Analysis of kiwifruit orchard financial performance, including covariates

Abstract

The ARGOS project has collected financial data from panels of kiwifruit orchards over several years. The Economics team of the project has conducted analysis of the data to investigate differences amongst the orchards arising from their management systems. The results suggested that organic and conventional orchards had differences in some revenue and expense categories, but these differences netted out when the financial aggregates were calculated. As a result, bottom-line numbers like Effective Orchard Surplus were statistically similar for organic and conventional orchards (Greer et al, 2008 and Saunders et al, 2009). Following inter-disciplinary discussion of these results and consultation with end-users, the authors undertook the analysis reported here. The focus was on three issues: (1) How robust was the overall finding to different model specifications? (2)What factors were affecting financial aggregates, if management system was not? (3) How confident could stakeholders be in the results, given the design of the project? The present research built on the earlier work by incorporating a number of factors identified by the ARGOS team that could affect financial performance. These factors were then included in statistical analyses to determine their contribution to financial performance. The analysis thereby produced answers to the three questions above.