This study evaluates the economic competitiveness of a sample of Kansas farrow-to-finish operations by estimating relative firm efficiency using nonparametric mathematical programming techniques. Measures of technical, allocative, scale, economic, and overall efficiency are then related to farm characteristics to identify sources of efficiency. Results indicate that overall efficient farms produce a high quantity of pork per litter, produce a portion of their own feed grains, generate a large portion of their income from swine and other livestock enterprises, and have a lower debt-to-asset ratio.

Field releases of the indigenous egg parasitoid Cryan pennsylvanicwn (Ashmead) resulted in a 4-fold reduction in squash bug, Anasa tristis (De Geer), densities on 'Jack-O-Lantern' pumpkins in 1991. However, pest populations subjected to parasitoids were consistently higher, and fruit yields and quality lower, than on plants that were treated with the insecticide, esfenvalerate, When the squash bug-resistant 'Green-Striped Cushaw' was used, the difference in pest densities on parasitoid-released and insecticide-treated plants was only half of that observed on the susceptible cultivar. In 1992, under abnormally wet, cool conclitions, squash bug densities were higher on insecticide-treated plants and lower on plants where parasitoids were released than in 1991. Fruit quality for both cultivars was substantially reduced in all treatments in 1992, The wet, cool conditions apparently had less of an effect on pest densities and fruit yields on resistant pumpkins than on susceptible pumpkins. The expected net income for insecticide-treated pumpkins was substantially lower in 1992 than in 1991. \Nhere biological control and host plant resistance were combined, loss in expected net income in 1992 was considerably less than in 1991. Although costs associated with biological control were very high relative to the revenues, integrating biological control with host plant resistance may have some potential as an alternative management strategy,

In this paper we report on what "sustainable agriculture" means to farmers who seek to develop more sustainable farming systems. Group interviews were conducted with two groups of sustainable farmers in Kansas to learn how they developed their respective approaches, the kinds of parameters they have used to evaluate success and progress, and what other evaluation tools would be helpful to them. For the farmers we interviewed, the central meaning of sustainable agriculture is its holistic approach to assets management. It also means an alternative perspective on what constitutes success in farming. While economic considerations are important, they are balanced by other considerations such as environmental quality, quality of life, and the contributions the farmers can make to their communities. Sustainable agriculture also means an approach to agriculture that entails "thinking risks" as much as financial risks. Lastly, sustainable agriculture means whole farm planning; the farmers we interviewed were more interested in applying whole-farm planning principles based on their local knowledge, than in evaluation tools based on the expert knowledge of researchers and other scientists. The implications of what sustainable agriculture means to these farmers for research and educational programs are discussed.

An efficient frontier provides information concerning the tradeoff between risk and return in farm enterprise choice decisions. If mean-variance analysis is used, the frontier is efficient in the sense that it represents a series of farm enterprise combinations, each enterprise combination having minimum risk (variance of returns) for a specified level of return. Anderson, Dillon, and Hardaker provide a discussion of the different types of frontiers and the different methods of deriving them.Development of efficient frontiers is particularly helpful when the risk among enterprises varies substantially (Schurle and Erven). However, efficient frontiers do not provide information about nearoptimal enterprise combinations. According to Heady and Candler the optimum solutions in linear programming need not be optimum for other criteria. Since farmer's utility functions cannot be completely specified in terms of risk and returns, decision makers and researchers should be interested in farm plans slightly different from those on the frontier in terms of risk and return levels. The usefulness and uniqueness of frontiers as a decision aid would be reduced substantially if these near optimal solutions included substantially different enterprise combinations. Other considerations of the manager may overshadow the differences in risk between near-optimal enterprise combinations off the frontier and the optimum plan on the frontier.Related work of an experimental nature has been done previously on the impacts of estimation error on the development of efficient frontiers. Frankfurter, Phillips, and Seagle found that the impacts of errors in estimating the mean, variance, and covariance are so strong that the usefulness of some mean-variance approaches to portfolio selection is brought into question. The model used in this analysis is somewhat related to other mean-variance Bryan W.

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