CORN PRODUCERS´ RESPONSE TO THE 2001 NITROGEN FERTILIZER PRICE INCREASE

During the past few years, nitrogen fertilizer prices and price volatility have increased. Producers of nitrogen-intensive crops, such as corn, who are faced with increased nitrogen prices or price volatility, can adopt either cost-reducing or price variability-reducing strategies. Using a behavioral model in the logit specification and data from a 2001 national survey of U.S. corn producers, we found that the probability of forward pricing nitrogen fertilizer and the probability of using nitrogen more efficiently were linked to operator occupation, farm size, yield goal, and farm location