School of Economic Sciences

Agribusiness Management

Agribusiness Management Project People

Ken Duft teaches a course in Advanced Agribusiness Management (AE 460). He also does consultation work with agribusiness management programs, cooperatives, and private for-profit firms in both the agricultural input supply sector and the marketing side of the farm. An "Agribusiness Management" newsletter is available from this site. The newsletters deal with different aspects of Agribusiness Management and are grouped loosely by category. New newsletters will be published later this year. In January he takes part in the Cooperative Leadership Seminar, a week-long educational program directed towards agribusiness cooperative managers.  Ken is involved in research on straw-to-energy (see article and Extension Bulletin E1946E under Agribusiness Projects). A complete paper is available, "AE02-4: Options in Financing Agribusiness Cooperatives: Research Findings and Conclusions."

 

Ray Folwell teaches classes in Agricultural Prices, Advanced Agricultural Marketing, Agribusiness Management and Marketing, and supervises two Agribusiness Internship programs, 497 and 597.  He also does research on the competitive position of the U.S. and Washington asparagus industry in relation to harvesting costs.  He is involved in production, uses, and trade flow of alfalfa seed research; the economics of potential alternatives for methyl bromide in postharvest commodity/quarantine treatments research; domestic and international marketing strategies for U.S. beef research; and viticultural, enological, and economic aspects of wine grape production in Washington, specifically focusing on analyzing the production and marketing risk in producing various varieties of vinifera grapes in Washington research.

 

Tom Schotzko is responsible for tree fruit marketing education.  His focus is involved in such diverse subjects as analyzing grower sales records to evaluating advertising impacts in the pear and apple industries.  In the produce marketing sector he does work in market system dynamics evaluating how the system operates, and how it is changing due to technology.  He also does some work in the dynamics of potato marketing in collaboration with extension faculty in horticulture.
Three articles on the apple industry are included here: Per Acre Receipts for Red Delicious and Gala:The Effects of Grade, Size, Cullage and Yield, Apple Outlook, 2002 Crop, and Projecting Crop Size. Linked to this article is an Excel workbook that contains a sheet for each variety and for the total estimates of apple production and acreage.  The totals sheet also has graphs for each variety and for the total.  Each graph contains a curve for the estimate and upper and lower bounds that are some adjustable percentage to reflect the variability that occurs in the crop from year to year. New additions to this site are professional papers - 1) that describes part of the work that evaluated WAC promotional activities: Measuring the Effects of Generic Price and Non-Price Promotional Activities: the Case of Washington Apples, and 2) A Brief Look at the Washington Apple Industry: Past and Present.

Other Agribusiness Research Faculty

 

 

School of Economic Sciences, PO Box 646210, Washington State University, Pullman WA 99164-6210
Phone: 509-335-2917, Fax: 509-335-1173, Contact Us