yield data from the University of Illinois Endowment Farms./p
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pOctavio A. Ramirez is professor and head, Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics, University of Georgia, Athens, GA. Tanya U. McDonald is research specialist, Department of Agricultural Economics and Agricultural Business, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM. Carlos E. Carpio is assistant professor, Department of Applied Economics and Statistics, Clemson University, Clemson, SC./ppThis study was supported by the National Research Initiative of the Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service, USDA, Grant #2004-35400-14194, and by the Agricultural Experiment Stations of the University of Georgia and New Mexico State University./p
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pL. Allen Torell is professor, Department of Agricultural Economics and Agricultural Business, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces; Neil R. Rimbey is professor, Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology, Caldwell Research and Extension Center, University of Idaho, Caldwell; Octavio A. Ramirez is professor and head, Department of Agricultural Economics and Agricultural Business, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces; and Daniel W. McCollum is economist, U.S. Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station, Fort Collins, Colorado./p pThis research was supported by the U.S. Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station under Grant No. 01-JV-11221617-273FS and by the Agricultural Experiment Stations at New Mexico State University and the University of Idaho. We thank Dinus M. Briggs and Ken Boykin for assistance in GIS mapping. Farm Credit Services was especially generous in providing ranch sales data for this study. In particular, we are grateful to Richard Amujo, Greg Carrasco, and Jim Welles for their assistance. Finally, we thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions./p pReview coordinated by T. F. Glover./p
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pJames E. Field is a former graduate student; Sukant K. Misra is Associate Dean for Research, College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources; and Octavio Ramirez is associate professor, Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX./p pThe authors thank Phil Johnson, Samarendu Mohanty, and Mohamadou Fadiga for their assistance with this paper. This research was supported by the Cotton Economics Research Institute, Texas Tech University. This is College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources publication CER-01-04./p
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