Over the past few decades, farmers have increasingly integrated cover crops into their cropping systems. Cover-crop benefits can help a farmer to achieve sustainability or reduce negative environmental externalities, such as soil erosion or chemical runoff. However, the impact on farm economics will likely be the strongest incentive to adopt cover crops. These impacts can include farm profits, cash crop yields or both. This paper provides a review of cover-crop adoption, production, risk and policy considerations from an economic perspective. These dimensions are examined through a review of cover-crop literature. This review was written to provide an overview of cover crops and their impacts on the farm business and the environment, especially with regard to economic considerations. Through increasing knowledge about cover crops, the intent here is to inform producers contemplating adoption and policy makers seeking to encourage adoption.

The logistic regression model has been widely used in the social and natural sciences and results from studies using this model can have significant policy impacts. Thus, confidence in the reliability of inferences drawn from these models is essential. The robustness of such inferences is dependent on sample size. The purpose of this article is to examine the impact of alternative data sets on the mean estimated bias and efficiency of parameter estimation and inference for the logistic regression model with observational data. A number of simulations are conducted examining the impact of sample size, nonlinear predictors, and multicollinearity on substantive inferences (e.g. odds ratios, marginal effects) when using logistic regression models. Findings suggest that small sample size can negatively affect the quality of parameter estimates and inferences in the presence of rare events, multicollinearity, and nonlinear predictor functions, but marginal effects estimates are relatively more robust to sample size.

The expansion of sugarcane production in the Brazilian Cerrado has resulted in indirect land use change (ILUC), occurring when displaced land uses in one location are reallocated to another. Studies, however, usually identify ILUC at the regional or national level far from the original area of a displaced land use. This study examines the occurrence of ILUC due to sugarcane expansion for ethanol production at the farm level in the Brazilian Cerrado. It fills a gap in the literature by examining socioeconomic, policy and farm-level factors that influence ILUC at the farm level in the Brazilian Cerrado using face-to-face enumerated surveys. Results indicate that ILUC did occur at the farm (producer) scale and farmers who undertook ILUC intensified agricultural production on their farms. Results inform policymakers on how the intensification of agricultural practices may make it potentially difficult to keep protected lands out of production, reducing the environmental benefits from sugarcane-based biofuel production.