Tracking the Consolidation of US AgricultureJEL codes

I assess farm sector consolidation in the United States from the 1980s through the most recent (2017) Census of Agriculture. Consolidation has been large, widespread across crop and livestock commodities, and persistent over time. Research on this topic benefits from access to farm-level datasets, which provide more comprehensive insights into consolidation and alter what we thought we knew about farm consolidation in earlier studies using aggregated data. I close with a reflection on the applications and challenges that I have found in using firm-, plant-, and transactions-level microdata through my career.