Organic and Conventional Vegetable Production in Oklahoma

Abstract

Growing vegetables as an alternative to traditional crops can potentially enhance Oklahoma farmers' incomes. Conversion from conventional to organic method of production may take some years, but some of the organic yield data obtained from WWAREC, Lane Oklahoma has shown that organic systems may give more yields as compared to conventional systems in the long term. A linear programming model was used to find the optimal mix of vegetables in both production systems. Additionally a target MOTAD (Minimization of Total Absolute Deviation) model was used to perform risk analysis in both organic and conventional production systems. The results of this study show that a combination of tomato, determinate southern pea and sweet corn is most profitable for the conventional system and a combination of tomato, determinate southern pea and watermelon is most profitable for the organic system. Block labor is more restrictive and less profitable compared to the hourly labor. In addition to that the risk analysis results show that higher variability existed in most of the cases in the organic production system as compared to the conventional production system. In some cases, in the organic system, some acres of land should be left idle due to higher production cost and higher risk involved; whereas, all the acres should be used in all cases in the conventional production system. This study is intended to provide information to the potential producers considering increasing their production of specialty crops including conventional and organic vegetables.