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The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of structural changes in hog production manure management practices.

The data used in this study are obtained from a large-scale nationwide hog producers’ survey in rural China conducted by the Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in 2010. A descriptive analysis between hog manure management and its main determinants was conducted. Based on the collected data, an econometric model on the determinants of hog manure management was constructed and used for analysis.

The results of this study suggest that the scale of hog production has an important impact on the pattern of hog manure management. Moreover, the results from descriptive statistics and multivariate estimation suggest that smaller hog producers are more likely to apply hog manure to their own lands, while larger hog producers are more likely to sell the manure or find other ways to dispose of it.

This study contributes to the existing literature by examining the impact of structural changes in hog production on hog manure management and the environment.

This paper explored factors that impact insurance choices of demand (farmers) and supply (insurance companies) side, respectively.

Specially designed survey questions allow one to fully observe the demand tendency from farmers and partially observe the supply tendency from insurance companies. Using bi‐vairate probit model, a joint estimation of insurance decisions of both supply and demand sides suggested that factors perform different roles in affecting insurance participation.

Farmer's age and education have positive impacts on insurance demand, but are indifference to insurance providers. Insurance suppliers care about farmers' experience in the fields when providing insurance services, however, on the demand side, farmers' experience occasionally results in overconfidence and hence, impedes farmers' insurance purchasing. Production scales, proxy by sow inventory, are put more weight by farmers than insurance suppliers when making decisions. Production efficiency measures perform as incentives for farmers to purchase insurance. While suppliers prefer customers who use vaccine, farmers tend to treat vaccine as a substitute for insurance to prevent disease risk.

Results from bi‐vairate probit model offer deeper understandings about livestock insurance choices and provide further insights to improve policy design and promote participation.

The study designed a special questionnaire and firstly used bi‐vairate probit model to offer more understandings about demand and supply sides of livestock insurance.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate market power in the Chinese pork supply chain. The authors aim to explain why a steady rise in prices is observed in the sector, apart from existing evidence on incomplete/asymmetric cost pass-through and concerns of growing concentration and consolidation in the sector.

This study uses a new empirical industrial organization model for both oligopoly and oligopsony power to measure the degree of market power exerted on consumers and hog farmers simultaneously.

By examining annual panel data across provinces in China, the authors find that both oligopoly and oligopsony powers exist in the pork supply chain. In particular, the authors determine that a higher degree of market power is found to influence prices paid to hog farmers than prices paid by pork consumers. Estimates of key elasticities in the Chinese pork supply chain are also updated based on the structural model estimation and the latest data.

Due to the lack of data at a more granular level of geography, the authors are only able to estimate market power by three major economic regions.

The findings provide useful information for future policy analyses of Chinese food markets. First, the pork-packing industry should be of great concern in terms of market power and its influence on consumers’ and farmers’ welfare. It is essential to take into consideration market power in the pork supply chain before making any public policy regarding the pork market. Furthermore, following economic theory and experience from developed countries, large meat packers will eventually vertically control hog farmers given their stronger oligopsony power over the upstream. Vertical integration may be the next important issue in terms of food market competition. Finally, the results may also draw the government’s attention to investigating market competition in all major food markets.

The empirical evidence draws attention to the issue of food market competition in one of the largest and most important meat-packing markets in China. The authors hope to encourage further discussions on pork and hog market regulations and related public policies.

The purpose of this paper is to quantify the benefits to farmers from using alternative marketing arrangements (AMAs) in the USA. The authors first estimate a behavioral model explaining farmers' joint decisions on which commodities to produce and which marketing channels to use when selling their outputs. The authors then use the estimated model to quantify the benefits to farmers from using AMAs.

The authors use the discrete choice random utility maximization model to examine farmers' choices on production regimes, where a regime is defined as a possible combination of all the individual commodity/marketing arrangement channels that the farmer can choose to use. The farmer is assumed to compare the utilities he gets from each of the possible production regimes and then selects the production regime that yields the highest utility to him. The benefit of having access to a particular AMA is measured as the negative of the welfare loss associated with forcing the farmer to abandon that particular AMA.

The results indicate that AMAs yield an economically significant amount of benefits to farmers who rely on them to market their outputs. At the national level, the benefit of using production contracts to hog farmers is valued at $336.4 million. The benefits of using marketing contracts are valued at $374.2, $156.6 and $92.1 million for corn, soybeans and wheat producers.

The paper is the first study that uses the farm-level data to study the welfare effects of marketing contracts in the grain sector. The results show that considering a multi-enterprises farm, farmers' welfare loss might be smaller when the hog production contract is no longer existed.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a new margin protection (MP) scheme for the producers of hog, cattle and dairy in the developing countries.

The proposed MP scheme is inspired by the Livestock Gross Margin (LGM) program that has been successfully implemented in US directly implementing the LGM program in developing countries can be difficult due to the rudimentary of the futures market with limited futures listing. To address this issue, the authors proxy the futures prices by relating to some relevant spot prices via an econometric model. The proxied futures prices, in turn, enable the implementation of a generalized LGM, which the authors denote as the MP scheme.

As China is the world’s largest consumption and production of pork, the authors describe the proposed MP scheme by demonstrating how a generalized LGM can be constructed for the Chinese hog producers. By empirically comparing to the pilot hog price index insurance for the Beijing’s hog producers, the authors find that the proposed MP scheme is more effective in providing MP for the producers.

The proposed MP scheme still requires the availability of some relevant spot prices in order to use an econometric model to proxy the missing futures prices.

The value of this research stems from demonstrating how an MP scheme can be constructed for developing countries that have rudimentary futures markets.

This study examines problems that may occur when conventional Value‐at‐Risk (VaR) estimators are used to quantify market risks in an agricultural context. For example, standard VaR methods, such as the variance‐covariance method or historical simulation, can fail when the return distribution is fat tailed. This problem is aggravated when long‐term VaR forecasts are desired. Extreme Value Theory (EVT) is proposed to overcome these problems. The application of EVT is illustrated by an example from the German hog market. Multi‐period VaR forecasts derived by EVT are found to deviate considerably from standard forecasts. We conclude that EVT is a useful complement to traditional VaR methods.

The purpose of this review article is to demonstrate how the quasi-experimental approach has been used to study environmental and natural resource issues related to agricultural production.

This review article first provides a short introduction to the quasi-experimental approach using the potential outcomes framework and then uses studies on the environmental sustainability of agricultural production to illustrate how quasi-experimental methods have been applied. Papers reviewed consist of studies that estimate the environmental externalities from agricultural production, evaluate agri-environmental and other related policies and programs, and demonstrate issues related to on-farm resource use and climate adaptation.

Difference-in-differences (DID) and two-way fixed effects methods that utilize the spatial and temporal variation in panel data are widely used to estimate the causal impact of changes in agricultural production and policy on the environment. Utilizing the discontinuities and limits created by agricultural policies and regulations, local treatment effects on land and other input use are estimated using regression discontinuity (RD) or instrumental variable (IV) methods with cross-sectional data.

Challenges faced by the food systems have made agricultural sustainability more critical than ever. Over the past three decades, the quasi-experimental approach has become the powerhouse of applied economic research. This review article focuses on quasi-experimental studies on the environmental sustainability of agriculture to provide methodological insights and to highlight gaps in the economics literature of agricultural sustainability.

Closer vertical co‐ordination of supply chains is becoming a prevalent feature in the agri‐food sectors of many countries. Presents a framework within which to analyse these changes. The framework links drivers for change to product characteristics, which in turn affect transaction characteristics and transaction costs, thereby leading to a change in vertical co‐ordination. A case study of the US grains industry provides an illustration of the framework. Implications for agricultural producers, producer groups and policy makers are discussed.

The authors explicitly evaluate the dynamic impact of five most concerned supply chain disruption scenarios, including: (1) a short-term shortage and price jump of corn supply in hog farms; (2) a shortage of market hogs to packing facilities; (3) disruption in breeding stock adjustments; (4) disruption in pork import; and (5) a combination of scenario (1)–(4).

The agricultural supply chain experienced tremendous disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic. To evaluate the impact of disruptions, the authors employ a system dynamics model of hog market to simulate and project the impact of COVID-19 on China hog production and pork consumption. In the model the authors explicitly characterize the cyclical pattern of hog market. The hog cycle model is calibrated using market data from 2018–2019 to represent the market situation during an ongoing African swine fever.

The authors find that the impacts of supply chain disruption are generally short-lived. Market hog transportation disruption has immediate impact on price and consumption. But the impact is smoothed out in six months. Delay in import shipment temporarily reduces consumption and raises hog price. A temporary increase of corn price or delay in breeding stock acquisition does not produce significant impact on national hog market as a whole, despite mass media coverage on certain severely affected regions.

This is the first evaluation of short-term supply chain disruption on China hog market from COVID-19. The authors employ a system dynamics model of hog markets with an international trade component. The model allows for monthly time step analysis and projection of the COVID-19 impact over a five-year period. The results and discussion have far-reaching implications for agricultural markets around the world.

Examines the hog marketing system in Canada and the development of single‐desk hog marketing agencies, acting as central selling agencies, which have made an important contribution in enhancing the pork supply chain. Reports the results of a 1995 survey, soliciting opinions from representatives of meat packers, provincial marketing agencies and producers across Canada, from which a framework was developed to evaluate the efficiency of five main areas: production and distribution; equitable distribution of rewards; growth in pork processing; investment opportunities; and degree of competition. Emphasizes the vulnerability of the Canadian pork sector to increased competition from producers in other countries, and stresses the need for Canada to develop an effective supply chain in order to maximize its potential in this sector.