Business Organization and Coordination in Marketing Specialty Hogs: A Comparative Analysis of Two Firms from Iowa, November 2005

We study business organization and coordination of specialty-market hog production using a comparative analysis of two Iowa pork niche-marketing firms. We describe and analyze each firms management of five key organizational challenges: planning and logistics, quality assurance, process verication and management of �credence attributes,� business structure, and profit sharing. Although each firm is engaged in essentially the same activity, there are substantial differences across the two firms in the way production and marketing are coordinated. These differences are partly explained by the relative size and age of each firm, thus highlighting the importance of organizational evolution in agricultural markets, but are also partly the result of a formal organizational separation between marketing and production activities in one of the firm.

Little Dairy on the Prairie: from butter makin' to high-tech agriculture, 2005

In 2001, extensive archaeological excavations were conducted at the Oneida Cheese Factory in Jones County. The county is a microcosm of larger dairying trends found throughout northeast Iowa, the state’s premier dairy-producing region. Jones County moved from homemade cheese and butter production by farm women, to the industrialization of the dairy farm and opening of cheese factories and butter creameries. A number of innovations affected the industry around the turn-of-the-twentieth century, including reliable butterfat testing, the introduction of ensilage (silos) that created yearround milk production, and consolidation of the many local creameries into larger creamery organizations, such as the Diamond Creamery run by Henry D. Sherman of Jones County. Iowa’s dairy industry of today looks very different from its heritage: consolidation and competition have drastically reduced the number of cows, dairy farms, and processing plants. In recent years, northeast Iowa has become the center of a movement to revitalize Iowa’s dairy industry, particularly through the use of value-added strategies, such as niche markets and large regional co-operatives: the lessons from Iowa’s dairying legacy are resurfacing as a solution to modern agricultural challenges.