Q. How has production contracting for livestock evolved?
A. The trends in production contracting
are different for poultry, hogs, and cattle. In every
year (for which there are data) since 1964, most of the
production contracts have been for poultry production.
The 1990s saw a large increase in the number of production contracts
among hog farms. Since the number of farms producing livestock has
declined over time, the share of farms with production contracts
has increased at an even faster rate.
And, since large farms are more likely to contract than smaller
ones, the share of production under contract is greater
than the share of farms with production contracts.
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