This paper compares the production technology and production risk of organic and conventional arable farms in the Netherlands. Just-Pope production functions that explicitly account for output variability are estimated using panel data of Dutch organic and conventional farms. Prior investigation of the data indicates that within variation of output is significantly higher for organic farms, indicating that organic farms face more output variation than conventional farms. The estimation results indicate that in both types of farms, unobserved farm-specific factors like management skills and soil quality are important in explaining output variability and production risk. The results further indicate that land has the highest elasticity of production for both farm types. Labour and other variable inputs have significant production elasticities in the case of conventional farms and other variable inputs in the case of organic farms. Manure and fertilisers are risk-increasing inputs on organic farms and risk-reducing inputs on conventional farms. Other variable inputs and labour are risk increasing on both farm types; capital and land are risk-reducing inputs. Copyright (c) 2009 The Authors. Journal compilation (c) 2009 The Agricultural Economics Society.

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The objective of this article is to identify typical tobacco farms according to determinants of diversification that can be used to explore possibilities of diversification in the province of Salta (Northwest of Argentina). National Agriculture Census data of 278 farms in the main tobacco production area of Salta were used for the analysis. The variables selected concerning determinants of diversification were: land area, irrigation, general capital goods and specific capital goods, ownership of land, education, off-farm work, and labour availability. The analysis of the principal components applied to 16 selected variables allowed to reduce the dimensionality of the data to four components. Those components were used to apply K-means cluster approach to classify the farms. Four clusters were determined. Cluster 1 and Cluster 2 are the largest clusters. These concern highly specialized tobacco farms. They differ regarding determinants for diversification due to different levels of education of the farmer and different levels of off-farm work. Both clusters are interesting for further analysis regarding diversification alternatives to maintain or improve income and to reduce soil degradation. Cluster 3 concerns large tobacco farms being somewhat less specialized than the farms in Clusters 1 and 2. Intensive tobacco production makes this group interesting for exploring diversification alternatives to improve soil conditions. Farms in Cluster 4 already have a high level of diversification with substantial livestock production. The presence of perennial pastures suggests a better soil management than the other clusters. This cluster looks appealing to investigate what can be done regarding diversification.Additional key words: clusters, determinants of diversification, income, Nicotiana tabacum, principal components, soil degradation. Resumen Tipología de explotaciones tabacaleras de acuerdo a determinantes de diversificación en el Valle de Lerma (Salta-Argentina)El objetivo de este artículo es identificar explotaciones de tabaco de acuerdo a determinantes de diversificación para ser utilizadas en la exploración de posibilidades de diversificación en la provincia de Salta (Noroeste de Argentina). Se utilizaron para el análisis datos del Censo Nacional Agropecuario correspondientes a 278 explotaciones de la principal área de producción de tabaco de Salta. Las variables seleccionadas como determinantes de la diversificación fueron: superficie de tierra, capital general, capital específico, propiedad de la tierra, educación, trabajo extra predial y mano de obra. Se aplicó análisis de componentes principales a 16 variables seleccionadas y así se redujo la dimensión de los datos a cuatro componentes, que fueron utilizados en el análisis de conglomerados (K-means) para clasificar las explotaciones. Se determinaron cuatro conglomerados. Los conglomerados 1 y 2 son los más numerosos; están compuestos por explotaciones altamente especializadas en tabaco y difieren entre sí por el nivel de educación del productor y po...