Volume 51, Issue 1, January 2026

January, 2026

2025 WAEA Presidential Address: JARE Topics, Author Networks, and Citations, 1992 to 2024

By: Lambert, Dayton M.
This study examines 1,009 articles published in the Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics (JARE) from 1992 to 2024. It identifies 24 research topics using Latent Dirichlet Allocation and explores how topics and author collaboration networks influence citations. Article citation data from Scopus show that consumer, farm resource, and crop insurance articles lead overall and yearly citation growth. Niche topics demonstrate high citation intensity. A count regression finds that topic choice and certain types of author collaboration significantly predict citation counts. The findings underscore JARE’s scholarly influence and highlight its importance as a journal for disseminating impactful research in agricultural and resource economics.
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January, 2026

The Impacts of a Local Enhanced Management Area on Groundwater Use for Crop Production

By: Lambert, Dayton M.; Golden, Bill; Lambert, Lixia; Guerrero, Bridget
This study evaluates the impact of groundwater restrictions under Kansas’s Local Enhanced Management Area program, focusing on the Sheridan-6 (SD6) region from 2013 to 2023. Using difference-in-differences regressions and well-level panel data, we find that SD6 irrigators reduced water use intensity by 16 percent and pumping costs by $5.48 per acre on average. No significant changes in irrigated acreage occurred. Differences from the control group decreased after 2018 when irrigators outside SD6 adopted less stringent water use policies. Results suggest that locally governed, farmer-led restrictions can reduce water use without diminishing productivity, though policy diffusion and adaptive responses complicate long-term measurement of conservation outcomes.
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January, 2026

Does Complexity Pay? Forecasting Corn and Soybean Yields Using Crop Condition Ratings

By: Li, Jiarui; Irwin, Scott H.; Hubbs, Todd
We compare the accuracy of crop condition models from existing literature in forecasting U.S. corn and soybean yields. The data for the study consists of weekly state and national crop condition ratings from the USDA over 1986 through 2022. A battery of statistical tests is applied to perform out-of-sample forecasts over 2000 through 2022. While there are differences in the accuracy of the models, test results are uniform in suggesting that no model has statistically significant superior forecast accuracy. A key finding is that relatively simple models perform just as well as more complex and computationally demanding models.
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January, 2026

Grassland Property Rights and the Size-Productivity Relationship: Evidence from Pastoral China

By: Zhang, Mingxue; Li, Dongqing
Using household panel data from five major pastoral provinces in China, we illustrate a robust inverse relationship (IR) between grassland size and productivity. Our investigation reveals that the certification of grassland property rights significantly contributes to this IR. The persistence of the IR among households with certified grassland-use rights, contrasted with its absence among those with ambiguous rights, highlights its role. The emergence of grassland misallocation and fragmentation during the property rights certification process appears detrimental to grassland productivity, potentially explaining this phenomenon. Additionally, herders’ adaptive strategies, like renting grassland and cooperative management, may help mitigate the IR.
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January, 2026

Heterogeneous Effects of COVID-19 on Fruit and Vegetable Markets

By: Kennedy, Odongo; Mittelhammer, Ron C.; McCluskey, Jill J.; Astill, Gregory
The COVID-19 pandemic caused abrupt changes in food purchases and consumer behavior because of both supply and demand shocks. Stay-at-home orders resulted in large reductions in demand for food consumed in food-away-from-home settings. At the same time, the demand for food purchased at grocery stores and online spiked. We analyze the association between pandemic, related media coverage, and prices of specialty crop commodities. We find that prices of specialty crops consumed mostly away from home exhibited a demonstrative negative relationship with the pandemic and associated media coverage compared to specialty crops consumed mostly at home.
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January, 2026

A Different “Law of One Price”: Unintended Impacts of Uniform Price Regulation in Livestock Markets

By: Ramsey, A. Ford; Goodwin, Barry K.
This study evaluates the impact of groundwater restrictions under Kansas’s Local Enhanced Management Area program, focusing on the Sheridan-6 (SD6) region from 2013 to 2023. Using difference-in-differences regressions and well-level panel data, we find that SD6 irrigators reduced water use intensity by 16 percent and pumping costs by $5.48 per acre on average. No significant changes in irrigated acreage occurred. Differences from the control group decreased after 2018 when irrigators outside SD6 adopted less stringent water use policies. Results suggest that locally governed, farmer-led restrictions can reduce water use without diminishing productivity, though policy diffusion and adaptive responses complicate long-term measurement of conservation outcomes.
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January, 2026

Small Precautionary Response to Risk in Corn Seeding Rate Decisions

By: Zhao, Yue; Hennessy, David A.; Lindsey, Alexander J.
We find that farmers’ precautionary motives have small impact on optimal corn seeding rates, contrary to their significant influence on savings and asset decisions. Our conceptual model shows that precautionary motives increase seeding rates when higher seeding rates reduce yield risk and decrease them when higher seeding rates increase yield risk. Analysis of Ohio and Illinois field data reveals a U-shaped yield risk response to seeding rates. Simulations indicate a 0.2% seeding rate increase in Ohio and a 0.19% decrease in Illinois due to precautionary motives, while yield insurance reduces optimal seeding rates in both states by up to 2%.
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January, 2026

Impacts of Deportation of Undocumented Workers on the Broiler Supply Chain

By: Devadoss, Stephen; Luckstead, Jeff
This study explores the impacts of deportation of the undocumented workers on various segments of the poultry supply chain using a model comprising domestic workers and undocumented workers. The results show that the deportation of 20% of undocumented workers in the poultry supply chain increases the wage rates by 7.82% which raises the cost of production and chicken product prices. Lack of labor availability due to this deportation policy causes production to decline in every segment of the poultry supply chain. Poultry producersÕ welfare declines by $63.85 million. Price inflation for chicken products occurs, ranging from 1.41% for feet to 2.94% for ready-to-eat products. Domestic consumption of chicken products falls, ranging from 0.73% for whole chickens to 2.11% for ready-to-eat products. US consumers’ surplus declines by $1.94 billion.
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January, 2026

Global Agricultural Productivity: Insights from a Dynamic Gravity Model

By: Luckstead, Jeff
This study estimates an aggregate agricultural industry dynamic structural gravity model with capital accumulation to assess the relationship between capital accumulation and determinants of total factor productivity (TFP) in agricultural trade flows. The Armington elasticity of substitution is 1.47. Institutional variables government investment, business regulations, legal enforcement of contracts, and communication technology are key drivers of global agricultural TFP. The capital stock transition parameter is 34.6%. Counterfactual analyses show that increasing all countries’ TFP and improving institutional quality in countries with low-quality institutions generally raise exports, imports, output, capital stock, and welfare.
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January, 2026

Price Dynamics and Weather Anomalies in Agricultural Supply Chains

By: Ghoshray, Atanu; Ghosh, Madhusudan; Lim, Sunghun
In developing countries, certain specialty crops, highly consumed for their culture, often face increased vulnerability to price fluctuations along supply chains due to natural disasters and climate crises. Onions in India are a prime example. Leveraging monthly-level price data along the onion supply chain from March 2010 to April 2022, this study proposes a VAR-X model that explores the price dynamics among onion arrivals, retail and wholesale prices, alongside rainfall anomalies across four major cities in India. Our core finding reveals that rainfall anomalies have a significant yet contrasting effect on prices and arrivals along the onion supply chain.
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