Agricultural economists at North Carolina State University (NCSU) have received $465,000 to study different types of marketing arrangements in the hog and pork industries.

NCSU is part of a group of researchers headed by the Research Triangle Institute at Raleigh, NC, which received a $4.3 million contract from the Agriculture Department’s Grain Inspection Packers and Stockyards Administration to study livestock and meat marketing for hogs, cattle and sheep.

NCSU agricultural economists led by Tomislav Vukina will review numerous surveys, transaction data and conduct economic analyses to include:

• Identifying and determining the use of emerging types of marketing arrangements such as production and marketing contracts;
• Determining terms of the marketing arrangements and their availability to entities of different sizes and in different geographic locations; and
• Determining the long-term implications of swine marketing arrangements on operating costs, animal and meat quality, marketing risks, livestock and meat prices and the structure of the livestock and meat packing industries.