Erik J. O'Donoghue

Profits, Costs, and the Changing Structure of Dairy Farming

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 higher revenue per hundredweight of milk sold, the cost advantages of larger size allow large farms to be profitable, on average, even while most small farms are unable to earn enough to replace their capital. Further survey evidence, as well as the financial data, suggest that consolidation is likely to continue.

Risk and farm operator labour supply

This study uses a large increase in US Federal crop insurance subsidies as a natural experiment to identify the importance of risk for farm operator labour supply. Subsidy increases induced greater crop insurance coverage, which in turn reduced farmers’ financial risks. Crop insurance participation data are merged with farm-level Census of Agriculture data from 1992 and 1997 to compare how individuals’ off-farm labour supply changed in response to the policy-induced change in insurance coverage. The empirical approach controls for unobserved heterogeneity and accounts for the censored nature of the data. It is found that greater insurance coverage reduces the off-farm labour supply of operators who produced at least

Exploring Alternative Farm Definitions: Implications for Agricultural Statistics and Program Eligibility

100 000 of output, and increased the labour supply of small-farm operators who produced less than

What Does Initial Farm Size Imply About Growth and Diversification

25 000 of output.

The Effects of Premium Subsidies on Demand for Crop Insurance

Meeting agricultural policy and statistical goals requires a definition of U.S. agricultures basic unit, the farm. However, these goals can be at odds with one another. USDA defines farm very broadly to comprehensively measure agricultural activity. Consequently, most establishments classified as farms in the United States produce very little, while most production occurs on a small number of much larger operations. While desirable for obtaining comprehensive national coverage, measurement and analysis based on the current definition can provide misleading characterizations of farms and farm structure in the United States. Additionally, more stringent requirements have been proposed for farms to qualify for Federal agricultural program benefits. This analysis outlines the structure of U.S. farms, discusses the current farm definition, evaluates several potential criteria that have been proposed to define target farms more precisely, and examines how these criteria affect both statistical coverage and program eligibility.

Structure and Finances of U.S. Farms: Family Farm Report, 2007 Edition

Recent consolidation in agriculture has shifted production toward fewer but larger farms, reshaping business relationships between farmers, processors, input suppliers, and local communities. We analyze growth and diversification of U.S. corn, wheat, apple, and beef farms by examining longitudinal changes in 10 size cohorts through three successive censuses. We fail to reject Gibrat’s law in apple and wheat industries and the mean reversion hypothesis in beef and corn industries. Apple and wheat farms diversify over time. The findings suggest that scale economies diminish for large farms across all four industries and scope economies dominate scale economies for large apple and wheat farms.

Estimating the Extent of Moral Hazard in Crop Insurance Using Administrative Data

The first 50 years of the Federal crop insurance program were marked by low enrollment levels. To boost program participation, legislation in 1994 and 2000 increased premium subsidies. In the years since, the jump in enrollment coupled with high commodity prices caused significant increases in program costs. This report examines the effects of premium subsidies on the demand for crop insurance across major crops and production regions. Findings show that while increases in subsidies can induce farmers to enroll more land, they primarily encourage them to adopt higher levels of coverage on land already enrolled. Midwestern and wheat producers are more responsive to changes in subsidies relative to other regions and crops. Findings suggest that changes to current premium subsidies have the potential to alter producers’ reliance on crop insurance to help mitigate farm risk.