Progress 02/15/14 to 02/14/20
Outputs
Target Audience:Crop management professionals and specialists. Scientists and professionals interested in crop-specific dynamic economic and environmental performance Changes/Problems:The economic performance of dynamic processes that are implemented across heterogeneous spatial dimensions and under highly uncertain conditions can be enhanced through investment in process flexibility. We have demonstrated that the benefits of such flexibility can substantially out way the costs of investment. A variety of project effort limitations prevented us from applying this capacity for design and management of dynamic, spatial systems under uncertainty to the crop management problem when it is faced with climate change impacted weather systems. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?ABD students were given the opportunity to work on aspects of the economics modules of the project. Specifically, these included an effort to identify, estimate, and predict extreme events and jumps in time series, to estimate and predict the extent and evolution of volatility in the levels of time series variables, to estimate and predict the transmission of extreme events and volatility across economically interdependent series such as prices and crop sales.A second effort included collaborative work on adaptative strategies such as introduction of perennial energy crops with typical field crops such as corn and soybeans. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Conference papers, journal articles, PhD dissertations. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Farm-level economic decision models were developed to incorporate biophysical crop performance models and support planning and adaptive response to changing economic and crop performance asweather conditions change. Multiple crop/field settings considered allow for field variation typical on crop farms.
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Accepted
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
Hoffman, A., Kemanian, A. and Forest, C.E., 2020. The response of maize, sorghum, and soybean yield to growing-phase climate revealed with machine learning. Environmental Research Letters.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2019
Citation:
Kemanian, A. R. (November 13, 2019). "Climate demons, agricultural adaptation, and environmental protection," Symposium: Climate Smart Practices and Agricultural Resilience, 2019 ASA-CSSA-SSSA Annual Meeting - Embracing the Digital Environment, San Antonio, TX.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2018
Citation:
Weaver, R. D. (Author), & Moon, Y. (2018). Pricing Perishables with Uncertain Demand, Substitutes, and Consumer Heterogeneity. International Journal on Food System Dynamics, 9(5), 484--495.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
Weaver, R. D. D. (Primary Author) (2020). Pricing Perishables: Robust Price Assurance. International Journal on Food System Dynamics, 11(1), 39-51. a
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2019
Citation:
Weaver, R. D. (Author Only, Penn State University). (February 2019). "Food System Waste: Incentives for Price Strategies.," European Forum on System Dynamics and Innovation in Food Networks, European Association of Agricultural Economics, Garmisch, DE
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Accepted
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
Weaver, R.D. and Sung H. Chung. (2020) Sustainable Management of Remanufacturing in Dynamic Supply Systems. Spatial Economics and Networks.
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Progress 02/15/18 to 02/14/19
Outputs
Target Audience:
Nothing Reported
Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?A PhD student has been brought into the project to implement further development of the economic model and integration of the economic and crop growth models. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?
Nothing Reported
What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We are now at a stage where prototype models of economic decision-making and crop processes can be integrated. This integration will be accomplished in this next reporting period. Further, the prototype models will be extended to consider deep uncertainty characterized by an information environment that involved jump processes. Robust optimation methods will be applied.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
A dynamic, stochastic decision model was completed to estimate the economic value of production plans that incorporate flexibility to adapt to changing economic and environmental conditions. The model prototype has been used to consider a number of field crop settings where adaptation to changing conditions generates economic value compared to production plans that are rigid and do not allow for adaptation. While simple real options problems consider the option to postpone commitment, our approach is consider plans that incorporate flexibility to switch models. Examples include replanting to short season varieties after Spring field flooding, use of cover crops, and choice of perennial crops that provide flexibility in field entry.
Publications
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2019
Citation:
Weaver, R. D. and B. Choi. Food system waste: Incentives for price strategies.
14th International European Forum, 176th EAAE Seminar on System Dynamics and Innovation in Food Networks. February 10-14, 2019. Garmisch, DE.
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Progress 02/15/17 to 02/14/18
Outputs
Target Audience:Crop managers and consultants. Changes/Problems:Integration of the crop simulation model with economic decision model will require simplifications to enable simulation. However, these appear to be feasible. We plan to implement the decision model in three alternative risk settings: 1) price and yield stochastic processes that are dynamic and stochastic though known to the decision-maker, 2) Bayesian learning setting where the information set changes and agents invest effort to learn about how the data generating processes change, and 3)robust optimization where only the boundaries of the information set can be characterized. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?A PhD student in ag econ (Byunghee Choi) has been working with the project over the past two years, supported by Hatch funding. As he has prepared for a dual degree in AgEcon and Operations Research, he is ideal to participate in the development of simulation applications planned in the project. He has passed comps and completed substantial work. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Weaver, R. D. and B. Choi. Valuation of Strategic Flexibility. Paper presented at INFORMS Annual Meeting, November 4-7, 2018 Phoenix, AZ. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?In the next year, the cropping system model will be linked with the strategic management (optimal switching) model to illustrate and evaluate the combined system's utility for identifying 1) oppportunities to switch planned field practices and crops, and 2) to select initial cropping plans the enable flexibility. For the later setting, we will provide estimates of the economic value of flexibility relative to crop plans that rigid after implementation and allow for little intra-seasonal adaptation. We will also illustrate and evaluate our switching model's utility for application within the context of inter-seasonal adaptation. In this application, we will focus on cropping involving perennial crops such as alfalfa, switchgrass, and other forages that involve substantial start-up commitment. Results of these studies will be presented in academic papers and further funding to take the model capacity to farm-level use will be saught.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Progress was made on two fronts: 1) watershed cropping system modeling and 2) economic simulation model development. On the first front, watershed cropping simulation modeling was extended to provide simulated crop growth through the growing season conditioned by weather events and experience. This capacity will support consideration of adaptive response by crop managers to current and anticipated weather events and experience. On the second front, economic theory of optimal switching within a dynamic, stochastic environment was developed to motivate new simulation capacity for modeling strategic response of farm managers to changing economic and weather conditions. This provides new capacity to analyze and predict strategic management response through changing cropping plans and field activities, including replanting and multiple cropping.
Publications
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2018
Citation:
Pricing Perishables. Proceedings of IGLS Forum. Innsbrucke, Austria.
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Progress 02/15/16 to 02/14/17
Outputs
Target Audience:Academics, crop consultants, and crop managers. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Ph D student Jiachuan Tiancontinued to be trained and PhD dissertation was completed. Jiachuan Tian worked with the project to contribute to identification and prediction of extreme price movements within spatially restricted markets. Rachel Rozum, a prospective student interested in ecological modeling, worked with J. Tooker and A. Kemanian to develop a conceptual model of insect invasion and spreads, as well as the code to couple with the model Cycles. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?
Nothing Reported
What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?During the next reporting period, the economic component of the project will develop theory, methods, and applications for agent-level decisions with respect to production planning and implementation that is supported by search and learning strategies to procure inputs, sell outputs. The next period will see further development of an adaptative model of field specific crop planning and implementation that is constrained by farm specific resource demands and availability (Weaver). Kemanian will scale up the field specific crop growth model to support simulation of watershed scale crop processes. Weaver and Kemanian efforts will move toward direct collaboration to join the adaptation model with the crop process model to support simulation of watershed scale effects of adaptive crop processes faced with climate variability represented by uncertain range of climate outcomes. The insect model has two missing components: the effect of landscape heterogeneity in determining the spreading speed and predation. To address the former limitation, we plan characterize of each field using a landscape index in a 2-mile radius around each field. Predatory behavior will be managed by consideration of presence or absence of natural enemies, rather than by modeling a population of predators. Coupling this model with Cycles will add the pest forcing to the dynamic rotation builder, and biological sensitivity to climate variables.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
The economic research component by Weaver developed economic theory and methods for 1) modeling the agent level welfare effects of extreme events impacting the market settings in which they procure inputs and sell outputs, 2) supplier behavior in a market setting where highly heterogeneous agents search with learning to procure inputs and sell outputs and a high degree of information asymmetry exists across agents and suppliers, the market setting is pertubated by extreme events, and the agent level demands and supplier capacity are uncertain and stochastic. Theory and methods were developed and their applicability to the project goals was evaluated through applications. Typical cropping system simulation models require that the user program a rotation sequence with pre-defined dates for each operation, such as planting dates, harvest dates, fertilization dates, etc. These types of pre-programmed rotation sequences, by definition, do not allow a simulation to dynamically adapt the rotation sequence based on events triggered in the simulation, such as low yields for a specific crop, or crop failures due to extreme weather. To overcome this limitation, White and Kemanian reported development of a preliminary algorithm to dynamically assign a crop rotation based on field specific yield histories and planting date suitability. The objective of this crop rotation algorithm is to maximize daily economic return to the land subject to some agronomic constraints based on past field history. Weaver developed a heuristic approach to choose crop plans over crop season that recognizes the value of intra-season change of plans given the arrival of unanticipated information. Weaver developed and illustrated the usefulness of a game theoretic bargaining model of regional price formation to predict procurement and sales price volatility resulting from exposure of farms to common growing conditions and demands for products. This model will be joined with the agent model to feedback estimates of economic performance. Kemanian and Tooker developed a field-based insect model based on a population matrix that tracks the phenological stage and number of insects at that given stage. At each stage, the insects have specific feeding and spread behaviors. The spread behavior uses a model that randomly determines a spread direction and spread speed. If the insect finds resources at the resulting location, then the insect feeds. In the absence of resources (plant leaves or roots, depending on the insect), insect spread continues within or across fields. This model has not been coupled with Cycles.
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2016
Citation:
Rosa, F. R.D. Weaver, and M Vasciaveo. (2016) Dairy Commodity Prices in Italy: Volatility and Forecasting after Milk Quotas. Int. J. Food System Dynamics. 112-115.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2016
Citation:
Weaver, Robert D., Sara Savastano, and Adriana Paolantonio. 2016. HOUSEHOLD WELFARE EFFECTS OF PRICE BOOMS:NONPARAMETRIC MICRO-LEVEL EVIDENCE. 20th ICABR Conference. June 26-29. Ravello, Italy.
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Progress 02/15/15 to 02/14/16
Outputs
Target Audience:Farm operators, consultants. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?PhD student Jiachuan Tian continued to be engaged in the project and was trained in econometric and numerical methods to support computational approaches to solving spatial, dynamic models. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Conferences and publications. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?During the next project period,an economic theory and computational economic methods will be developed to model price determination and quantitiestransacted at the agent level was developed to generate agent level predictive capacity for price, quantity pairs.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
The economic setting considered in this project involves a market setting in which a large number of highly heterogeneous agents seek to procure inputs from a more limited number of suppliers. The market conditions are pertubated by extreme stochastic events that generate a randomized spatial distribution of agent procurement needs and of supplier supply capacitity. In this project year, the economic theory of agent search and learning was developed by Weaver to support further development of a model of agent-suppler bargaining that results in agent-supplier transactions for perishable products. The Penn State Integrated Hydrologic Model (PIHM) provides a dataset of coarse-scale hydrologic variability within a watershed that can be used to inform the construction of representative farm fields for subsequent farm-scale modeling in Cycles. Duffy and Leonard calibrated the PIHM model for the Conestoga Watershed, an approximately 124,000 ha watershed located primarily within Lancaster county and with small sections extending into Berks and Lebanon counties in Pennsylvania. Following calibration, a triangular mesh grid of 1,663 cells (minimum cell size 4 ha, median cell size 70 ha, maximum cell size 200 ha) was modeled in PIHM for the period 1987 through 1996. Daily outputs for groundwater storage, unsaturated zone water storage, transpiration, and infiltration were averaged by month for each grid cell.White and Kemanian prepared land cover data for use in watershed level simulations. Inorder to focus on agricultural land, grid cells with less than 50% agricultural land area, based on the 2011 National Land Cover Database, were excluded from the analysis from the PIHMs data set to be used for crop simulation. Estimated August daily transpiration rate of each parcel was used to discriminate between mesh grid cells in the PIHM output relevant for characterizing agricultural production potential. August is a period of high water demand by crops and a period when water shortages during the grain fill period for summer annual crops occur that are translated into reduced crop yields. The distribution of August transpiration rates across the grid cells of the PIHM simulation was generated by percentile ranking of each grid cell on a cumulative area basis and use of predicted percentile ranking.
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2015
Citation:
Rosa, F. R.D. Weaver, and M Vasciaveo. (2016) Dairy Commodity Prices in Italy: Volatility and Forecasting after Milk Quotas. Int. J. Food System Dynamics. 112-115.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2015
Citation:
Weaver,R.D., F. Rosa, and M. Vasciaveo (2015) Structural Changes and Dairy Chain Efficiency in Italy Int. J. Food System Dynamics 6 (3): 147-169
- Type:
Other
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2015
Citation:
Robert D. Weaver and Jiachuan Tian. 2015. Procurement Model with Search Costs. Working Paper.
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Progress 02/15/14 to 02/14/15
Outputs
Target Audience:Animal and crop farm operators and managers, crop consultants, animal feed consultants. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Two graduate students werebrought into the project effort, Jiachuan Tian and Y. Moon. Their work provided training directed toward preparation for PhD dissertation research focused on price volatility associated with regional commodity markets. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Conference presentations, journal articles. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Economic theory and methods for modeling procurement by heterogeneous agents will be developed by Weaver to support development of spatially specific models of price formation in a context characterized by high levels of uncertainty with respect to market conditions as well as asymmetry in information across agents and suppliers of inputs. The procurement model will also consider Bayesian learning and seach. Kemanian will complete a soft coupling between Cycles and PIHM to be able to run a representative set of fields and farms. Kemanian and Tooker will develop a conceptual insect spread model that is sensitive to climate outcomes.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Economic research during this project period by Weaver focused on development of economic theory and methods to model price formation,price level transmission, price dynamics and volatilityin an open economy. Important salient features of the project's problem setting include extreme events and a high level of agent heterogeneity, a market setting where agents compete in procurement efforts and bargain with suppliers who may have more information on market condition than agents do. To characterize this setting, a multiple agent game model was developed where agents compete for a limited, renewable resource. The model's properties were examine with simulation. Second, metrics for price dynamics and volatility were developed and applied within the context of multiple spatial market setting where shocks in one market are transmitted into other markets. This work lays the foundation for forecasting capacity necessary for the project. Kemanian and White reconfigured the Cycles crop and soil process model from VB to C. The role of this effort in the project was to enable a stop-decide-go running mode. This was done to support intraseason stopping of simulation at any point in time when crop plan revision would be valuable given change in information. The translated code was placed in Github for version control, documentation and storage.
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2014
Citation:
Chung, S. H. ,Terry L. Friesz, and Robert. D. Weaver (2014). "Dynamic Sustainability Games for Renewable Resources - A Computational Approach. accepted. IEEE Transactions 63:155-166.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2014
Citation:
Robert D. Weaver and Jiachuan Tian. (2014) ENERGY PRICE DYNAMICS IN THE REAL ECONOMY: CAUSAL EVIDENCE. Working Paper. January 2014. Presented at WIFO - �sterreichisches Institut f�r Wirtschaftsforschung. Vienna, Austria.
- Type:
Other
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2014
Citation:
Robert. D. Weaver and Yongma Moon. 2014. Pricing Perishables. Working Paper.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2014
Citation:
Robert D. Weaver Price Transmission in Vertical Dairy Chains: The Italian Case
International European Forum on Innovation and System Dynamics in Networks. February 17-21, 2014, Innsbruck-Igls, Austria.
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