Agricultural Management Economics: Activity Analysis and Decision Making

This book on agricultural management and decision making differs from other texts which tend to describe production economics followed by the presentation of analytical approaches. Instead, the processes of agricultural production and their management are couched in terms of activity analysis, since this permits greater integration of theory with practical evaluations. Analytical tools developed in the book involve the construction of spreadsheet models, and readers are able to construct their own PC spreadsheets from the book’s examples and case studies. Economic principles are presented that will assist in improving the design of agricultural processes and technologies, in guiding their appropriate combination in a business setting, and with the making of decisions through time and in recognition of noncertainty. Activity analysis models that allow the design and combination of agricultural activities to be optimized are also discussed. These include single versus multiple objective models, investment models, and approaches that allow decisions to be optimized under conditions of noncertainty.