Water shortage has been a significant issue for several decades in the Texas High Plains. Agriculture has been identified as the main activity contributing to this shortage. To address this issue, many efforts have been focused on the possible adoption of sophisticated irrigation systems with high levels of water application efficiency. In this study, the entry and exit thresholds for the low-energy precision application (LEPA) system are analyzed simultaneously in cotton farming in the Texas High Plains using a real options approach. The results show that the LEPA system is profitable only when cotton price is set above $1.59/kg. The exit (entry) threshold is consistently low (high) over a range of values for parameter changes including investment cost, exit cost, variable cost, risk-adjusted discount rate, and volatility rate, so it is unlikely that farmers with irrigation systems in place would leave them easily. This implies that to attain the goal of saving water, Lubbock County needs to focus on convincing current farmers to replace old irrigation systems with new ones.JEL classification: Q14, Q16, Q25

Federal crop insurance programs offer producers the option of insuring farm units individually or as an aggregate unit. Existing programs offer a fixed 10% discount for most growers taking coverage at the aggregate level. This article describes an analysis of risk changes when units are aggregated. The methods described here, which base unit aggregation discounts on observable farm characteristics, are approved for implementation into the Federal Crop Insurance Program.

We analyze the effects of crop insurance and the Marketing Loan Program on optimal nitrogen use and acreage allocation for a case cotton–sorghum farm in Texas. A mathematical programming model is used to solve for the optimal nitrogen fertilizer rate, crop acreage allocation, coverage level, and price election factor, along with participation in the crop insurance and the Marketing Loan Program for both crops. Results show that depending on the crop and farmer risk aversion, these federal risk management programs increase or decrease optimal fertilizer rates –6% to 3%, increase optimal cotton acreage 94% to 144%, and decrease sorghum acres up to 50%.

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