Nothing New Under the Sun, Ag Processing and Trading Edition

New Jersey senator Corey Booker has introduced legislation to impose “a temporary moratorium on mergers and acquisitions between large farm, food, and grocery companies, and establish a commission to strengthen antitrust enforcement in the agribusiness industry.”  Booker frets about concentration in the industry, noting that the four-firm concentration ratios in pork processing, beef processing, soybean crushing, and wet corn milling are upwards of 70 percent, and four major firms “control” 90 percent of the world grain trade.

My first reaction is: where has Booker been all these years?  This is hardly a new phenomenon.  Exactly a century ago–starting in 1918–in response to concerns about, well, concentration in the meat-packing industry, the Federal Trade Commission published a massive 6 volume study of the industry  The main theme was that the industry was controlled by five major firms.  A representative subject heading in this work is “[m]ethods of the five packers in controlling the meat-packing industry.”  “The five packers” is a recurring refrain.

The consolidation of the packing industry in the United States in the late-19th and early-20th centuries was a direct result of the communications revolution, notably the development of railroads and refrigeration technology that permitted the exploitation of economies of scale in packing.   The industry was not just concentrated in the sense of having a relatively small number of firms–it was geographically concentrated as well, with Chicago assuming a dominant role in the 1870s and later, largely supplanting earlier packing centers like Cincinnati (which at one time was referred to as “Porkopolis”).

In other words, concentration in meat-packing has been the rule for well over a century, and reflects economies of scale.

Personal aside: as a PhD student at Chicago, I was a beneficiary of the legacy of the packing kings of Chicago: I was the Oscar Mayer Fellow, and the fellowship paid my tuition and stipend.  My main regret: I never had a chance to drive the Weinermobile (which should have been a perk!).  My main source of relief: I never had to sing an adaption of the Oscar Mayer Weiner Song: “Oh I wish I were an Oscar Mayer Fellow, that’s what I really want to be.”

Back to the subject at hand!

Booker also frets about vertical integration, and this is indeed a difference between the 2018 meat industry and the 1918 version: as the Union Stockyards in Chicago attested–by the smell, if nothing else–the big packers did not operate their own feedlots, but bought livestock raised in the country and shipped to Chicago for processing.

I am a skeptic about market power-based explanations of vertical integration, and there is no robust economic theory that demonstrates that vertical integration is anti-competitive.  The models that show how vertical integration can be used to reduce competition tend to be highly stylized toys dependent on rather special assumptions, and hence are very fragile and don’t really shed much light on the phenomenon.

Transactions cost-based theories are much more plausible and empirically successful, and I would imagine that vertical integration in meat packing is driven by TCE considerations.  I haven’t delved into the subject, but I would guess that vertical integration enhances quality control and monitoring, and reduces the asymmetric information problems that are present in spot transactions, where a grower has better information about the quality of the cattle, and the care, feeding, and growing conditions than a buyer.

I’d also note that some of the other industries Booker mentions–notably bean and corn processing–have not seen upstream integration at all.

This variation in integration across different types of commodities suggests that transactional differences result in different organizational responses.  Grain and livestock are very different, and these likely give rise to different transactions costs for market vs. non-market transactions in the two sectors.  It is difficult to see how the potential for monopsony power differs across these sectors.

Insofar as the major grain traders are concerned, again–this is hardly news.  It was hardly news 40 years ago when Dan Morgan wrote Merchants of Grain.

Furthermore, Booker’s concerns seem rather quaint in light of the contraction of merchant margins, about which I’ve written a few posts.  Ironically, as my most recent ABCD post noted, downstream vertical integration by farmers into storage and logistics is a major driver of this trend.

To the extent that consolidation is in play in grains (and also in softs, such as sugar), it is a reflection of the industry’s travails, rather than driven by a drive to monopolize the industry.  Consolidation through merger is a time-tested method for squeezing out excess capacity in a static or declining industry.

Booker’s bill almost certainly has no chance of passage.  But it does reflect a common mindset in DC.  This is a mindset that is driven by simplistic understandings of the drivers of industrial structure, and is especially untainted by any familiarity with transactions cost economics and what it has to say about vertical integration.