The use of electronic commerce for quality control and cost cutting efficiencies by the food and agricultural industries in the United States is the focus of this paper. The food industry engages in e-commerce through 1.) Internet shopping for consumers called business-to-consumer (B2C)...

Swine production networks are becoming a significant part of the Minnesota swine industry, with at least 30 production networks in operation as of late 1995. There are probably at least 450 producers involved, representing at least nine percent of the state s sow inventory. Not counted in these...

These papers describe the current economic conditions and outline some of the opportunities facing Minnesota farmers as they complete 1998 and develop plans for 1999. The first paper, Prospects For Farm Income in 1998, describes the variation in net farm income farmers in the Southeastern and...

This paper examines structural breaks in the vertical price relationships in U.S. beef/cattleand pork/hog sectors using monthly data of the past 40 years. A major methodologicalissue addressed is how to estimate price relationships when data contain intermittentstructural breaks with unknown...

This paper expands the contributions of Goodwin and Holt (AJAE, 1999) and Goodwin and Harper (J. of Ag. and Appl. Econ., 2000), GHH henceforth, who analyze retail-wholesale-farm price transmissions in the U.S. beef and pork industries using weekly data. First, in light of advancements in unit...

The U.S. pork sector is evolving from an industry of small, independent firms vertically linked by spot markets to one of substantially larger firms vertically connected through contractual agreements and integration. Potential benefits to this tighter vertical arrangement include lower consumer...

The U.S. pork sector is evolving from an industry of small, independent firms vertically linked by spot markets to one of substantially larger firms vertically connected through contractual agreements and integration. Potential benefits to this tighter vertical arrangement include lower consumer...

As the U.S. hog production sector becomes ever more specialized, the importance of capital inputs has heightened. Given that it is costly to adjust the capital stock and that the associated adjustment cost function may exhibit cost asymmetries between investment and disinvestment,...