Industry Structure and Policy Issues

How Big is Minnesota’s Food and Agricultural Industry? (pdf)
IMPLAN Analysis

"For small farms: Household income safety net might be better than commodity programs"
and "Farm household income safety net programs hard to implement"
A set of two August 2001 extension news releases as background for the prospective 2002 farm bill.

Generic Environmental Impact Statement on Animal Agriculture
Technical working paper on trends and forces of change affecting the Minnesota livestock industry done in 2001, and literature review done in 1999.

Study of the Economic and Local Government Impacts of the Minnesota Swine Industry – results are summarized in four publications:

"Evaluating the Economic and Fiscal Impacts of an Evolving Swine Industry,” with Diego E. Platas and George Morse, in the CURA Reporter, Center for Urban and Regional Affairs, University of Minnesota, Volume XXXI, No. 1, February 2001.

Lazarus, W.F., D.E. Platas, and S. Guess-Murphy. "Evaluating the Economic Impacts of an Evolving Swine Industry: The Importance of Region Size." Review of Agricultural Economics 22(2002):458-473.

Lazarus, W.F., D.E. Platas, and G.W. Morse “IMPLAN’s Weakest Link: Production Functions or Regional Purchase Coefficients?” Journal of Regional Analysis and Policy 32(2002):33-48.

"Economic and Fiscal Impacts of Different Sizes of Swine Operations on Minnesota Counties,” PhD Thesis by Diego Platas, Department of Applied Economics, August 2000.