Shredded wheat was invented in the late 19th century and has been marketed under the Nabisco brand name since 1925. In 1985 the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company acquired the Nabisco Company and in 1988 the RJR Nabisco Company underwent a leveraged buyout (LBO) led by Kolberg, Kravis, and Roberts...

Food cooperatives have existed in the United States since the mid-nineteenth century. The vast majority of food co-ops in existence in the mid 1990s were founded in the 1970s and 1980s by consumers who wanted high quality natural foods at reasonable prices, but could not find it in traditional...

Antitrust policy and the economic analysis of related issues in the food channel have attracted the attention of agricultural economists since the passage of the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890. In this paper we endeavor to provide some information on the actual operation of antitrust policies in...

Thank you for inviting me to speak to your conference. Given that the standard definition of an expert is someone who is more than a hundred miles from home I qualify as an expert on the western Canadian dairy industry. The conference organizing committee gave me as a working title, “Who...

First, I would like to review the changing structure of the food distribution industry and try to highlight how changes in the structure of the system affect access to food by low income urban consumers. Then, I will move on to discuss performance issues and highlight impacts on low income urban...

This article introduces the Forum by explaining the sequence of events related to the jawboning campaign and subsequent reductions in cereal prices. It also introduces the main issues on the vigor of competition and pricing that are analyzed in subsequent papers. Jawboning as a public policy...

The Capper-Volstead Act, passed in 1922, is the magna carta of agricultural cooperatives. The act has two sections. The first section generally defines what a Capper-Volstead cooperative is and the second section prohibits under price enhancement. Congress clearly intended that farmers be able...

This briefing paper presents some facts that pertain to the overall performance of the milk-marketing channel in New England. It updates information provided in earlier papers that focused upon dairy pricing during and immediately prior to the Compact era. (Cotterill, 2001a, b, Cotterill and...

Price gouging is commonly perceived to be a consumer issue, however it also is a farmer issue. Currently, retail fluid milk prices in New England are as much as a dollar per gallon above supply costs (Cotterill et al. 2002; Mohl 2002). Yes, consumers are paying too much; but farmers are also...

The branded integration strategy is not new. Recall that Agrimark owned Hood in a joint venture with Agway for many years. It did not work for many reasons, including the fact that Agrimark was prohibited by the U.S. Justice Department from direct representation on the Hood board of directors....