SOUTHERN JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS JULY, 1978 PRICE, YIELD, AND GROSS REVENUE VARIABILITY FOR SELECTED GEORGIA CROPS*

A topic of considerable recent discussion is "state average " information on the expected the use of high return per acre crops such as trend and the variation of the trend deviations vegetables as a possible means of improving for the price, yield, and gross revenue of alter-income levels on small, limited-resource farms. native crops, a producer has some information Though production economic analyses (those (although rough) to use in his production deci-using conventional techniques such as budget- sions. In other words, in the absence of ideal ing and linear programming) indicate that knowledge, some information, if it is accurate farmers with small acreage might increase and reliable, is always better than none. their income substantially by selecting vege-table enterprises, very few farmers are select-ing vegetables over field crops. One possible explanation for their failure to do so is that the MEASUREMENT OF VARIABILITY income from vegetable crops is more variable COEFFICIENTS than that from field crops, and owners of small farms are more inclined to produce crops that Because the outcome of a given productio