Re: Hogs? Farming ? and a rerun ?

Bob MacGregor (rdmacgregor@gov.pe.ca)
Wed, 16 Dec 1998 14:27:32 -0400

This big spread between farmgate and retail prices sounds like a marvelous incentive and opportunity to do direct marketing (call it vertical integration if you wish!). Excess profits always attract investment and competition unless there is monopoly power.
The earlier description of the processing bottleneck sounds a bit like unofficial supply management -- a kind of monopoly market power (we know very well in Canada) that keeps prices artificially high by restricting supply.
My wife is contacting some of her hog-farmer friends to arrange to get a hog (or most of one) into our freezer -- we'll come out way ahead and will be content to pay the farmer a lot more than he'd get selling his hog to the local slaughter plant.
BOB

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