Malnutrition-Environmental Degradation, Risk Tradeoffs with Special Emphasis on Wheat Protein Forecasting

• Activity Number: 330
• Type: Invited
• Date/Time: Tuesday, August 6, 2013 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Risk Analysis
• Author(s): Michael E. Tarter*+
• Companies: University of California, Berkeley
• Keywords: absolute value ; Fourier Series ; loglogistic ; order statistic expectation ; percentile

Abstract

Nitrogen-based fertilizer, once available, helped triple the world's population to what it is today. Also today, red tides and other forms of environmental degradation are attributed to fertilizer overuse. To expedite studies of nutritional/environmental degradation-related tradeoffs new approaches were studied. In particular, based on prior knowledge of agriculture-related density curve shape, nonparametric curve estimators were improved. For example, for a wheat field of standard size the optimal amount of applied nitrogen is currently deemed less than 400 pounds and, additionally, is thought (as a rough approximation) to equal 250 pounds. Notable is that the number 250 is closer to the maximum, 400, than it is to the minimum value, zero. In this paper, asymmetry is also considered from the point of view of the response variate, yield percentage protein, YPP. Of three methods studied, an approach based on third-standardized-moment skewness was found to best optimize estimated YPP density resolving power.