China's rapid economic growth and significant increase in divorce and remarriage rates since the early 1980s provide an excellent case for studying the divorce and remarriage patterns in economic transition. Following extremely low divorce and remarriage rates in the 1960s and 1970s, China's crude divorce rate increased from 0.33 in 1979 to 1.59 in 2007, and the percentage of remarriages among the people who married each year increased from 3.05% in 1985 to 10.24% in 2007. Our graphical and econometric analyses based on the most recently available data suggest that the variations in divorce rate and remarriage rate across regions and over time were associated with regional factors, per-capita income, and education level. Also, there was a positive trend in both divorce and remarriage rates across all regions in China over the study period.

While joining farmer cooperatives has been identified as a way for farmers, especially small farmers, to overcome their limitations in the marketplace and increase their income, this paper presents an analytical framework for examining how farmer cooperative may increase farmer income in rural China, empirically assesses the impacts of such membership on household income, and examines how the membership may affect income inequality. Data from a large-scale survey of rural households in China are used to examine the impacts of farmer cooperative membership and other factors on household income through a multivariate regression analysis and to test whether the impacts are different across income groups through a quantile regression analysis. The propensity score matching technique is used to address potential self-selection bias problems in the dataset and quantile regression is used to examine the impact for different income quantiles or groups of farmers. The empirical results indicate that farmers participating in professional cooperatives, on average, earned significantly higher income than their counterparts, but the positive impact was not statistically significant for low-income quantiles. This finding suggests that encouraging the development of and participation in farmer cooperatives could increase the average income but may not contribute directly to the policy goal of reducing income inequality in rural China.

A case study of the Central Vermont Public Service Corporation (CVPS) Cow Power program examines the economic feasibility for dairy farms to convert cow manure into electricity via anaerobic methane digestion. The study reviews the mechanism for CVPS, dairy farms, electricity customers, and government agencies to develop and operate the program since 2004, examines the costs and returns for the participating dairy farms, and assesses their cash flow over a period of 7 yr under different scenarios. With 6 dairy farms generating about 12 million kilowatt-hours of electricity per year and more than 4,600 CVPS electricity customers voluntarily paying premiums of $0.04 per kilowatt-hour, or a total of about $470,000 per year, the CVPS Cow Power program represents a successful and locally sourced renewable energy project with many environmental and economic benefits. Factors for the successful development and operation of the program include significant grants from government agencies and other organizations, strong consumer support, timely adjustments to the basic electricity price paid to the farms, and close collaboration among the participating parties. This study confirms that it is technically feasible to convert cow manure to electricity on farms, but the economic returns depend highly on the base electricity price, premium rate, financial supports from government agencies and other organizations, and sales of the byproducts of methane generation.

Although organic food has rapidly emerged as an important food industry in the United States and many other countries, farmers and fruit growers need more information on consumer preferences and willingness to pay for locally grown organic food products to make better production and marketing decisions. This article presents the findings from a conjoint study on consumer valuation of major attributes of fresh apples (production method, price, certification, and product origin) and the tradeoffs between price and other attributes. Analysis results based on data from 382 respondents, or 3056 observations, in the state of Vermont suggest that there is likely a significant niche market for locally grown organic apples, and many consumers, especially people who had purchased organic food, are willing to pay significantly more for organic apples produced locally and certified by the Northeast Organic Farming Association. This study also suggests that there are significant differences in preferences between respondents who had purchased organic food and respondents who had not purchased organic food, although both groups showed a strong preference and willingness to pay for locally grown apples as compared with apples from other regions.

Many U.S. dairy farms, especially small farms, are struggling to stay in business due to difficult economic conditions. While switching to organic milk production has been identified as one way to improve farm profitability, there are very limited economic data available on organic dairy profitability and the key factors contributing to its variation among organic dairy farms. This study analyzes a 10-year longitudinal dataset of Vermont organic dairy farms (2006–2016), collected by the University of Vermont Extension, to identify key factors influencing farm profitability and quantify their impact on farm return on assets (ROA) through a multivariate fixed-effects regression model. Results suggest that significant factors for organic farm profitability measured by ROA include feeding management, farm management, farm size, milk price and input costs. Such findings may help many organic dairy farms identify potential areas for improving their profitability and conventional farms evaluate the potential financial benefits of switching to organic operation.