Exhibit 636

Competition and Agriculture: Voices from the Workshops on Agriculture and Antitrust Enforcement in our 21st Century Economy and Thoughts on the Way Forward

Exhibit 636 · Agency report

Competition and Agriculture: Voices from the Workshops on Agriculture and Antitrust Enforcement in our 21st Century Economy and Thoughts on the Way Forward

Participants offered varied—and at times contradictory—accounts of the problems they face and the solutions they envision.

Reports on the 2010 DOJ-USDA workshops (opening remarks by Assistant Attorney General Christine Varney, 12 March 2010). Lists recurring themes including market concentration, merger enforcement, monopsony, bid rigging, market manipulation, captive supply and contracting; says the Division "has redoubled its efforts to prevent anticompetitive agricultural mergers and conduct."

Source: DOJ Antitrust Division
Date: May 2012
Quoted from: p. 1
Grade: Primary record
Document: https://www.justice.gov/atr/public/reports/283291.pdf
Accessed: 2026-11-09
Cited by: Findings citing this exhibit

Cited by

Finding AGR-5.2: Primary record USDA's Economic Research Service attributes the rise in beef and pork packing concentration mostly to larger plants and says mergers played a limited role. ERS also reports that the farm-to-wholesale beef price spread doubled between 2015 and 2019. GAO estimated that fed cattle prices in 2013 to 2015 may have been about 9 percent higher in areas with less packer concentration than in areas with more, and stated that this evidence alone does not imply anticompetitive or improper behavior.