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This paper aims to quantify the loss (or leakage) of organic cattle to conventional value chains in Ireland and assess its economic and environmental impacts.

The paper adopts a Bio-economy Input-Output (BIO) model, a quantitative economic model representing the interdependencies between different sectors of the economy, to assess the economic and environmental impacts of organic leakage in the Irish beef sector.

The study reveals that 17% of organic cattle aged under 1 year old leave the organic value chain, leaking to the conventional market as a result of imbalances in the development of the beef value chain. The economic cost of this organic leakage is 5.66 million euros. Leakage also has environmental effects because of changes in lifecycle methane and nitrogen emissions based on longer finishing times on organic farms and chemical fertilisers applied on conventional farms. The organic leakage results in a reduction of 82 tons of methane emission and 52 additional tons of nitrogen emission, which leads to 11,484 tons of net global warming potential (GWP) for a 100-year time horizon.

Because of data availability, the research focussed on the baseline year 2015, which had national data available for disaggregation in Ireland. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to assess the economic and environmental impacts when more recent data are available and to analyse the change in the impacts over the years.

This study contributes to the discussion on organic conversion and provides valuable insights for stakeholders, especially policymakers, for the design of future organic schemes.

This is the first paper to assess organic leakage in the beef sector.

Premium subsidy rates were increased in 2019 and 2020 for livestock risk protection (LRP) insurance, which is price insurance for cattle producers. The authors examined if the LRP subsidy rate changes affected the LRP coverage levels purchased by feeder and fed cattle producers.

The authors collected the United States Department of Agriculture Risk Management Agency summary of business sales data for daily LRP purchases from 2015 to 2023. The authors estimated a multinomial logit model to determine if subsidy rate changes were associated with the likelihood of LRP policies being purchased at different coverage levels.

After the 2019 and 2020 subsidy rate changes, the likelihood of producers buying LRP-feeder cattle policies with coverage over 95% increased relative to the policies with coverage less than 89.99% but did not influence the likelihood of producers buying LRP-feeder cattle policies with coverage between 90 and 94.99% relative to policies with coverage less than 89.99%. Marginal effects show these subsidy rate changes increased the likelihood of buyers purchasing LRP-feeder cattle policies with greater than 95% coverage. The subsidy change did not affect the purchase of LRP-fed cattle policies.

The results demonstrate the influence of the recent LRP policy adjustments on insurance purchases, which could be important for agency officials and policy makers. This is the first study to explore the LRP policy purchases which provides the United States cattle industry insight into the LRP price insurance take-up, which can guide producer extension education on managing price risk.

Livestock Risk Protection (LRP) insurance can reduce losses from price declines for cattle producers, but LRP adoptions has been limited. In 2019 and 2020, LRP subsidies were increased to lower the cost, but it is unclear how much these changes lowered the cost. The objective of this research was to estimate the impact of the subsidy increase on the cost of LRP for feeder and fed cattle by month and for various insurance period lengths and levels.

The authors collected United States LRP offering data from 2017 to 2021. The authors estimated separate generalized least squares regression for feeder cattle and fed cattle with producer premium as the dependent variable. Independent variables were dummy variables for coverage level, insurance period, month and year as well as dummy variables in commodity years 2019 and 2020 when the LRP subsidy was increased.

The authors found the subsidy increases did reduce the cost of LRP policies for feeder and fed cattle LRP policies. Producer premiums for feeder cattle LRP polices have declined between $1.41 to $1.90 per cwt and $0.95 to $1.56 per cwt for fed cattle LRP policies depending on the coverage level. Results indicate these subsidy increases did lower the LRP premium costs to producers.

Results show policy implications from the subsidy increases and will be informative to producers when exploring the cost of LRP. This study extends the literature by estimating the reduction in subsidy costs while considering total premiums changed.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an analysis of the changing practices of cattle rustling in Kenya from a relatively small isolated and opportunistic activity to a much more planned and systematic entrepreneurial business involving collusion and corruption.

This paper provides a conceptual approach using key literature and documentary evidence to show how, in the northern part of Kenya, cattle rustling is common occurrence with criminals taking advantage of remote rural environments with minimal surveillance and consequently less opportunity of being stopped and searched by police.

Results evidence significant differences in how rustling is perceived and valorized. Rustling in Kenya is now an entrepreneurial crime with the involvement of rural organized criminal gangs (ROCGs), who are operating in food supply chains throughout Kenya and the African continent.

This paper suggests that a more nuanced understanding of the entrepreneurial nature of some illegal practices in a rural Kenya is necessary and how it requires multi-agency investigation.

The paper is unique in that it considers how cattle rustling is becoming a more entrepreneurial crime than previously. Little prior work on this subject exists in Kenya. The paper utilizes the framework of Smith and McElwee (2013) on illegal enterprise to frame cattle rustling as an entrepreneurial crime.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the development of cattle value chain can influence employment creation and income of both cattle farmers and merchants. The study focusses on cattle farmers in Lagos, Ogun and Oyo States where there are the largest cattle farms and live cattle merchants in Southern Nigeria.

It employs a research approach that uses key informant interviews and structured questionnaire in garnering needed information from cattle farms, abattoirs and merchant.

The results suggest that with some minimal supports, employment creation and income generation can be improved.

None of the reviewed empirical studies is specific to the cattle value chain in South Western Nigeria. Among other values, the study identifies employment and income opportunities in corporate and non-corporate farms in the cattle value chain in South Western Nigeria.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate Alberta’s cattle loan guarantee program. It measures the risk premiums on lending that would accrue to banks participating in the program, estimates the value (price) of the loan guarantee, and estimates the interest subsidy provided by the program.

A cash flow model of cattle feeding is used. The model estimates a measure of risk that is applied to option pricing models to estimate the value of the guarantee.

Insurance premiums for the credit risk to lenders are 0.20 percent of the value of the loan for the entire feeding period, and 0.41 percent for backgrounding but negligible for finishing. The price of the loan guarantee estimated by the Black-Scholes model is 4.43 percent of the value of the loan and is comparable to prices estimated by the binomial model. The program provides a subsidy rate of 4.58 percent.

Charging a guarantee fee can potentially eliminate the interest subsidy inherent in the program. But this would necessitate determining the impact of the guarantee fee on the additional access to credit that has been achieved through the program.

Different levels of risk for backgrounding and finishing imply different risk premiums on cattle loans. Therefore interest on cattle loans should reflect not only the individual farmer’s risk profile but also the nature of the feeding operation.

This is the first paper to simultaneously estimate risk premiums on cattle feeding loans, the value of the loan guarantee provided by the Alberta Feeder Association Loan Guarantee Program, and the inherent interest subsidy.

The purpose of this paper is to determine and contrast the risk mitigating effectiveness from optimal multiproduct time-varying hedge ratios, applied to the margin of a cattle feedlot operation, over single commodity time-varying and naive hedge ratios.

A parsimonious regime-switching dynamic correlations (RSDC) model is estimated in two-stages, where the dynamic correlations among prices of numerous commodities vary proportionally between two different regimes/levels. This property simplifies estimation methods for a large number of parameters involved.

There is significant evidence that resulting simultaneous correlations among the prices (spot and futures) for each commodity attain different levels along the time-series. Second, for in and out-of-sample data there is a substantial reduction in the operation's margin variance provided from both multiproduct and single time-varying optimal hedge ratios over naive hedge ratios. Lastly, risk mitigation is attained at a lower cost given that average optimal multiproduct and single time-varying hedge ratios obtained for corn, feeder cattle and live cattle are significantly below the naive full hedge ratio.

The application studied is limited in that once a hedge position has been set at a particular period, it is not possible to modify or update at a subsequent period.

Agricultural producers, specifically cattle feeders, may profit from a tool using improved techniques to determine hedge ratios by considering a larger amount of up-to-date information. Moreover, these agents may apply hedge ratios significantly lower than one and thus mitigate risk at lower costs.

Feedlot operators will benefit from the potential implementation of this parsimonious RSDC model for their hedging operations, as it provides average optimal hedge ratios significantly lower than one and sizeable advantages in margin risk mitigation.

The Chinese government has increasingly turned to industry policy as a means of promoting rural development. These industry policies have not necessarily led to an improvement in rural incomes nor to the achievement of other social and environmental goals. This paper examines ways of designing these policies to achieve better rural development outcomes.

The approach adopts a detailed micro‐level analysis of industry policy through the window of the cattle and beef industries. Intensive fieldwork and interviews are conducted with all segments of and participants in the industry in all major beef production and consumption regions. A series of normative analyses examines issues of integration, scale of development, regionalism and specialisation.

Industry policy is a powerful mechanism by which to influence regional and rural development. Improving development outcomes requires that central and local government goals converge and that regions in inland China are well integrated with other regions and sectors of the economy. Large‐scale development projects must be carefully designed to avoid displacing individual households from industry development.

By crossing institutional, geographic and industry segment lines in a comprehensive manner, the research will aid Chinese decision makers concerned with rural development in the design of their industry development policies.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate information asymmetry in cattle supply transaction in Brazil. While the literature traditionally explores the seller’s information asymmetry advantages, the authors, in turn, draw attention to buyer’s role. This paper aims to show what farmer characteristics present negative correlation with slaughterhouses’ information asymmetry advantages. By slaughterhouses’ advantages, the authors refer to slaughterhouses’ opportunistic appropriation of value due to hidden information, such as quality measurement and remuneration of difficult-to-measure attributes. In doing so, this paper addresses the following research question: what are the farmer’s characteristics with negative correlation with slaughterhouses’ information asymmetry advantages?

This paper employs a logit model regression on a survey of 89 Brazilian cattle breeders. Drawing on transaction cost economics, this study empirically evaluates farmers’ technology level, level of education, family tradition, farm size and efforts to collect price information, to test which of these characteristics present negative correlation with slaughterhouses’ information asymmetry advantages.

The results illustrate that the cattle breeders’ level of education is negatively correlated with buyers’ information asymmetry advantages. Additionally, the authors find a controversial result presenting efforts to collect price information as positively correlated with this kind of information asymmetry advantages. Farmer’s farm size, family tradition and the level of technology were not influential. These findings suggest that a possible value appropriation from buyers’ information asymmetry is a problem for several types of producers, even varying size, family tradition in the activity or transaction costs to collect price information (e.g. lack of transparency). Initiatives should try to reduce this problem to these farmers to avoid value appropriation resulting from information asymmetry problems, especially in the lack of transparency.

This paper adopts a survey about information asymmetry in cattle supply transactions in Brazil, which is well known as one of the most relevant producer and consumer of meat. The main contribution is to shed light on the understanding of buyers’ information asymmetry advantages in farmer-slaughterhouse transactions to avoid potential conflicts. Given some singularities of the Brazilian cattle industry, the authors can empirically test buyers’, not sellers’, information asymmetry advantages.

The purpose of this study is to examine key factors that affect cattle farmers’ selection of marketing channels and draw implications for China's beef supply chain development.Design/methodology/approach – A questionnaire was designed and face‐to‐face interviews were conducted with a random sample of 153 farmers located in three major cattle producing regions across China.Findings – Several variables related to transaction costs (chiefly, in the form of negotiation costs and monitoring costs), as well as socio‐economic factors, were identified as of significant influence on farmers’ choices of cattle marketing channels.Research limitations/implications – Further research should be conducted to measure the effects of risk preference in marketing decisions. Caution needs to be exercised when generalising the findings of this study to cattle farmers in other regions that are significantly different from the surveyed ones.Practical implications – This study will contribute to a better understanding of cattle producers’ marketing channel selection. Further, it will contribute to identifying which factors encourage or discourage farmers from using forward contracts; information needed urgently by private and public policy makers.Originality/value – This paper presents a model and case study that show how transaction cost minimisation affects the adoption of vertical coordination. Studies examining this area for China are scarce and this paper makes an important contribution to the literature.