The effect of capital structure and seasonality of fresh market vegetables was examined via the Target MOTAD model. The level of capital indebtedness and the selection of either a fall or spring season resulted in significantly different levels of enterprise mixes, expected returns, risk magnitudes, rates of change of risk magnitudes, and operating capital requirements. The fall season demonstrated larger initial levels of risk and larger increases in the level of risk due to increases in indebtedness. The spring season showed larger increases in risk between the minimum risk point and the maximum expected return point (linear programming solution) on the risk-efficient frontier. Operating capital requirements were substantially higher for the fall season than for the spring season. The operating capital requirements of the spring season were significantly affected by the level of indebtedness and the magnitude of risk selected by the grower, while the larger operating capital requirements of the fall season were only marginally affected.

Risk-efficient portfolios from a subset of marketing strategies were identified using Target MOTAD. Portfolios were generated for Illinois, Arkansas, and South Carolina to determine whether regional price and yield characteristics affected the optimal marketing strategy selection during 1972-1985. The results support previous conclusions that the risk borne when following a combination of marketing strategies was less than the risk of any single marketing strategy examined. The results also show that the marketing strategies representing efficient risk-return combinations for a producer in one region were different from the efficient risk-return combinations for a producer in another region. Therefore, generic marketing advice would have produced results less preferred in one region than in another.

An analysis of a typical crop and livestock farm in North Florida is presented. The analysis incorporates the potential competition and complementarity among crop and beef cattle enterprises. A Target MOTAD model is developed to account for risk in a decision framework.

The results indicate that when income risk is ignored, peanuts, watermelon, and stocker cattle are the only enterprises included in the optimal solution. When income risk is heavily weighted, the optimal solution includes peanuts, watermelon, stocker cattle, cow-calf, and irrigated soybeans. The results suggest that the persistence of cow-calf production may be explained as a stabilizer of income.

Income variability and means for managing risk continue to receive much attention in farm management research. In this paper, irrigation is presented as a risk-management strategy that offers potential diversification benefits. Potential diversification opportunities largely result from a wider range of enterprise production activities. A portfolio analysis of dryland and irrigated farm scenarios indicates that income stabilizing and diversification effects of irrigation substantially modify the risk-return position of a typical farm in northeast Louisiana. Safety-first considerations along with Target MOT AD programming procedures also are used to evaluate the impact of irrigation on the farm's financial performance.

Decisions regarding when to harvest and when to sell sweet potatoes are more complex than for other crops because yields continue to increase after the crop is initially ready for harvest, and sweet potatoes can either be sold at harvest or cured and stored for later sale. The optimum marketing decision, based on expected net revenue, is dependent on yield and prices and their variability, and on costs of storage. A marketing strategy is developed using Target MOTAD and data covering 21 years.

Given an equipment complement, a specific crop mix has a probability distribution for whole-farm net returns. Increasing crop acreage while holding the set of equipment constant will reduce fixed costs per acre, but it will also increase the length of time required to complete crucial field operations such as planting and harvesting. Thus, the probability of encountering weather-related delays in fieldwork will increase. This increase in delays may cause a decline in yields and changes in the distribution of net returns. This paper develops a Target MOTAD model capable of capturing intra-year impacts on profit that arise from the timing of planting and harvesting operations as well as inter-year impacts on profits that are due to variations in economic and weather-related factors. The model relies on estimates of available fieldwork time and a crop's harvestable yield in different time periods throughout the harvest season.