Chad Hart, professor, was quoted in a May 5 The Cedar Rapids Gazette story, "More hogs, fewer hog farmers in Iowa."
The number of Iowa farms with hogs fell 86 percent from 1982 to 2017. But the number of hogs in Iowa more than tripled over that time, according to the U.S. Census of Agriculture.
"An agricultural system with fewer owners who specialize in one or two commodities improves efficiency, which lowers costs for consumers," said Chad Hart, an Iowa State University economics professor and crop market specialist.
"And large-scale agriculture hasn’t found a good way to measure environmental attributes — such as clean water and wildlife habitat — so that they can be factored into the cost of doing business," Hart said.
“The environmental aspect is something we need to figure out how to appropriately value,” he said. “That is what has been missing in a lot of the discussion as we move forward here.”
Hart was also interviewed in a May 11 KCCI story, "Inflation pace slows, but prices continue to rise."
"I think the challenge here is that while inflation sort of roared up very quickly, it's likely going to come down rather slowly," said Chad Hart, professor of economics at Iowa State University.
"The reason prices are going up is that supplies are relatively tight for a lot of things and demand is still relatively strong," he said.