Abstract
<p class="sar-body"><span lang="EN-US">There are little economic data concerning the profitability of organic vegetable crops in the Southern Coastal Plain, especially in reference to sod-based rotation and tillage alternatives. A three-year experiment was conducted at the North Florida Research and Education Center-Quincy involving a crop rotation sequence of oats and rye (winter), bush beans (spring), soybean (summer) and broccoli (fall). Bush beans and broccoli were the cash crops. This paper presents analyses of the riskiness of organic production utilizing years in bahiagrass prior to initiating the crop rotation sequence and conventional tillage (CT) versus strip tillage (ST). Methods of “Risk-rated enterprise budget” and “Analyses of Variance-Covariance Matrix (ANOVA)” were utilized for determining relative profitability, and coefficient of variation was applied for measuring riskiness of each treatment. Three years of bahiagrass prior to initiating the crop rotation sequence, in combination with conventional tillage, had the highest profitability and ranked as the least risky scenario. The second most profitable treatment was conventional tillage with four years of bahiagrass. Focusing on strip tillage, four years of bahiagrass with strip-tillage ranked third in term of profitability.</span></p>
Highlights
The demand for organically-grown products in the United States has increased substantially such that the previously supply-driven organic sector is market-driven
Enterprise budgets were developed by The UGA Fruits and Vegetable Extension Ag-Economics Specialist, and value of net revenue for broccoli and bush bean for different treatments were calculated
Our economic analyses of data from an experimental crop rotation project conducted over three years, indicated that 3 and 4 years bahiagrass were the most profitable treatments for both bush bean and broccoli, and for whole system containing both cash crops
Summary
The demand for organically-grown products in the United States has increased substantially such that the previously supply-driven organic sector is market-driven. The marketing boom has increased retail sales of organic foods from $3.6 billion in 1997 to $21.1 billion in 2008 (Dimitri & Oberholtzer, 2009). The organic sector is the fastest growing sector of the U.S agricultural economy. As of 2007, the 48-state total certified organic farms was over 4 million acres (USDA Census; 2009). Transition to organic production has great regional variation. California has the most organically-certified acreage in production, with Washington, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, Vermont and Maine rounding out the top 10 (Greene & Kreman, 2003)
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