The MILC program, a counter-cyclical income support program, was designed to provide price support to dairy farmers. Since the inception of the MILC program it has been argued that the program is inefficient and rewards inefficiency by keeping high cost, small dairy farms in business. Large...

This paper examines the effect of state regulation of water quality on the location of hog production across states in the US. A qualitative measure is developed from states' water quality legislation in 1994 and 1998. No evidence is found that increased stringency is detrimental to hog production.

Prion diseases have raised concerns in consumer’s minds about food safety associated with meat world-wide. Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) and Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) both exist in Canada and consumer markets for beef, bison, elk and deer may have been affected by the diseases....

Climate change could affect the costs and returns of livestock production by altering the thermal environment of animals thereby affecting animal health, reproduction, and the efficiency by which livestock convert feed into retained products (especially meat and milk). In the United States,...

In the context of bovine tuberculosis (bTB) control in New Zealand cattle, we address the problem of management under uncertain disease prevalence by integrating a model of disease transmission and Bayesian learning from testing. We show the implications of accounting for the full dynamic value...

The article aims to investigate how operational managerial practices can contribute to improved farm level efficiency at dairy farms. Operational managerial practices are defined as animal health, breeding, and feeding practices. The main contribution of the article is that it investigates...

A case study of the Central Vermont Public Service Corporation (CVPS) Cow Power program examines the economic feasibility for dairy farms to convert cow manure into electricity via anaerobic methane digestion. The study confirms that it is technically feasible to convert cow manure to...

Previous analyses of dairy farm structural change focused on the variation over time in one or a small number of regions. Here we present an EU15-wide analysis of the change of the number of farms in different size classes. The purpose is (1) to identify the differences in regional development...