Impacts of Alternative Marketing Agreement Cattle Procurement Volumes on Packer Costs: Evidence from Plant-Level P&L Data

It has been argued that access to captive supply cattle improve the economic efficiency of beef packing facilities. However, this argument has not been subject to hypothesis testing. This work models the cost efficiencies associated with captive supplies or cattle we refer to as being sourced through alternative marketing agreements (AMAs). We find that slaughter and processing costs are lower ceteris paribus for AMA cattle than for cash market cattle. We find that plants that slaughter cattle from AMA sources operate at higher monthly volumes ceteris paribus and lower average costs per head. And we find that plants that slaughter cattle from AMA sources have more predictable volumes ceteris paribus and have lower average costs per head. If AMAs were limited or prohibited then packing industry efficiency would be negatively impacted and that fed cattle prices would be negatively impacted.