The uneven industrialization of agro-food systems: The significance of household production in the United States beef industry

This dissertation looks at the structure of the U.S. beef industry and the continued importance of small-scale, part-time beef producers. The average beef producer has only 42 breeding cows, and 30% of the total U.S. beef inventory is in such small herds. This is in direct contrast to other livestock sectors, such as pork and poultry, which have undergone widespread concentration and vertical integration.; My research indicates that the socio-cultural logic of small-scale producers partially explains their continued persistence. For many producers, raising beef is a supplemental income source engaged in primarily for lifestyle benefits rather than profit. As a result, ranchers can forego profits, accepting very low prices and ignoring market signals, because profit is not their primarily motivation. They report almost no direct effects of the massive changes in the feeding and packing sectors of the beef industry.; At the same time, stockers have emerged as an essential step in the beef industry. They standardize the calves from hundreds of thousands of beef producers, providing a steady supply of similar-size calves to packers. As a result, packers' motivation to alter the structure of U.S. beef production is reduced. Yet stockers face enormous pressures from packers to produce on contracts and fear that in the future they will be vertically integrated or outright replaced.; Overall, my research indicates that the process of industrialization in the beef industry is uneven and halting. Packers have radically altered the processing sector and have vertically integrated with feedlots. Yet stockers provide a buffer that protects cow calf operators from these changes. As a result, small-scale producers remain dominant in beef, a situation that is unlikely to change in the near future.