Economic and fiscal impacts of different sizes of swine operations on Minnesota counties

Debates about the regulation of swine operations are taking place nationally and in Minnesota. Concerns about odor and the environment continue to make it difficult for pork producers to obtain land use permits for new facilities. Often economic and fiscal impacts of new operations on local economies are misunderstood. Several attempts to estimate the economic impact of the swine industry on state and county economies have been done. However, these studies relied on secondary data and did not estimate the impacts for different sizes and types of operations. Since the impacts are likely to vary by size and type of operation, as well as varying by different types of local economies, additional research is needed to address these issues.; This project collects primary data on the local purchasing patterns of two different sizes and types of pork producers. It develops Minnesota specific production functions for these pork producers. Regional input-output models are developed for four different Minnesota counties, using regional purchase coefficients specific to each county. Fiscal impacts are estimated after the economic impacts. Using an integrated econometric/regional input-output modeling system, employment change is adjusted for those commuting between areas. A total of sixteen different scenarios are examined to explore the economic and fiscal impacts.; The results suggest both employment and total income impacts are less for larger units before considering survivability. Income per worker is greater for larger units both before and after considering survivability. Over a period of five years, larger units have greater impacts due to a higher percent of smaller units going out of business. These results are likely to be more accurate than prior studies for two reasons. First, the input-output model carefully adjusts to reflect local production functions and purchasing patterns. Second, the integrated econometric/input-output modeling system corrects for problems in the input-output model and allows for estimation of the fiscal impacts.