Dairy Market Assessment and Planning System: improved sustainability and profitability of small and medium-sized U.S. dairy farms

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Project description:

Many U.S. dairy farms, typically small, family-owned, and multi-generational farms, have folded or are at risk of failing. Increasing consumer support for healthy food that benefits local economies may represent a channel where remaining dairy farms can find sustainable market opportunities, generate more revenue, restore profitability to sustain farmer livelihoods, keep fertile farmland in production, and meet evolving consumer preferences. This interactive tool, entitled “Dairy Market Assessment and Planning System” (DairyMAPS) was built by Atlantic Corporation and a collaborative team representing stakeholders across the US. DairyMAPS is intended to reinvigorate small and medium-sized US dairy farms by identifying and quantifying local market opportunities for new products and small-batch milk processing. Intensive business and economic research resulted in three accomplished objectives:

Consumer Survey – to assess consumer attitudes and preferences about local dairy products by state;
Business and Economic Modeling – to quantify potential value of US market opportunities for local dairy products by product and state; and
Market Feasibility – to develop an interactive spatial visualization tool for market assessment of local dairy products by price and by state.

Presenters: Dylan Bouchard and Ray Bernier

Presenter bios:

Dylan Bouchard, Ph.D.

Agriculture Economist – Mr. Bouchard’s research interests include production and agricultural economics, spatial price transmission, and time series econometrics. Relevant publications include “An Analysis of Farm Profitability, Exit Decision, and Price Supports in the Maine Dairy Industry” and “Is a Dairy Relief Program Really Working? Results from the 2013 Cost-of-Production Survey.” Mr. Bouchard served this project as an Atlantic Corporation consultant and lead economist.

Ray Bernier, MBA

Project Director – Mr. Bernier has served as Atlantic’s senior project manager on a number of local foods, agriculture, and aquaculture initiatives—directing several Atlantic client research and development projects over the last eight years. Mr. Bernier also has extensive experience managing large-scale data management and visualization projects, including those leading to spatial representation of market data in the dairy and aquaculture industries.