Progress Reports and Work Plans
Team members: Marco Palma, Team Leader (Texas A&M Univ.) & Lius Ribera (Texas A&M Univ.)
Perform economic analysis, cost of production/disease control
Define, parameterize, simulate, and validate production variables based on cucurbit production crop budgets
Completed:
- Macro and micro economic variables were collected to develop the economic model, such as interest rates, input costs, production windows and existing crop budgets.
- Graduate students were selected to work on the project and were trained on how to collect data to develop representative farms.
- Faculty and graduate students have IRB clearance to collect information from producers.
- Developed 11 representative farms in California (3 watermelon and 3 cantaloupe), Florida (3 watermelon) and Texas (1 watermelon and 1 cantaloupe)
In progress:
- Identify facilitators to develop representative farms in the Northeast region (Spring 2018)
- Identify how the findings of the project impact representative farms (Spring 2018)
Develop and validate all representative farms (Summer/Fall 2018)
Probability of Net Returns per acre to be less than $0, between $0 and $1,000, and more than $1,000 for cantaloupe and watermelons by different farm sizes in California, Florida and Texas. Image provided by Luis A. Ribera, Texas A&M University.
