The soda industry is trending toward vertical integration, which Coke and Pepsi acquiring their largest bottlers.  From the WSJ…

Read the full piece here. 

A number of opponents of Obamacare, such as Wall Street Journal columnist William McGurn, have criticized the President and his people for referring to pending proposals as “health insurance reform” rather than “health care reform.” I suppose these critics think the President is engaging in a sleight of hand in an effort to minimize the significance of the reform proposals — as in, “We’re not reforming the whole health care system, just health insurance. No biggie.” But Mr. Obama is right. This proposal is about insurance rather than the provision of health care itself. And that’s the main problem.

Read the full piece here.

To expand on Geoff’s post about concentration in the seed industry, there has been a consistent line of discussion throughout the day raising the specter of monopoly and anti-competitive behavior, not only in seed but also in livestock.  There are continual references to adverse price effects and limitations in choice for consumers and producers alike, followed by such tagged-on qualifiers as “if there are any”. The implication is that there is good reason to believe such effects exist and simply have yet to be discovered if we look.

Read the full piece here.

A common theme throughout the day has been the declining number of seed companies–increasing concentration–and its effect. Except no one has talked about the effect.  Other than pointing to the structural change itself, no one seems to have any evidence relating to the effect of the change.  One farmer at the open mic session (coincidentally one who had been sued by Monsanto) asserted that the move from 70 seed companies to 4 represented a relevant decline in competition.  But he didn’t talk about any relevant effect; he had nothing to offer on declining return on investment–no evidence that the change actually affected his bottom line.

Read the full piece here. 

The morning’s panel of farmers represented a variety of perspectives, ranging from more reasoned to more reactionary.  Among the ideas suggested…

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Let me say at the outset, some of my prior beliefs. First, I believe in the marketplace of ideas and think that more speech is generally better than less speech. I believe the Founders shared this belief and enshrined it in the “no law” component of the First Amendment. I believe this is especially true for speech about politics. Why else would we allow the Nazis to march in Skokie? Other countries don’t let Nazi’s march because they (rightfully) view their ideas as repugnant. But we let them march. We do so because we are more confident in our citizens’ ability to know right from wrong, to look beyond rhetoric for substance, and to be able to weigh competing claims of truth. If we didn’t trust the people to make decisions based on all available information, if we didn’t trust the people to be able to filter speech according to its source and content, if we didn’t trust the people to know what is good for them, we wouldn’t let the Nazi’s march. But we let them march.

Read the full piece here. 

Bill Northey, IA Ag Sec’y, sounds a bit like an economist (ah, turns out he has a degree in ag business and an MBA . . . ).  Yes, price of seeds has gone up, but so has yield, and so has overall value.  The issue, he says, is how to divide the surplus, and he suggests that it’s dividing the pie that drives farmer concerns.  That’s not at all a surprise, but it’s also not much of an antitrust issue.  Unless the pie could be bigger absent, say, Monsanto’s huge investment in seeds and the resulting relatively-concentrated market structure (and basing enforcement on the theoretical possibility of that counter-factual is a perilous enterprise, as Josh and I have suggested many times), this is just a question of pecuniary transfers.  Sure, they matter a lot to the parties involved and there’s always an incentive to deputize the government to put a thumb on the scale of that dispute, but that’s not a matter of allocative efficiency, and not a matter for the antitrust laws.

Read the full piece here. 

As readers may know, Eric Holder was added to the workshop at the last minute (see the latest agenda here).  So the day starts out with Holder and Vilsack, and they are joined by Varney and Tom Miller (the Iowa AG) and a host of other politicos including Senator Grassley and Congressman Boswell.

Read the full piece here. 

As Geoff noted, we’re stationed at the DOJ/USDA workshop to witness the goings on and provide some comments.

US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack opened this session with a laundry list of statistics concerning rural America and the agriculture sector. The statistics focused on national concentration ratios and national averages, which are tremendously deceiving for understanding the agriculture sector.

Read the full piece here.