| ▲ | alephnerd 6 days ago | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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... | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ▲ | ModernMech 6 days ago | parent | next [-] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
Market failures due to oligarchic control is the natural end state of capitalism. Everything is going as intended, the point of the system is to produce oligarchs, not efficient markets. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| ▲ | rcpt 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
Lina Khan was in power for years and didn't do anything about this. Closest thing was a case where she blocked Sanderson Farms from being acquired but that was poultry. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| ▲ | gruez 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
By "data" I was referring to data to support the claim that consolidation led to increase in prices (eg. margin expansion), not that consolidation was happening at all. It's the same with supermarkets. There's no doubt that consolidation was happening, and there's even evidence that it led to higher prices, but the absolute effect on grocery bills seems to be marginal. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||