Everyone should have the right to try, but none of us has the innate right to succeed. We should have opportunities but not guarantees. There are four points that I emphasized before the commission. My studies of data from the Iowa Farm Business Association lead me to conclude that for row crops the low point on the average cost curve is somewhere between 400 and 600 row crop acres. In swine production, the low point is approximately 1000 head marketed.
Agricultural enterprises exhibit what is called an L-shaped average cost curve.
There are initial economies of size but these are captured sooner than most people realize. Farms are not getting bigger to lower cost of production. Most of the farmers I talked to agree that low-cost production can be achieved without large volumes of production. Their concern is access to markets. A second point I made before the commission is that we do not know the extent, nature, or impact of multi-family farms.