Concentration of Agricultural Markets

February 2005
Mary Hendrickson and William Heffernan
Department of Rural Sociology -- University of Missouri
Columbia, MO 65211 (573)882-3776
email: HendricksonM@missouri.edu
email: HeffernanW@missouri.edu

CR4 is the concentration ratio (relative to 100%) of the top four firms in a specific food industry.

Beef Packers CR4 = 83.5%*

1. Tyson (formerly IBP Inc.)
2. Cargill (Excel)
3. Swift & Co.
4. National Beef Packing Co.

Source - Cattle Buyer’s Weekly - Steer & Heifer Slaughter reported in Feedstuffs 6/16/03. Note: Smithfield Foods is the 5th largest beef packer after a series of recent acquisitions.

Beef Feedlots

One-time Capacity:

1. Cactus Feeders Inc. 500,000
2. ContiBeef LLC 450,000
3. ConAgra Cattle Feeding Co. 440,000
4. Caprock Cattle Feeders 290,000

Source - Feedstuffs 9/17/03

Pork Packers CR4 = 64%*

1. Smithfield Foods
2. Tyson Foods (formerly IBP Inc.)
3. Swift & Co.
4. Hormel Foods

Source - Feedstuffs 9/22/03 (includes the Smithfield acquisition of Farmland Foods) Note: Including Cargill (Excel) and Premium Standard Farms creates a CR6=77%.

Pork Production CR4 = 49%*

Number of Sows:

1. Smithfield Foods 825,000
2. Premium Standard Farms 225,000
3. Seaboard Corporation 213,600
4. Prestage Farms 129,000

Source - Successful Farming Pork Powerhouses (October 2003)

Broilers CR4 = 56%*

1. Tyson Foods
2. Pilgrim’s Pride
3. Gold Kist
4. Perdue

Source - Feedstuffs 12/1/03

Turkeys CR4 = 51%*

1. Cargill Turkey Products
2. Hormel Foods (Jennie-O Turkey Store)
3. ConAgra (Butterball Turkey Co.)
4. Carolina Turkeys

Source - National Turkey Federation (2003)

Animal Feed Plants CR4 = 34%* Annual Capacity*

1. Land O’Lakes LLC/Purina Mills 12.5 million tons
2. Cargill Animal Nutrition (Nutrena) 9.0 million tons
3. ADM Alliance Nutrition 3.2 million tons
4. J.D. Heiskell & Co. 2.8 million tons

Source - Feedstuffs 3/1/04 and Feedstuffs Reference Issue 2003 ** If the U.S. total production is 80 million tons as it was in 1999 (Census of Manufacturing 1999)

Flour Milling CR4 = 63%**

Daily Milling Capacity:

1. Cargill/CHS (Horizon Milling) 293,000 cwts
2. ADM 288,800 cwts
3. ConAgra 250,100 cwts
4. Cereal Food Processors 93,100 cwts

Source - Milling and Baking News 9/7/04 ** Total US 24-Hour Milling Capacity is 1,477,000 cwts (Milling and Baking News 3/2/04)

Soybean Crushing CR4 = unknown

1. ADM
2. Bunge CR3=71%*
3. Cargill
4. Ag Processing Inc.

Source - Wall Street Journal 7/22/02

Ethanol Production CR4 = 41%

Million Gallons Per Year

1. ADM 1070
2. Cargill 128
3. Aventine Renewable Energy Inc. 100
4. VeraSun Energy Corporation 100

Source - http://www.ethanolrfa.org/eth_prod_fac.html Note - Farmer owned ethanol plants accounted for 1.276 billion gallons per year or 37.3% of total capacity.

Dairy Processors

Annual Sales*

1. Dean Foods $8,260 Million
2. Kraft Foods (Majority owner is Philip Morris) $4,300 Million
3. Land O’Lakes $2,969 Million
4. Schreiber Foods, Inc.** $2,200 Million

Source - Dairy Foods: Dairy 100 (2004)

Notes - Saputo Inc. actually is listed as the number four processor in North America, but over 70% of its plants are in Canada. Dairy Farmers of America has slipped out of the top four processors with sales of $1,392 Million. However, DFA also owns 50% of the sixth largest firm, National Dairy Holdings, which at the time of the merger of Dean and Suiza acquired the joint holdings of DFA and Suiza. Dean controls 30% of the fluid milk market in the United States (Feedstuffs 1/19/04). DFA produces 33% of the US milk supply (Hoover’s Company Profiles, 9/1/04).

Input Market Notes

Monsanto and Pioneer control 60% of the U.S. corn and soybean seed market, which is estimated at $5 billion. (New York Times, 1/6/04).

Mosaic, created by a merger between Cargill and ICM with Cargill owning 67% of the new company, will produce 14.4% of the world’s phosphate, and 15.5% of the world’s potash. (Chemical Week Associates 2/4/04) With this merger, the International Fertilizer Development Center estimates the company will have 50-60% share of the U.S. fertilizer market. (Feedstuffs 2/4/04)

Global Phosphate, Nitrogen, Potash and Feed Phosphate Fertilizer Companies:

1. Yara (Hydro Agri) $4.9 Billion
2. Mosaic (Cargill owns 67% with ICM owning 33%) $4.1 Billion
3. PCS $2.6 Billion
4. Agrium $2.4 Billion
5. Terra (Does not include acquisition of Mississippi Chemical) $1.3 Billion

Source - Feedstuffs 9/6/04

Food Retailing CR5 = 46%*

Supermarket Grocery Sales:

1. Wal-Mart Stores $66.465 Billion
2. Kroger Co. 46.315 Billion
3. Albertsons, Inc. 31.962 Billion
4. Safeway, Inc. 29.572 Billion
5. Ahold USA, Inc. 25.105 Billion

Source - Progressive Grocer’s Super 50 (5/1/04) Progressive Grocer reports only grocery sales from supermarkets, and does not report general merchandise, drug or convenience sales. In the 4/15/04 issue, it reported that total 2003 supermarket sales were $432.8 Billion in the US.

World's Top Grocery Retailers 2004

1. Wal-Mart Stores (United States) $244.5 billion annual sales
2. Carrefour (France) $64.7
3. Ahold (The Netherlands) $59.2
4. Kroger (United States) $51.8
5. Metro (Germany) $48.5
6. Tesco (United Kingdom) $39.5
7. Costco (United States) $38.0
8. Albertsons (United States) $35.6
9. Rewe (Germany) $35.2
10. Aldi (Germany) $33.7

Source - Supermarket News 12/29/03

Top Food Processing Companies

Company (Fiscal year in parentheses if different from calendar year) 2003 Food Sales ($ millions) 2002 Food Sales ($ millions):

1. Kraft Foods Inc. 21,907 21,485
2. Tyson Foods Inc. (9/27/03) 21,894 21,285
3. Pepsico Inc. 18,293 17,363
4. ConAgra Foods Inc. (5/25/03) 16,927 22,521
5. Nestle (US & Canada) 13,798 13,110
6. Anheuser-Busch Cos. Inc. 10,984 10,574
7. Mars Inc. 10,000 9,300
8. Sara Lee Corp. (6/28/03) 9,778 9,219
9. General Mills (5/30/04) 9,520 9,206
10. Dean Foods Co. 9,185 8,992

Source - Food Processing, Vol. 65(8), August 2004