01/11/08 Public policy implications of fewer and larger dairies

Washington Ag January 11, 2008 There continue to be fewer but larger dairy farms in the United states and the largest farms are the fastest growing. Richard Shumway of the School of Economics at Washington State University, says that has some profound public policy implications. He says one issue is promoting competitiveness, since if the current trend continues, in just a little over a century it will only take about 10 dairies to supply U.S. milk demand. Shumway: "Small business support for dairies to help them to grow and help them to diversify would be an obvious policy implication. Enforcement of environmental policies. Implementation of even stronger environmental policies to reduce the negative externalities of the very large confined animal operations would also support strengthening the medium sized dairies." Shumway says it is surprising that dairy has not yet run out of economies of scale with the larger operations. He says that is different from beef, wheat, corn and apple farming operations. I'm Bob Hoff.