The USDA provides aggregate data about farming; such as, production volumes, consumption trends, and costs. In the following video Drew Conway (@drewconway) and John Bellone (@johnbellone) used this aggregate data to illustrate how the operating costs for milk producers vary regionally over time. The data represents monthly per-CWT operating costs for the period of 2006-2010.
There are several interesting features of the visualization. First, we can see some striking regional differences in operating costs, with Maine having relatively high costs, while Texas remains low. Also, in mid-2008 there is a sudden spike in operating costs.
While this data provides some insight into the business of milk production, there are many unanswered questions. For example, at this level of aggregation we are unable to differentiate local and organic farmers from the larger producers.
Data obtained from http://data.gov through http://usda.gov. This was done at the first New York City Food+Tech Hackathon on Saturday December 4th, 2010 in SoHo.
