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Direct marketing strategies increasingly have been recognized as a viable business option in U.S. agriculture as they allow producers to receive a better price by selling products directly to consumers. The objective of this study is twofold. Using a national survey, we first estimated a zero-inflated negative binomial model to identify factors affecting the total number of direct marketing strategies adopted by farmers. Then we estimated a quantile regression model to assess the impact of the intensity of adoption of direct marketing strategies on gross cash farm income. The results show that the intensity of adoption has no significant impact on gross cash farm income and that participation in farmers markets is negatively correlated with gross cash farm income at all five quantiles estimated.

The objective of this study is to estimate the impact of natural amenity on farmland values in the contiguous United States using a quantile regression approach and data from the 2006, 2007, and 2008 Agricultural Resource Management Surveys. The contribution of this study is threefold. First, we explicitly include variables representing natural amenity, and soil characteristics of farmland. Second, we employ a quantile regression approach to examine potentially heterogeneous impacts of natural amenity and soil characteristics at different quantiles of farmland values. Third, we utilized data from a nationwide survey of farm household to examine findings in studies using regional data are consistent at a national scale. Our quantile regression analysis offers some insightful results. Natural amenity is positively correlated with farmland values and its impact is often more pronounced at higher price range of farmland.

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to assess the impacts of GM crop adoption on the profitability of farms operated by young and/or beginning farmers and ranchers (YBFR). Design/methodology/approach -This research uses weighted quantile regression analysis in conjunction with 2004-2006 Agricultural Resource Management Survey to evaluate the impact of GM crop adoption on financial performance of farms operated by YBFR. The methodology employed in this study corrects for the simultaneity of technology adoption and farm financial performance. Findings -As expected, the impact of GM crop adoption on profitability is positively affected by the scale of operation and leverage. On the other hand, off-farm employment by "beginning" farmers has a negative impact on farm's profitability if they choose to adopt GM crops. Finally, quantile regression results from a farm household study shows that the model performs better at the higher quantile of the distribution.Research limitations/implications -This study helps to determine whether the adoption of GM crops increases the profitability of farms operated by "beginning" farmers. In addition, it explores the impact of other factors (such as farm, operator, demographic, and financial characteristics) on the profitability of farms operated by "beginning" farmers. Practical implications -Computing the profitability of adoption decisions for YBFR will provide significant information to YBFR that they can use in constructing their farm operations strategic business plan and future decisions regarding farming operations. Originality/value -Existing research does not examine the impact of GM crops adoption on farm profitability of YBFR. Furthermore, YBFR operators face significant challenges in making their operations financially viable, owing to lack of access to capital and land.

Nematic superconductivity with spontaneously broken rotation symmetry has recently been reported in doped topological insulators, M x Bi 2 Se 3 (M=Cu, Sr, Nb). Here we show that the electromagnetic (EM) response of these compounds provides a spectroscopy for bosonic excitations that reflect the pairing channel and the broken symmetries of the ground state. Using quasiclassical Keldysh theory, we find two characteristic bosonic modes in nematic superconductors: the nematicity mode and the chiral Higgs mode. The former corresponds to the vibrations of the nematic order parameter associated with broken crystal symmetry, while the latter represents the excitation of chiral Cooper pairs. The chiral Higgs mode softens at a critical doping, signaling a dynamical instability of the nematic state towards a new chiral ground state with broken time reversal and mirror symmetry. Evolution of the bosonic spectrum is directly captured by EM power absorption spectra. We also discuss contributions to the bosonic spectrum from sub-dominant pairing channels to the EM response.Introduction. Spontaneous symmetry breaking is an important concept that spreads across the diverse fields of modern physics. The recent discovery of two-fold rotation symmetry in superconducting compounds, M x Bi 2 Se 3 (M = Cu, Sr, Nb), has stimulated an intense discussion of superconductivity with a new class of spontaneous symmetry breaking [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]. The rotation symmetry breaking in the basal plane is compatible with odd-parity time-reversal invariant pairing belonging to the two-dimensional irreducible representation (E u ) of the D 3d symmetry, which exhibits twofold symmetric gap anisotropy (Fig. 1). The anisotropy is represented by a nematic order parameter [12]. The odd-parity superconductor (SC) M x Bi 2 Se 3 has also attracted much attention as a prototype of DIII topological SCs that host helical Majorana fermions [13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21].