No one knows why James Hunter left his family for a two year gold prospecting tour in them thar hills. All we really know is a remote branch of the family tree once broke loose from his Missouri roots for the California Gold Rush. Maybe James wanted respite from routine … or plain old adventure. Or maybe he had gold fever. He found gold, probably not the bonanza he wanted, but when James returned there was just enough Read More …
BY LINA KHAN In July, the public learned that Goldman Sachs and several other large banks have morphed into giant merchants of physical goods, routinely shipping oil, running power plants, and amassing stocks of metals so large that Coca Cola accused them of hoarding. It was a disconcerting moment, as regulators realized that firms so recently known for their explosive mortgage-backed securities also deal in goods that can literally explode. These activities mean that banks supplying credit to Read More …
AAI Working Paper No. 13-05: by Author: C. Robert Taylor and Diana L. Moss Fertilizers are a critical input in the agricultural sector where industrial farming is heavily dependent on external inputs of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium or potash. A history of supra-competitive pricing by the few, large global producers of fertilizer inputs – coupled with characteristics that make the market conducive to anticompetitive coordination (i.e., collusion) – raise significant competitive concerns. This working paper qualitatively and quantitatively Read More …
Fifteen years ago, in responding to the question of why producers were receiving so little for their livestock, Dr. John Helmuth (economist, meat industry expert, and longtime critic of meat industry consolidation) said, “There is an economic term to describe this phenomenon: It is called stealing.” Compared to a competitive time in the industry in the 1970’s, the monopoly power of the big retailers and meat packers has left today’s cattle producers nearly $600 per head short of Read More …
“We are in for a series of years with very low prices with very strenuous circumstances” – Daryll E. Ray, Professor of Agriculture and Resource Economics and Director of the Agricultural Policy Analysis Center (APAC) at the University of Tennessee Daryll E Ray received the 2013 Organization for Competitive Markets John Helmuth Award. “I knew John Helmuth for many years as tried to address excessive meatpacker market power,” said Mike Callicrate, OCM President. “Helmuth was one of the Read More …
In my experience in talking with students and groups of people outside the university is it that they are very eager to have meaningful give and take discussions on alternative food systems … that discussion rarely occurs in a Land Grant University setting. The Land Grant system was created 151 years ago intended for teaching, research and outreach and service for the middle class, for common people for working class … it had public interest orientation and was Read More …
“There is nothing I care about more than farmers” – Dave Murphy, Food Democracy Now Murphy worked for President Obama during this first term and at that time was a supporter of Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack.
“Antitrust is really simple, it’s very narrow, it focuses on a simple set of metrics but it largely ignores unique features of agricultural markets like food safety and reliability. If we get these big conglomerates in our food supply chain – are we going to have quality, are we going to have reliability, are we going to preserve safety? Whenever you have a small number of producers your supply chain becomes very fragile, bottle-necked in parts and that Read More …