Seifried Adele, BSc.

Education

2011-2014
University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna
Master Program
„Agricultural and Food Economics”

Bachelor Program
“Agricultural Sciences“

2010
Study abroad
EM Strasbourg Business School (EMS)

2007-2010
Vienna University of Economics and Business
Bachelor Program “International Business Administration”

Master thesis associated with the PhD-Project
Agrarian Landuse

“Stochastic dominance analysis of soybean and corn gross margins in Austria”

The issues of protein deficit and the increasing amounts of GMO soybean imports are on the political agenda in the European Union. The thesis focuses on the economic aspects of soybean cultivation in Austria using data (crop yields, variable production costs) provided by the farmers in the working group ‘Agriculture’ as well as price data from Statistics Austria.

The data has been statistically analyzed with respect to temporal, management and regional characteristics. The regional analysis has led to the delineation of ´homogenous´ soybean cultivation regions in Austria represented by similar gross margin, cost and crop yield levels. Consequently, main differences have been detected between humid and semi-arid regions in Austria.

A stochastic dominance (SD) analysis has been applied in order to compare soybean and maize gross margins in humid and semi-arid regions. First and second degree SD analysis do not provide a dominant alternative but show that the economic risk of soybean production is mostly higher than of maize production. Higher gross margins are therefore more likely to be achieved with maize production. Neither subsidies nor positive or negative externalities are included in the SD analysis. The chosen approach allows the evaluation of the relative profitability of soybean and maize production in Austria.

Supervisors
supervisor: Schmid Erwin, Univ.Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dr.
co-supervisor: Mitter Hermine, DDipl.-Ing.