[azemetre]

Why not band together and force better conditions by the corporations? This is what unions are for, a place for labor to bargain fairly compared to capital.

This will also have the nice benefit of raising the tide to lift all boats, rather than trying to diverge and course correct by oneself (raising cattle isn't comparable in skills or costs to running a meat packing facility).

[chrisseaton]

> This is what unions are for

They're independent companies. They aren't employed by anyone. They aren't labour they're owners. That's not what a union is for.

[WanderPanda]

Correct, that is what a cartel is for

[meheleventyone]

Isn’t a cartel more about illicit collusion (often outright illegal) rather than forming a public organisation to act collectively?

[celestialcheese]

It seems like it depends on the industry. OPEC is the largest, and definitely not illegal, cartel, but there are others. [1]

1 - https://guides.loc.gov/oil-and-gas-industry/organizations

[aksss]

OPEC would be illegal if replicated by a band of American companies, no? I think it's only "legal" because the sovereign entities running it transcend any laws of commerce as we understand them in America. Not dependent upon the industry so much as the scale of the participants and the laws those participants are beholden to.

[AnthonyMouse]

Cartels violate antitrust laws. Labor unions in particular have an antitrust exception. But both of them are solving the problem from the wrong end.

The question isn't how to negotiate with an existing monopolist that can screw you over with monopoly power, it's how to break their monopoly. "Get your own monopoly" not only doesn't fix it, it just makes it worse for everybody else. Congratulations, humans who eat food, there are now two monopolies in your supply chain.

[giantg2]

That's a duopoly, which is hopefully better than a monopoly. It forces competition and will at least keep the independent people solvent. Hell, you can structure it where the processing fee is set and the producers set their own sale prices.

What other options. Is there for beef production?

[AnthonyMouse]

You misunderstand. It's not that there was one monopoly wholesaler and now there are two. It's that there was one monopoly wholesaler, and there still is, but now it's negotiating with a new cartel of manufacturers. That's not better.

Don't form a new cartel, break up the old monopoly.

[ipaddr]

Association is a better concept or industry group

[bobthepanda]

Farmers already do this, and they're called cooperatives.

Some US big name brands that are cooperatives are Darigold, Land O' Lakes, Organic Valley, and Sunkist.

The largest company in New Zealand is a dairy cooperative: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fonterra

It's interesting that this is not common for meat, when it is for dairy. Wonder why that is.

[Mandatum]

Because meat isn't as commoditized, there's too many different grades and products. When 70%+ of your output turns into shelf-stable milk powder, it's all the same. Fonterra has kept local milk supplies in New Zealand at export prices for more than 15 years. It wasn't until recently that smaller independent co-op's formed and began selling processor-to-table and exporting themselves.

However now many of the processors are owned by the same companies or people, so processors who'd previously deal with these co-ops are signing exclusivity deals with Fonterra and they're being shut out of the market.

But we also have the income and GDP brought by Fonterra for the last 10-15 years to thank. Unfortunately we're seeing a lot of those profits off-shored or eaten up by corporate middlemen owned by conglomerates now.

[chrisseaton]

Meat is literally traded as a commodity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_Hog

[dehrmann]

Cartels and unions both tightly control the supply of what they are selling, so they're not all that different economically.

[ip26]

I think they are picturing a “union of small companies” organizing to demand better terms from the large companies they do business with. (Without merging)