Price Discovery and Risk Management in an Industrialized Pork Sector
The process of industrialization in the swine industry has been written about extensively in recent years by Grimes, Barkema and Cook, Hurt, Rhodes, Boehlje and Schrader and others. The purpose of this paper is to concentrate on the pricing issues that have arisen during this process of industrialization. These issues include the diminishing role of open competitive markets and the increasing role of carcass value pricing, contracting, vertical integration and coordination, and marketing supply contracts.