| Reality speaks - 2/16/2026 10:07 The consolidation of the Chicken and Hog industries were driven by the desire of some feed guy to grow his feed business, Found that by applying modern management controls that they could improve performance allowing them to expand geometrically in parts of the country that had #1 no environmental controls in place and #2 a culture of more cooperation among farmers vs the strong independent streak found among the farmers in the upper Midwest (those Germans and Nordic people are very independent minded)
I lived through the 1998 hog market bloodbath. I think I can make a pretty solid argument that the consolidation of pork and maybe slightly less so poultry was vastly accelerated because a few people figured out they could buy corn cheaper than it cost to grow it, in the era of 30 to 40 cent LDPs. Guberment grain price policy and just a very brief period of astonishing equity burn controlled by the big packers was enough to squash almost everybody who had 100-200 sows and a few hundred acres of corn. |
more farm consolidation cure low prices?