ANALYSIS OF THE IMPACT OF ALTERNATIVE TILLAGE - PLANTING SYSTEMS ON OPTIMAL FARM ORGANIZATION AND INCOME
Abstract
During recent years there has been an increase in the use of reduced tillage planting systems for corn on Indiana farms. Reduced tillage involves the elimination and/or consolidation of some of the tillage operations used in a conventional tillage system. Consequently, the use of reduced tillage systems results in a reduction in amount of labor required to produce an acre of corn. Furthermore, the use of a reduced tillage system speeds up the planting operation making it possible to plant more corn in early periods thus, resulting in higher yields. The total labor requirements and the seasonal labor distributions are different for each tillage system. Therefore, changing from one tillage system to another affects the entire farm organization. Thus, the decision relative to the selection of a tillage system should not be made in isolation from other aspects of the farm business, but rather it should be based on an analysis of the total farm operation. A total systems linear programming model was used to determine the effect of alternate tillage - planting systems on optimal farm organization and income. This model was composed of three subsystems including one for corn, one for soybeans, and one for hogs. Seven tillage - planting systems were analyzed: conventional, field cultivate, wheel track, chisel plant, strip rotary till, till plant and no-till. In the first phase of the analysis, a resource situation containing 600 acres of land, 2 man equivalents of labor, and 75 units of hog capacity was assumed. Seven opti- mal solutions were obtained by imposing each of the tillage systems on this resource situation. The results of these optimal solutions showed that all the reduced tillage systems except wheel track were more profitable than the conventional system. The no-till system resulted in the highest profit and highest percentage of land in corn. Conversely, the wheel track system resulted in the lowest profit and lowest percentage of land in corn. Based on these results, the no-till and wheel track systems were selected to be used along with the conventional system for performance function analysis. The estimation of the performance functions was accomplished by first obtaining 27 optimal solutions for each tillage system. These solutions were obtained by using the 27 different resource combinations resulting from a complete factorial experimental design with three levels of land, three levels of labor, and three levels of hog capacity. In estimating the performance functions, measures of earnings, marginal value products of seasonal labor and an index of farm organization were used as the dependent variables. The levels of land, labor, and hog facilities were used as the independent variables. The performance functions were used to determine the effects of re- source availability levels on the dependent variables. The no-till system resulted in higher gross profit than either of the other two systems for all resource situations except very low land-labor ratios. In this case the conventional system gave a higher gross profit. For most resource situations, there was only a small difference in the profitability of the conventional and wheel track systems. The highest marginal value product of labor used during the land preparation period and also during the harvesting period occurred when the conventional system was used. On the other hand, the highest marginal value product of labor used during the planting season occurred when the wheel track system was used.
Degree
Ph.D.
Subject Area
Agricultural economics
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