| ▲ | gruez 6 days ago | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Is this supported by the data? During the pandemic people were also blaming "monopolization" or "consolidation" for the rise in grocery prices, but in reality the margins of publicly traded supermarket companies went up by a percentage point or two. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ▲ | jncfhnb 6 days ago | parent | next [-] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Profit margin increasing by a percentage point on a low margin business is potentially significant | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| ▲ | alephnerd 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Yep. To quote The Bullvine [0] (Axios for the cattle and dairy industry): "Here’s another force reshaping the industry that has nothing to do with immigration: processor consolidation. According to industry analysis, just three major cooperatives—Dairy Farmers of America, Land O’Lakes, and California Dairies—now handle over 80% of the nation’s milk marketing. These processors need massive, consistent volumes. New processing plants require millions of pounds of milk per day to operate efficiently. From a logistical standpoint, it’s far more efficient to contract with a dozen 5,000-cow dairies than 500 smaller operations. I was at a dairy conference in Wisconsin last year where a DFA representative candidly admitted: “We’re building plants that need 4-5 million pounds per day. We can’t deal with 200 small farms—we need 10 large ones.” This “processor pull” creates powerful incentives for farm-level consolidation. I’ve seen it happen firsthand in regions where a new mega-processing plant opens—suddenly, there’s pressure on every farm in the area to either scale up or get squeezed out" Also [1] ----------- The fact that a country like India can support 228 milk cooperatives each generating around $500M-2B in revenue and outcompete American dairy+cattle in production and even reducing environmental impact with marginal subsidizes [2] means distribution+processing consolidation and it's side effects (cattle monoculture, non-competitive prices given to farmers, dairy processers NOW becoming animal feed manufacturers) are a good example of market failures due to oligopolic control. No one at the WI and MI state Dem level is chatting about this based on some of my own meeting with them recently. This is the kind of swing vote topic that can flip all 3 branches of government in 26 and 28. If someone like me who has been somewhat hesitant about Lina Khan until after getting deep into the dairy industry recently, I think HNers should recognize the opportunity this provides. 84% of Americans consume dairy and dairy products [3] - this is an easy win if some sympathy was provided. Yet, the comments I'm seeing here on HN (and with those who I chatted with at the state level Dems) are reminiscent to those who blamed autoworkers and coalworkers for not learning to code back in 2014. [0] - https://www.thebullvine.com/dairy-industry/dairys-great-cons... [1] - https://www.thebullvine.com/news/will-your-dairy-farm-surviv... [2] - https://www.thebullvine.com/dairy-industry/from-extinction-t... [3] - https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/agriculture/our-insights... | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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