James MacDonald

Even before the financial challenges of the last two years, contraction of small and even medium sized dairies had been underway for some time.According to the 2017 Consensus of Agriculture, there were over 30,000 operations with fewer than 200 dairy cows, a drop of roughly 10,000 in roughly a decade... Read More ...

The trend of consolidation of dairy farms over the last two decades has primarily been steady. At the same time, the trend of the number of small dairy operations declining has been steady as well. That's not surprising information within a recent USDA study of  dairy industry consolidation. Re ...

Production and marketing contracts play a significant part in the way Ag producers and buyers do business, but to what extent?  USDA's research economists James MacDonald said the contracts are very important.  He noted the contracts cover roughly 40% of all production in Ag.   “They...