Using farm data from three dairy-dependent communities in Wisconsin, this study addresses the question: Do small farms spend more locally than large farms? The work develops a theoretical model of farm cost functions with transaction costs varying between local and distant input sources. This model is then tested econometrically, describing farm costs and where they were spent as a function of transaction/search costs and farm characteristics. The results suggest that scale does matter to farm spending patterns.

The objective of the present study was to investigate the effect of environmental factors, milk casein content and titratable acidity on milk coagulation properties (MCP) of samples routinely collected in the Trento province (northeast Italy) under field conditions. Rennet coagulation time (RCT, min), curd-firming time (k20, min) and curd firmness (a30, mm) were determined by Formagraph on 14 971 samples from 635 herds associated to 17 dairy factories. Besides MCP, fat, protein, and casein percentages, titratable acidity (TA), and somatic cell and bacterial counts were available. A standardised index of milk aptitude to coagulate (IAC) was derived using information of RCT and a30. An analysis of variance was conducted on MCP and IAC using a fixed effects linear model. Approximately 3% of milk samples did not form a curd within the testing time (30 min) and k20 was missing for 26% of milks. The percentage of samples without information on k20 largely differed among dairy factories (1·7–20·9%). Significant differences were estimated between the best and the worst dairy factory for RCT (−2 min), k20 (−1·2 min), a30 (+3·4 mm) and IAC (+2·6 points). Milk casein content and TA were important factors in explaining the variation of MCP and IAC, supporting the central role of these two traits on technological properties. The Trento province is heterogeneous in terms of dairy systems and this could explain the differences among dairy factories.

Australia, as with a number of other countries with dairy industries, established a national school milk scheme which operated from 1951 to the beginning of 1974 at no cost to the children's families. The scheme, funded by the federal government and administered by the states, ended abruptly after costs blew out, with resultant losses by the industry. This article describes the limited provision of milk in schools in two states prior to the national scheme and how, after the cessation of the national scheme, dairy industry initiatives in some states were gradually developed to market liquid cow's milk, including flavoured products, at subsidised prices to school children who were perceived as potential lifelong consumers. The article traces the rise and decline of these schemes in the late twentieth century within the context of moves towards dairy deregulation and its effects on the industry.

This study examines the adoption of best-management practices (BMPs) in terms of the total number of practices implemented up to a certain period, using count data analysis. Poisson and negative binomial regressions were used to examine the likely determinants of producers' decisions to adopt greater numbers of technologies, and the specific case of dairy producers' adoption of BMPs was explored. Our results emphasize the significant effect of producers' awareness of the efforts to control non-point source pollution, information about BMPs, farm size, producer's educational attainment, and risk aversion on the number of BMPs adopted.

This paper addresses the problem of assigning economic weights to heritable genetic traits of dairy cows while taking all implicit natural resource values into consideration. To do so, a deterministic bio-economic model of a dairy farm enterprise driven by input probabilities of oestrous detection and conception rates that act through the calving interval is constructed. The model further accounts for biologically limiting factors of both livestock and land within a neo-classical economics framework of profit maximization. Departing from the more customary approach of obtaining gross margins to calculate levels of return in the agricultural sector, we employ a natural resource economics methodology where returns are set against an economic point of reference specified as the value of natural assets' productivity and terminal assets' resale value. Introducing the impact of farming intensity on soil fertility enables us to obtain long-run variations in natural asset values as affected by tillage intensity. Results show that economic weights are not constant over the range of changes in genetic improvements due to the non-linearity of the system induced by diminishing marginal product of inputs and finite carrying capacity of resources employed. These values, while invariant to area farmed, are however subject to variations in resource quality and therefore will reflect the sensitivity of long-term sustainability of the system to managerial decisions on intensity of operation. Results further demonstrated that achieving optimum levels of output while precluding the impact of intensity on land productivity can seriously reduce the time horizon over which sustainability can be maintained. Inclusion of the implicit costs of land use on the other hand tended to suggest optimum levels of output below those identified when only considering accounting data.

In the dairy industry re-use and multi-use cleaning-in-place (CIP) systems are operated by circulating chemicals and water without taking the equipment apart. The solutions, which become polluted due to the removal of fouling compounds, are drained periodically when they are considered to be too polluted. This work shows the large variations in composition (pollution, surface tension, etc) of the industrial caustic solutions coming from milk standardization and pasteurization plant CIP throughout their life time (7 days) and from 1 week to another. The work is also intended to show how nanofiltration (1 kg mol−1 molecular weight cut-off) was robust and performed well, with good recovery of caustic solutions, even when faced with large variations of solutions composition: high caustic yield, permeation flux (J) in the range 42–110 l h−1 m−2, average chemical oxygen demand (COD) reduction equal to 0.58 and low surface tension change. Equations have been established for the prediction of J as a function of initial membrane hydraulic resistance (Rm) caustic concentration, volume reduction ratio (VRR) and initial soluble COD. When VRR increased, both J and pollution retention decreased despite the increase in irreversible fouling induced by the increase of soluble pollution concentration in retentate . The higher the initial soluble COD, the sharper the decrease in J vs. VRR. Since irreversible fouling was usually small (0.1–3.4×1013 m−1, that is to say of the same order of magnitude as Rm), the membrane cleaning could be efficiently performed by using single phase sodium hypochlorite alternately with a more expensive acid–base cleaning sequence. The obtained permeate was a clear regenerated cleaning solution with low soluble COD (0.2–3.5 g/l) and surface tension (56–30 mJ m−2) which could be successfully exploited owing to its cleaning potential.