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Nicholson is an associate professor of animal and dairy sciences and agricultural and applied economics at UW–Madison, whose position is funded entirely by the Dairy Innovation Hub. His research specialties include dairy markets and policy, food systems modeling, controlled-environment agriculture, and linkages between agriculture and food security.
Graduate student (pictured above): Jack Myers is pursuing a PhD in animal and dairy sciences with an emphasis on dairy policy, mentored by Chuck Nicholson. He earned his master’s in food science from Kansas State University and his bachelor’s in dairy science from Iowa State University. His research focuses on dairy markets and policy analysis.
The principal justification for this project is that FMMO regulation plays a key role in determining milk prices and profitability for the majority of US dairy farms, and we currently lack economic models that can appropriately analyze the implications of proposed changes to FMMOs or their elimination. Given the current status of economic models to assess the impacts of modifications to, or elimination of, FMMOs, we propose to develop a novel dynamic and systems-oriented modeling framework that will allow appropriate analysis of this important dairy policy issue. More specifically, we propose to: 1) Assess the dynamic economic impacts of changes to FMMO pricing formulas and other provisions as appropriate on farm milk prices, farm incomes for farms of different sizes and in different locations of the US, and examine the implications for dairy cooperative organizations and propriety dairy processors and 2) Assess the dynamic economic impacts of the elimination of FMMO with and without transition periods on farm milk prices, farm incomes for farms of different sizes and in different locations of the US, and examine the implications for dairy cooperative organizations and propriety dairy processors.