diff --git a/scripts/distro-files/config-full.toml b/scripts/distro-files/config-full.toml
index 7d6c3f4f..1d2b5996 100644
--- a/scripts/distro-files/config-full.toml
+++ b/scripts/distro-files/config-full.toml
@@ -138,6 +138,9 @@ topicActivity = "allMyActivity"
 topicPrefix = "postsFromServer1"
 # optional: forces topic suffix for instance mutations; each entry is data UUID : suffix.
 topicSuffixes = ["bc95398cb3ae40fcab2529c7bca1ad0d:myGreatDataInstance"]
+# optional: allows setting of max # messages on producer queue (queue.buffering.max.messages)
+# default is 100,000 and may be exceeded for activity logs on very busy servers
+bufferSize = 1000000
 
 servers = ["foo.bar.com:1234", "foo2.bar.com:1234"]
 
diff --git a/storage/kafka.go b/storage/kafka.go
index b5c81ed1..40d78226 100644
--- a/storage/kafka.go
+++ b/storage/kafka.go
@@ -39,6 +39,7 @@ type KafkaConfig struct {
 	TopicPrefix   string   // if supplied, will be prefixed to any mutation logging
 	TopicSuffixes []string // optional topic suffixes per data UUID
 	Servers       []string
+	BufferSize    int // queue.buffering.max.messages
 }
 
 // KafkaTopicSuffix returns any configured suffix for the given data UUID or the empty string.
@@ -83,11 +84,14 @@ func (kc KafkaConfig) Initialize(hostID string) error {
 	}
 	kafkaActivityTopic = reg.ReplaceAllString(kafkaActivityTopic, "-")
 
-	configMap := &kafka.ConfigMap{
+	configMap := kafka.ConfigMap{
 		"client.id":         "dvid-kafkaclient",
 		"bootstrap.servers": strings.Join(kc.Servers, ","),
 	}
-	if kafkaProducer, err = kafka.NewProducer(configMap); err != nil {
+	if kc.BufferSize != 0 {
+		configMap["queue.buffering.max.messages"] = kc.BufferSize
+	}
+	if kafkaProducer, err = kafka.NewProducer(&configMap); err != nil {
 		return err
 	}