Meatpacking consolidated rapidly in the last two decades: slaughter plants became much larger, and concentration increased as smaller firms left the industry. We use establishment-based data from the U.S. Census Bureau to describe consolidation and to identify the roles of scale economies and...

U.S. dairy production is consolidating into fewer but larger farms. This report uses data from several USDA surveys to detail that consolidation and to analyze the financial drivers of consolidation. Specifically, larger farms realize lower production costs. Although small dairy farms realize...

Marketing and production contracts covered 39 percent of the value of U.S. agricultural production in 2003, up from 36 percent in 2001 and a substantial increase over estimated values of 28 percent for 1991 and 11 percent in 1969. Large farms are far more likely to contract than small farms; in...

We use data from a recent national survey to analyze the use of subtherapeutic antibiotics (STAs) among producers of broilers. STAs are included in feed or water and are intended to prevent disease or promote growth. Producers who do not use STAs instead rely on a set of other practices,...

Crop production is shifting to much larger farms. Since government commodity payments reflect production volumes for program commodities, payments are also shifting to larger farms. In turn, the operators of very large farms have substantially higher household incomes than other farm households,...

Although food processing sector production is inherently linked to the availability and prices of agricultural materials (MA), this link appears to be weakening due to adaptations in input costs, technology, and food consumption patterns. This study assesses the roles of these changes on food...