We estimate a system of product and input-demand equations for food-processing industries to trace the links among farm commodity prices, food-processing costs, and food prices. Disembodied technical change, which likely reflects increasing consumer demand for convenience and product variety,...

U.S. dairy production is consolidating into fewer but larger farms. This report uses data from several USDA surveys to detail that consolidation and to analyze the financial drivers of consolidation. Specifically, larger farms realize lower production costs. Although small dairy farms realize...

Beefpacking underwent a dramatic transformation in the 1970s and 1980s, as plants got much larger and industry concentration rose dramatically. We use individual Census Bureau plant records to analyze the sources of the transformation. We find that there were modest but extensive scale economies...