Abstract

The California wild rice industry in 2001 is undergoing change. This change is being driven by increased wild rice production, changes in wild rice demand, and buyer concerns relative to product quality and food safety. These changes necessitate the need for the industry to evaluate its operational and marketing strategies. A major concern of the industry is how to meet the on-going changes while remaining profitable. The major emphasis of this study to evaluate two of the technological choices that are available to meet those changes. The technologies are a traditional technology and newer experimental technology that has been conceptualized, but not as yet used by the industry. The traditional and experimental technologies use the same basic wild rice processing steps (Figure #1). The traditional technology requires that immediately after the curing stage that the wild rice be either parched or parboiled (see section on wild rice processing for definitions) to infuse the bran layer into the wild rice kernel and then further processed into black or scarified wild rice. The experimental technology allows the wild rice to be stored after the curing stage. The technological choice begins with a multi-attribute analysis that compares the two technologies on the basis of certain selected characteristics. The technologies are compared on the basis of their internal rates of return under three differing product demand scenarios

Disciplines

Agribusiness | Agricultural and Resource Economics | Business

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URL: https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/agb_fac/20