Some books get written others write themselves. This book is the latter type. I have devoted
myselfto studying the economic organization of industries related to food and agriculture for
almost twenty-five years. It has been my good fortune to work at places that tolerated my
gadfly approach to research. So long as I produced a few publications each year and wooed a few
graduate students to share those interests I was free to pursue an array of topics: why firms
diversifY the competitive role of advertising strategies for selling in overseas markets
measuring market power and many others. Although firmly anchored in the eclectic analytical
framework of industrial economics and focused on the food system I traversed a wide field at
will. Some years ago I had pretty much convinced myself that naked price fixing was not a high
priority for scholarship in these industries. True collusion was rife in a few food industries
such as bid-rigging among suppliers of fluid milk to school districts in isolated rural
districts. Ripping off milk money from school children is reprehensible enough but the size of
the economic losses from localized price fixing paled besides other sources of imperfect
competition.
