[aksss]

How is big ag not representing an efficient market compared to thousands of small disconnected farms? In this sense thinking about efficiency being a measure of how open and accessible information is concerning said market. I can think of a few different pro/con angles to the assertion. Curious what's on your mind.

[kurthr]

Big Ag in this case is meat packing. Perhaps you're referring to the largest cattle ranches as well? Demonstrably, profits are going only to the middle men while farmers margins are squeezing to 0 driving them out of business... that will eventually raise actual supply prices once only the largest few "most efficient" ranchers left, but then those prices will be entirely passed on to consumers not the processors/middle men.

So supply prices rise as production falls... to the monopoly maximum marginal profit extracted from the consumer, just as predicted!