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.
