US Pork Research Articles

Vertical coordination in the US pork industry: Status, motivations, and expectations

In addition to horizontal consolidation at the input, production, and processing subsectors, the US pork industry is becoming more vertically aligned. The largest hog producers and pork processors were surveyed regarding their involvement in vertical coordination arrangements and their plans for future involvement in such programs. Motivation for entering these vertical agreements was examined as was the rate of adoption. Structural and regional implications of these results for the pork industry are discussed. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Lean and Mean: US Meat-Packing in an Era of Agro-Industrial Restructuring

A new wave of agro-industrialization has taken place in the US pork sector since the mid-1980s, Driven by changes in consumer demand and by restructuring in US meat-packing, agro-industrialization is centered around lean-meat production and involves alterations in genetics, feeding regimes, facilities construction, and management practices ‘down on the farm’, Two main expressions of intensive accumulation in US meat-packing are evident, but the lean-meat imperative is integral to both, There is a movement towards an increased scale and standardization of production as major meat-packing firms develop value-added meats for general consumption. Counter to this is the manufacture of boutique meats by firms that are poised to exploit health and food safety-related challenges to energy-intensive and capital-intensive ‘productivist’ agriculture, In this paper the current thrust of agro-industrialization in the US pork sector is examined in historical perspective, within the rise, decline, and recomposition of the postwar livestock–feed–meat complex. Attention is given to value-based marketing and pricing systems that many meat-packers have recently instituted to insure adequate supplies of lean hogs. In this paper it is argued that value-based pricing results in highly differentiated payments to producers, thus spurring demand by feeder-farmers for an array of new, commercial inputs—lean genetics, partitioning agents, medications—in hopes of refashioning the interior geography of the pig for profit.

Dynamic elasticities and flexibilities in a quarterly model of the US pork sector

It has long been recognized that usual elasticity and flexibility concepts are of limited value in a multi-equation setting. This is because the response caused by a change in an exogenous variable will have feedback effects as the system obtains a new equilibrium. Consequently, it is necessary to examine total response measures in a system framework. In spite of this recognition there has been no known attempt to examine the structural implications of an econometric model by using total elasticities and flexibilities. This paper extends the results from Cavas, Hassan, and Johnson (1981) to obtain total elasticity and flexibility measures in a general dynamic model, using a quarterly model of the U.S. pork sector. The results indicate that supply elasticities are generally smaller than those reported previously.