IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/aaea02/19709.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Is Yield Response Site-Specific? Revisiting Nitrogen Recommendations On Corn

Author

Listed:
  • Swinton, Scott M.
  • Liu, Yanyan
  • Miller, Neil R.

Abstract

Variable rate application (VRA) of fertilizer to U.S. cereal crops has provided uneven profitability results. Typically, yield response is negligible and input costs savings are insufficient to cover the added information and equipment costs of the technology. Largely overlooked has been the possibility that typical state-level fertilizer recommendations might be unsuited to VRA management. This research uses experimental data from 1999-2001 on 14 farm fields in south-central Michigan to test the hypothesis that site characteristics interact with nitrogen in affecting corn yield. Included among the site characteristics are a) soil test data, b) soil electrical conductivity, and c) terrain traits (potential wetness and insolation indexes). Site characteristics were found to interact significantly with nitrogen in affecting corn yield response in all three years. The difference in gross margins between VRA using site-characteristic based recommendations and uniform fertilizer application using whole-field or state-level recommendations was not enough to cover the cost of soil testing and VRA for most fields and years at current fertilizer and corn prices. Given that the costs of implementing VRA fertilization could not be recovered, few growers are likely to be willing to pay the added costs of experimentation and data analysis to develop site-specific recommendations, at least under conditions like those evaluated here.

Suggested Citation

  • Swinton, Scott M. & Liu, Yanyan & Miller, Neil R., 2002. "Is Yield Response Site-Specific? Revisiting Nitrogen Recommendations On Corn," 2002 Annual meeting, July 28-31, Long Beach, CA 19709, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:aaea02:19709
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.19709
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/19709/files/sp02sw02.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.19709?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Case, Anne C, 1991. "Spatial Patterns in Household Demand," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 59(4), pages 953-965, July.
    2. Bongiovanni, Rodolfo & Lowenberg-DeBoer, James, 2001. "Precision Agriculture: Economics Of Nitrogen Management In Corn Using Site-Specific Crop Response Estimates From A Spatial Regression Model," 2001 Annual meeting, August 5-8, Chicago, IL 20650, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    3. Hurley, Terrance M. & Kilian, Bernard & Malzer, Gary L. & Dikici, Huseyin, 2001. "The Value Of Information For Variable Rate Nitrogen Applications: A Comparison Of Soil Test, Topographical, And Remote Sensing Information," 2001 Annual meeting, August 5-8, Chicago, IL 20726, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    4. Lau, Lawrence J., 1986. "Functional forms in econometric model building," Handbook of Econometrics, in: Z. Griliches† & M. D. Intriligator (ed.), Handbook of Econometrics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 26, pages 1515-1566, Elsevier.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Link, Johanna & Graeff, Simone & Batchelor, William David & Claupein, Wilhelm, 2006. "Evaluating the economic and environmental impact of environmental compensation payment policy under uniform and variable-rate nitrogen management," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 91(1-2), pages 135-153, November.
    2. Bullock, David S. & Lowenberg-DeBoer, Jess & Swinton, Scott M., 2002. "Adding value to spatially managed inputs by understanding site-specific yield response," Agricultural Economics, Blackwell, vol. 27(3), pages 233-245, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Lambert, Dayton M. & Lowenberg-DeBoer, James & Bongiovanni, Rodolfo, 2003. "Spatial Regression Models For Yield Monitor Data: A Case Study From Argentina," 2003 Annual meeting, July 27-30, Montreal, Canada 22022, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    2. Hurley, Terrance M. & Malzer, Gary L. & Kilian, Bernard, 2003. "Estimating Site-Specific Nitrogen Crop Response Functions: A Conceptual Framework And Geostatistical Model," 2003 Annual meeting, July 27-30, Montreal, Canada 21950, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    3. Anselin, Luc, 2002. "Under the hood : Issues in the specification and interpretation of spatial regression models," Agricultural Economics, Blackwell, vol. 27(3), pages 247-267, November.
    4. Harper, David C. & Lambert, Dayton M. & Larson, James A. & Gwathmey, C. Owen, 2012. "Potassium carryover dynamics and optimal application policies in cotton production," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 106(1), pages 84-93.
    5. Asgharian, Hossein & Hess, Wolfgang & Liu, Lu, 2013. "A spatial analysis of international stock market linkages," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(12), pages 4738-4754.
    6. Yong Bao & Xiaotian Liu & Lihong Yang, 2020. "Indirect Inference Estimation of Spatial Autoregressions," Econometrics, MDPI, vol. 8(3), pages 1-26, September.
    7. Gupta, Abhimanyu & Robinson, Peter M., 2015. "Inference on higher-order spatial autoregressive models with increasingly many parameters," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 186(1), pages 19-31.
    8. Tchale, H. & Sauer, J., 2007. "Soil Fertility Management and Agricultural Productvity in Malawi," Proceedings “Schriften der Gesellschaft für Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften des Landbaues e.V.”, German Association of Agricultural Economists (GEWISOLA), vol. 42, March.
    9. Michalek, J., 1990. "Estimation of technological progress on the base of flexible cost function," Proceedings “Schriften der Gesellschaft für Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften des Landbaues e.V.”, German Association of Agricultural Economists (GEWISOLA), vol. 26.
    10. Haiqing Xu, 2010. "Social Interactions: A Game Theoretic Approach," Department of Economics Working Papers 130914, The University of Texas at Austin, Department of Economics.
    11. Revelli Federico, 2002. "Neighborhood effects in social service provision. Competition or reflection?," Department of Economics and Statistics Cognetti de Martiis. Working Papers 200206, University of Turin.
    12. Tosun Mehmet S & Skidmore Mark L, 2007. "Cross-Border Shopping and the Sales Tax: An Examination of Food Purchases in West Virginia," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 7(1), pages 1-20, December.
    13. Théophile Azomahou, 2008. "Minimum distance estimation of the spatial panel autoregressive model," Cliometrica, Journal of Historical Economics and Econometric History, Association Française de Cliométrie (AFC), vol. 2(1), pages 49-83, April.
    14. Baltagi, Badi H., 2006. "Random Effects And Spatial Autocorrelation With Equal Weights," Econometric Theory, Cambridge University Press, vol. 22(5), pages 973-984, October.
    15. Agénor Lahatte, 2010. "Autocorrélation spatiale et modèle de demande traitant des valeurs unitaires," Économie et Prévision, Programme National Persée, vol. 193(2), pages 101-117.
    16. Badi H. Baltagi & Zhenlin Yang, 2013. "Standardized LM tests for spatial error dependence in linear or panel regressions," Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 16(1), pages 103-134, February.
    17. Guowei Cui & Vasilis Sarafidis & Takashi Yamagata, 2020. "IV Estimation of Spatial Dynamic Panels with Interactive Effects: Large Sample Theory and an Application on Bank Attitude," Monash Econometrics and Business Statistics Working Papers 11/20, Monash University, Department of Econometrics and Business Statistics.
    18. Susanto Basu & John Fernald, 2001. "Why Is Productivity Procyclical? Why Do We Care?," NBER Chapters, in: New Developments in Productivity Analysis, pages 225-302, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Fang, Di & Richards, Timothy, 2016. "New Maize Variety Adoption in Mozambique: A Spatial Approach," 2016 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Boston, Massachusetts 235388, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    20. Bin Peng & Giovanni Forchini, 2012. "Consistent Estimation of Panel Data Models with a Multi-factor Error Structure," School of Economics Discussion Papers 0112, School of Economics, University of Surrey.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Crop Production/Industries;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:aaea02:19709. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aaeaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.