Odd Lots Talks Beak Capitalism on Money Stuff Talking Chicken

Summary

Odd Lots Podcast Episode Summary: "Beak Capitalism on Money Stuff Talking Chicken"

Release Date: December 27, 2024

In this special crossover episode of Bloomberg's "Odd Lots," hosts Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway engage in an in-depth conversation with Matt Levine and Katie Greifeld from the "Money Stuff" podcast. The episode delves into their collaborative three-part series titled "Beat Capitalism," which employs the chicken industry as a lens to explore broader themes in finance, markets, and economics.

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1. Introduction to the Crossover Episode

At the outset ([01:00]), Joe Weisenthal introduces the collaboration, highlighting the participation of Matt Levine, renowned for his financial columnist role, and Katie Greifeld, an expert in ETFs and financial reporting. The conversation sets the stage for an exploration of how the chicken industry mirrors complex economic structures and phenomena.

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2. The Genesis of "Beat Capitalism"

Tracy Alloway ([03:47]) and Joe Weisenthal ([04:16]) discuss the inspiration behind their series. Initially dubbed "Squawk Lots," the project aimed to dissect the U.S. economy through the lifecycle of a chicken—from egg to sandwich. Joe remarks, “Every once in a while we like to shake things up and do something slightly different,” referencing their previous series on the marijuana market titled "Potlots."

Matt Levine ([05:09]) elaborates on the multifaceted nature of the industry, stating, “You can learn a little something about how the economy works through that trajectory,” pointing out the myriad aspects from avian flu management to labor market dynamics within poultry farming.

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3. Supply Chain and Market Structure

A significant portion of the discussion ([18:13]–[22:13]) focuses on the intricate supply chain of the chicken industry. The hosts compare the role of integrators like Tyson and Purdue to modern platforms like Uber. Joe Weisenthal asks, “Does the pork industry look like this? Does the cow industry look like this?” emphasizing the parallels in how large corporations manage supply chains by outsourcing significant portions of the business to smaller farmers.

Matt Levine ([20:28]) introduces the concept of "tournament systems," where farmers are pitted against one another, competing on performance metrics set by the integrators. This system concentrates power within large companies, akin to how Uber controls its network of drivers, limiting farmers' autonomy despite their operational responsibilities.

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4. Historical Insights: The Victorian Chicken Bubble and Ray Dalio's Financial Engineering

Joe Weisenthal ([14:07]–[09:04]) shares an intriguing historical anecdote about the 1850s Victorian chicken bubble, a craze sparked by Queen Victoria’s interest in breeding exotic chickens. This bubble not only led to economic fluctuations but also indirectly influenced Charles Darwin’s evolutionary studies due to the widespread availability of diverse chicken breeds.

The conversation takes a humorous turn when discussing Ray Dalio's alleged role in the commercialization of Chicken McNuggets. Matt Levine ([09:04]) quips, “Only a true genius can invent the financial hedging instruments that allow it to be commercial,” crediting Dalio’s financial engineering with enabling McDonald's to stabilize chicken prices and roll out the McNugget nationwide. This segment underscores the often-overlooked role of financial strategies in product commercialization.

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5. Pricing Volatility and Antitrust Concerns

A key discussion point ([23:43]–[25:05]) revolves around pricing mechanisms and potential antitrust implications within the chicken industry. Katie Greifeld raises concerns about the Georgia Doc Index, an alleged tool used to manipulate chicken prices by inflating reported prices for supply contracts. Joe Weisenthal connects this to broader antitrust issues, questioning whether such pricing systems represent illegal collusion or simply efficient market strategies.

Matt Levine ([22:08]) touches upon the complexity of modern pricing algorithms, suggesting that tacit price-setting mechanisms, independent of explicit agreements, could foster uncompetitive practices. This highlights the delicate balance regulators must maintain in distinguishing between legitimate pricing strategies and anti-competitive behavior.

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6. Environmental and Societal Impacts of Industrial Chicken Farming

The conversation shifts to the environmental repercussions of large-scale chicken farming ([35:39]–[38:33]). Matt Levine ([35:39]) discusses the externalities associated with industrial farming, such as wastewater runoff and its detrimental effects on local ecosystems. The hosts express concern over bird flu’s spread in densely populated chicken farms, emphasizing the difficulty in preventing disease transmission in crowded conditions.

Ron Krishewski ([37:10]) brings attention to the ethical and environmental dilemmas posed by concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), noting, “I was an optimist about the existence of cheap protein,” but acknowledging the significant environmental costs that accompany it. This segment underscores the ongoing tension between economic efficiency and sustainable farming practices.

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7. Consumer Trends: The Chicken Sandwich Wars and Egg Pricing

Consumer behavior and market competition are examined through the lens of the "chicken sandwich wars" and the volatility in egg pricing ([32:22]–[33:45]). Tracy Alloway explains how external shocks like the pandemic and avian flu have influenced consumer acceptance of price hikes, as companies uniformly respond to increased costs by raising prices.

Joe Weisenthel ([32:59]) notes, “If everyone is doing it at the same time because of these same exogenous shocks, then where are you going to go to get cheap eggs or chickens?” highlighting how synchronized pricing strategies during crises can limit consumer choices and exacerbate inflationary pressures.

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8. Future Directions: Lab-Grown Chicken and Artisanal Farming

Looking ahead, the hosts explore alternatives to traditional chicken farming, such as lab-grown chicken and artisanal farming practices ([38:03]–[41:45]). Katie Greifeld questions the feasibility and market penetration of backyard or small-scale chicken farming, while Ron Krishewski references Vital Farms’ model of providing ample space per chicken to ensure better living conditions.

Joe Weisenthel ([40:13]) and Matt Levine ([40:05]) discuss the potential of lab-grown chicken as a sustainable and ethical alternative, pondering whether it can meet the demand for cheap protein without the associated environmental and animal welfare costs. This segment envisions a future where technological advancements could revolutionize protein production, balancing economic and ethical considerations.

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9. Conclusion and Final Thoughts

As the episode wraps up ([41:31]–[41:56]), the participants reflect on the multifaceted nature of the chicken industry. Matt Levine ([39:23]) reiterates his balanced perspective, stating, “I don't want this to be seen as some sort of Jeremiah against the chicken industry. I just think there's a lot of interesting tensions.” The conversation concludes with a mutual appreciation for the complexity and significance of using the chicken industry as a microcosm to understand broader economic and societal issues.

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Notable Quotes

• Matt Levine ([05:09]): “There are just so many interesting things that can be discussed along that entire supply chain.”

• Joe Weisenthel ([09:04]): “First of all, I love that Ray Dalio's like, chosen creationist story for himself. His background legend is I helped invent Chicken McNuggets.”

• Katie Greifeld ([18:42]): “Why is it like that? That's a really good question.”

• Ron Krishewski ([32:23]): “I thought this was something different for you guys.”

• Tracy Alloway ([03:47]): “The idea was you can actually explain a lot of really interesting themes in the American economy through the medium of chicken.”

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Key Takeaways

• Economic Microcosm: The chicken industry serves as a valuable framework for understanding complex economic dynamics, including supply chain management, market competition, and pricing strategies.

• Historical Influence: Historical events like the Victorian chicken bubble have had unforeseen impacts, influencing scientific research and economic policies.

• Regulatory Challenges: The industry's reliance on large integrators raises significant antitrust and regulatory concerns, particularly regarding pricing mechanisms and market fairness.

• Sustainability Concerns: Industrial-scale chicken farming poses environmental and ethical challenges, prompting discussions on sustainable and humane alternatives.

• Consumer Impact: Market disruptions like pandemics and disease outbreaks significantly affect consumer prices and industry stability, highlighting the interconnectedness of global supply chains.

• Future Innovations: Emerging solutions such as lab-grown chicken and artisanal farming practices represent potential pathways to balance economic efficiency with ethical and environmental sustainability.

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This episode of "Odd Lots" offers a comprehensive exploration of the chicken industry's role in the broader economic landscape, providing listeners with nuanced insights into market structures, historical influences, and future innovations. By framing complex financial and economic concepts within the context of the poultry industry, the hosts effectively illuminate the intricate interplay between agriculture, economics, and societal trends.

Transcript

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[Joe Weisenthal]

Hello odd lots listeners. We have something very special for you. Joe and I appeared on an episode of Bloomberg's latest podcast. It's called Money Stuff and it is hosted by two people that I think you will recognize from Odd Lots, Matt Levine, the esteemed financial columnist and chronicler of capitalism, as well as Katie Greifeld, who knows all things ETFs and horses as well. And Joe and I were there to talk about.

[Matt Levine]

That's right. So if you recall, back in November, Tracy and I released a three part series called Squawk Lots where we explained how the US Economy can be understood through the lens of chicken. Basically taking the entire industry from a egg to sandwich, so to speak. And so we were delighted to go on with Matt and Katie and talk about our work.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Technically, it was called Beat Capitalism.

[Matt Levine]

Oh, that's right.

[Joe Weisenthal]

But Squawklots was our code name for it.

[Matt Levine]

That's right. It was called A Long Time. That's right.

[Joe Weisenthal]

All right.

[Matt Levine]

It's been a long Time.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yes, it has. Okay. We hope you enjoy this special episode of Money Stuff and definitely give it a listen. Bloomberg Audio Studios Podcasts Radio News.

[Katie Greifeld]

Hello and welcome to a very special crossover episode of the Money Stuff, Odd Lots Podcasts. I'm Matt Levine and I write the Money Stuff column for Bloomberg Opinion.

[Ron Krishewski]

And I'm Katie Greifeld, a reporter for Bloomberg News and an anchor for Bloomberg Television.

[Katie Greifeld]

And we have two very special guests in the studio with us today. Katie.

[Ron Krishewski]

Their names are Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway. Wow, this is very exciting.

[Joe Weisenthal]

I like the pause to build suspense.

[Ron Krishewski]

Katie, I've been told to pause and then say names slowly for gravitas. So trying it out. It worked.

[Matt Levine]

Yeah, it worked. It worked.

[Katie Greifeld]

All right, we've established some gravitas.

[Matt Levine]

For what it's worth, Tracy and I, like, spent three years of odd lots workshopping ways to introduce guests. And I know we're only the second time you've had external guests, so don't feel any.

[Ron Krishewski]

My heart is pounded.

[Matt Levine]

Don't feel any anxiety about the guest. Do you remember how we used to do it, Tracy?

[Katie Greifeld]

Yeah.

[Joe Weisenthal]

We used to pretend that neither of us or one of us didn't know what we were going to talk about. And it was like, guess what we're going to talk about. But it didn't make any sense because, like, we clearly knew what we were going to talk about.

[Matt Levine]

It took us a while.

[Ron Krishewski]

How are we doing so far? Cause I feel like it's not going super well.

[Matt Levine]

It's going fine.

[Katie Greifeld]

What are we going to talk about?

[Matt Levine]

What?

[Ron Krishewski]

Someone should make a clucking.

[Joe Weisenthal]

You brought us here.

[Ron Krishewski]

Let's talk about chickens. You guys obviously have a lot to say. You did a three part series on chickens recently, which was pretty cool because I feel like this was something different for you guys.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah, every once in a while we like to shake things up and do something slightly different. Last year we actually did a three part series on the rollout of New York's legal marijuana market called Potlots. This one was a three part series about chicken and the code name for it was Squawk lots, but the actual name was Beat Capitalism. And the idea was you can actually explain a lot of really interesting themes in the American economy through the medium of chicken.

[Matt Levine]

Yeah, you just think from like egg to chicken sandwich or egg to chicken tender or egg to McNugget, et cetera.

[Ron Krishewski]

I mean, speak for yourselves.

[Matt Levine]

There are just so many interesting. Like the sort of premise is there are just interesting things that can be discussed along that entire supply chain. So whether it's avian flu and how to keep the flock of the birds, whether it's concentration in the poultry market, whether it's the nature of the labor market, how the big poultry companies contract with independent growers and so forth who raise the chickens themselves, which is interesting. Then there's questions about pricing and so forth and then commodity prices and then the chicken sandwich wars and the consumer experience of why Popeyes versus Panda Express versus whoever. There's a million different things even within all these things where it's like we can learn a little something about how the economy works through that trajectory.

[Katie Greifeld]

How did you decide on that? Was that like, you're like, we want to talk about chicken first, and then later you realize there are a lot of lenses? Or were you like, we need to talk about antitrust? What is antitrust?

[Joe Weisenthal]

I actually, I'm struggling to remember what the exact genesis that you were looking.

[Katie Greifeld]

At chickens in your backyard.

[Matt Levine]

Yeah.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah. I have a long term love of chickens, and my great ambition in life is to one day have backyard chickens. And I'm inching closer to that dream of chickens.

[Katie Greifeld]

Do you mean alive chickens to hang out with or dead chickens to eat or both? Totally different.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Both.

[Ron Krishewski]

All forms.

[Katie Greifeld]

Like in, like, one, then the other?

[Joe Weisenthal]

Well, I would raise chickens and I would have eggs, and that way I would be immune to egg inflation. But I know some people who raise meat chickens, and I don't think I would do that. It's depressing because meat chickens are very different to egg laying chickens. They look different. They don't really do anything. They kind of just like wa around.

[Matt Levine]

And flop over and then one day you kill them.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah, it's sad.

[Matt Levine]

The other thing, too, in addition to Tracy's affinity for chickens, we've done a lot of chicken episodes in the past. So there's this guy, Glenn Hickman, that we talked to. We've talked to him twice on the show. He has a big egg operation in Arizona. And so we talked about when egg prices were surging, we talked to him. When avian flu, which unfortunately, like, is getting headlines again, we talked to him. We've talked to Samuel Ryan, an analyst who thought that Wingstop, the country's biggest chicken chain and the biggest single. And there are certain lessons about pricing power that we learned because, you know, as wholesale wings went up, they raised the prices aggressively. When wholesale wing prices went down, they did not cut their prices. So we've done a lot of chicken related content in the past. It's like, oh, why don't we, like, put some of this together?

[Joe Weisenthal]

This was the surprising thing when we were putting together, you know, the list of people that we wanted to speak to for this series. Like, 80% of them we had actually spoken to before. So unknowingly, we were already a chicken podcast.

[Ron Krishewski]

Wow.

[Matt Levine]

Yeah.

[Ron Krishewski]

It's like it found you guys.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yes.

[Katie Greifeld]

Putting together that list. Where was Ray Dalio on that list?

[Joe Weisenthal]

Wait, what does Ray Dalio say?

[Katie Greifeld]

Do you not know?

[Joe Weisenthal]

No.

[Katie Greifeld]

Are you pretending to not know?

[Matt Levine]

No, I honestly.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Shoot.

[Matt Levine]

Now I feel really dumb because there's.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Like, oh, does he have that huge chicken Coop or. Oh, no, that's the London guy.

[Matt Levine]

Oh.

[Joe Weisenthal]

What?

[Ron Krishewski]

No, I feel like this is too good to be true.

[Katie Greifeld]

It's too good to be true. But it's like a little bit true.

[Matt Levine]

Because we talked about the history of cheering. So what's the urban legend according to Ray Dalio?

[Katie Greifeld]

This comes from Ray Dalio, like, including on podcasts and I think on like, the Bridgewater website. When he was working on Wall street before he started Bridgewater, he was, like, doing commodities stuff and one of his clients was McDonald's, and McDonald's were. I think this is like, according to your history, like, this is a few years after they had, like, introduced the chicken McNugget, but before they rolled it out nationally. And they were worried, apparently about volatility of chicken prices because they're like, well, we can't put chicken nuggets on the menu if the price is going to go up and down because you have to pull it off the menu or raise the prices. It would be terrible. We need to take the volatility out of chicken prices. And they came to Ray Dalio, allegedly, and they're like, can you sell us hedge? And Ray Dalio was like, wow, there's not like a liquid chicken market at the time. This is, I think, from the Bridgewater website. He argued that since a full grown chicken was nothing more than a baby chick plus corn and soy meal, the price of the grains were the volatile costs and they could hedge corn and soybean prices.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Oh, that's interesting.

[Katie Greifeld]

And they could. And so he sold McDonald's a bunch of cord and soybean derivatives and they were able to roll out the chicken McNugget.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah. First of all, I love that Ray Dalio's like, chosen creationist story for himself. His background legend is I helped invent Chicken McNuggets.

[Katie Greifeld]

That's a good one, though.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Secondly, McDonald's did not invent Chicken McNuggets, which is something that we learned from the podcast.

[Katie Greifeld]

McDonald's did not invent the chicken nugget, but Ray Dalio shepherded. Well, chicken nugget as a menu item.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Sure, okay, fine, we'll let him have that one. But the interesting thing is we did learn about volatility in pricing because this is something that the Wingstop CEO actually brings up. One of the reasons we saw chicken wing prices specifically go up so much in the aftermath of the pandemic was that it turns out they're the most volatile, like, part of the chicken.

[Matt Levine]

Can I say I have a contrarian opinion? I think Ray Dalio did invent the chicken McNugget. Anyone could invent a fried lump of chicken. It takes a true genius to invent the financial hedging instruments that allows it to be commercial. So I now accept the premise that actually he and not the person who, like, put the chicken meat in batter should get actually be the true father.

[Katie Greifeld]

Of the chicken McDonald's. I think that financial engineering is underrated as a moving force in, like, the real economy.

[Matt Levine]

I like this.

[Katie Greifeld]

He did the financial engineering behind the chicken. Tracy is shaking her head.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Well, you're right. It gets to an interesting question about what drives progress. Is it the underlying technology or is.

[Matt Levine]

It the which came first, the chicken McNugget?

[Katie Greifeld]

The Soviet future?

[Matt Levine]

Which came first, the nugget or the financial engineering gets a bad rap. And it turns out if you need.

[Joe Weisenthal]

That to commercialize, easy to consume protein.

[Matt Levine]

Yeah, I take it. I now give the crown to write.

[Katie Greifeld]

Do you think that right, like every, like, major innovation, like, there's the step of physical invention and then there's the step of like working out the financing part. And like, the financing people are generally unheralded but well paid.

[Matt Levine]

And.

[Joe Weisenthal]

I think Dalio's managing. Yeah, but this is Joe's pitch to try to get Ray on the podcast. I think to talk about chicken.

[Katie Greifeld]

We should have him on our podcast.

[Matt Levine]

To talk about, you know, who is the New York Mets manager who claimed to invent the rap. Do you remember that? You know, the rap sandwich?

[Ron Krishewski]

I've heard of it.

[Matt Levine]

The New York Mets manager in the 90s claimed to have invented the rap sandwich. I can't remember his name right now. Anyway, it sort of reminds me of that.

[Ron Krishewski]

It's like claiming to invent the apple pie. Like, if you just say it loudly enough, it's probably true.

[Matt Levine]

Yeah.

[Ron Krishewski]

Can we talk about why wings are the most volatile part of the chicken? I did not know that. I would have thought it was, I guess, any other part of the chicken from your podcast.

[Katie Greifeld]

I thought it was that the supply of chickens is set by the demand for chicken breasts. And so demand for chicken breasts goes down, the supply of chickens goes down, and wings do not drive the supply of chickens. So the wing price is just like.

[Matt Levine]

Thank you for listening.

[Joe Weisenthal]

That's exactly it. You learned something.

[Ron Krishewski]

The chicken.

[Katie Greifeld]

That's cool.

[Ron Krishewski]

The chicken breast is like the benchmark from which all the other breasts apart.

[Katie Greifeld]

And it's like the thing that's most used. And so like, essentially, if you're a Wingstop, you're buying like a sort of like leftover discard.

[Matt Levine]

Yeah, I like thigh, by the way. It's more than the breast. I think it's like a better. It's like the. The best cut.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Have you guys had chicken feet?

[Ron Krishewski]

No.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah, they're really good. And in Asia, people always say they're a really good source of collagen. So, like, a lot of young women or older women will eat them for skincare purposes, I believe.

[Ron Krishewski]

Do you eat it or do you just sort of slather it on your face?

[Joe Weisenthal]

No, no, you eat it. You, like, nibble on it.

[Ron Krishewski]

Oh, man.

[Matt Levine]

You can get it at most dim sum places in Chinatown here. So if we ever want to take a trip. And it's actually, I really find them quite delicious.

[Ron Krishewski]

I would love to watch you guys eat that. I'm not very adventurous myself, but boy, do I like being included.

[Katie Greifeld]

I have a new puppy and I get served a lot of ads for a lot of dog food products. And there's definitely like a extremely foot looking chicken foot that is feed my.

[Ron Krishewski]

Cat dried chicken hearts. Like, that's a, like, little crunchy heart snack.

[Matt Levine]

I think you've had some chicken hearts. I've had, yeah, I have. Or chicken liver. Is that something?

[Katie Greifeld]

Chicken livers?

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah.

[Matt Levine]

I think I've had chicken hearts too.

[Joe Weisenthal]

I make a Thanksgiving stuffing out of chicken liver. It's really good.

[Ron Krishewski]

Timely.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah. Well, we'll provide our recipe for chicken liver Thanksgiving stuffing after this podcast.

[Ron Krishewski]

Can I say. So this is a three part series. Yeah. That caught my ears the most was just like the physicality of the chicken and how it's changed that. The idea that, like, a chicken in the 1920s looks so much different than a chicken in the 2000s. Like, I feel like I knew that somewhere in the back of my mind, but this really brought it into stark focus for me just how much we've changed. Chickens.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah. So chickens, like a lot of domesticated animals, are like the products of, you know, centuries and certainly decades of evolution. Chickens, in case you're wondering, I think they originally came from forests of Indonesia. And back then they were like skinny little jungle birds. And I think they were mostly like, black. Anyway, they spread around the world. It turns out everyone loves chicken. One of the most fascinating parts of chicken history, and I don't know why I know this, but for some reason I do, is in the 1850s, there was a chicken bubble. So what happened was Queen Victoria got really into chickens, like breeding chickens, exotic chickens. And because she was the queen, a bunch of other people got into it and it sort of became this Fad where people were paying, like, lots and lots of money to get really exotic chickens.

[Ron Krishewski]

Were they eating them or just breeding?

[Joe Weisenthal]

No, they were just breeding them. They were selling them to other people.

[Ron Krishewski]

Yeah.

[Joe Weisenthal]

The bubble eventually burst, by the way, and the really interesting. Probably, but the really interesting thing is because exotic chickens became cheap, Charles Darwin started doing research with all these different chickens from around the world on evolution. So the Victorian chicken bubble indirectly influenced our understanding of evolution.

[Matt Levine]

This is like how the telecom bubble in 99 and 2000. And then we had the broadband roll on it then. And then. Yeah. Then because of the. We had the evolutionary theories of Darwin. I didn't know that. This didn't come up, did it, on the podcast?

[Joe Weisenthal]

No, I couldn't figure out where to put it in. I saved it for this podcast. Specifically.

[Ron Krishewski]

Perfect.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Specifically. There's a really funny book that was written sort of contemporaneously with the 1850s all about. It's called Hen Fever, and it's about the chicken bubble. And it has the most amazing illustrations, including it has picture of a guy blowing a bunch of different bubbles. And some of them are like, what you would expect, like the South Sea expeditions and railway stocks and things like that. But then some of them are Shanghais and Cochin, which are types of chickens. And then there's one that's labeled female novelists. So I guess in the 1850s, they thought female novelists were fat.

[Ron Krishewski]

Too many.

[Matt Levine]

Pipe down, by the way, that was my favorite of the three. Like, I really like the consumer angle. Obviously, it's fun to talk about the chicken sandwich wars. It's interesting, like, the market structure and some of the trust questions and the power. But, like, I do think, like, one of the great sources of wealth in modern society is abundant access to fairly inexpensive protein. And the story of the chicken getting plumper and plumper, the antibiotics that are used to keep them alive and keep them growing and avoid sickness, the sort of feeding mechanisms and so forth that have turned this sort of scrawny bird that Tracy was talking to in a sort of very tasty bird. Like, to me, that's like. Like, that's riveting. That's exciting. That's progress right there.

[Katie Greifeld]

Then it takes the soybean futures to make it more.

[Matt Levine]

Yeah, right. And the soybean futures, which, of course are crucial, which we really like. That's the thing we could have done, like, because chicken is so great, we could have done episodes on Feed futures because chicken is just so inherently connected to everything else.

[Joe Weisenthal]

This could have been like a 12 part series easily.

[Ron Krishewski]

I think I was gonna say you've gotta get Ray Dalio on.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah. Well, Ray Dalio.

[Ron Krishewski]

Now we're in a booking war.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Victorian chicken bubble. The grain market that underpins chicken nuggets.

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[Katie Greifeld]

Wait, I want to talk about the market structure. Yeah, there's an episode on essentially like how chicken is like Uber where yeah, like the farmers who farm the chickens don't own the chickens. They are outsourced from these big. They call them integrators like Tyson and Purdue where the integrators deliver hours old chicks to the farmers. The farmers take care of them for a couple of weeks and then the integrators take them back and turn them into chicken nuggets. Why is it like that?

[Joe Weisenthal]

That's a really good question. I think it's just like an outcrop of the way the chicken industry evolved. By the way, I have an interesting fact. If you don't know, chickens can still be sent live through the US mail so you can live order baby chips.

[Ron Krishewski]

Have you done that?

[Joe Weisenthal]

No, but I don't really want to. I would rather go to like a local agricultural tractor. Yeah, exactly. But anyway, so the way it worked is in the sort of 1920s, 1930s, we started getting these big broiler houses. So people discovered. This is actually one of Joe's favorite stories. The woman in Delaware.

[Matt Levine]

Yeah, there was a woman in Delaware who had a great name, Cecile Long Steel. And she ordered what, she ordered 100 chickens?

[Joe Weisenthal]

No, no, it was like 10 chicks.

[Matt Levine]

She ordered like 10 chicks in the mail and accidentally ordered a thousand. So she's like, all right, I guess I'm gonna become a farmer.

[Ron Krishewski]

That never happens to me.

[Matt Levine]

No, it doesn't happen to me either. The point about Uber. And so then people get into the farming because they're like, oh, I like the idea of farming. And it doesn't seem that bad to be a chicken farmer. But like, they're extremely highly constrained. The integrators, they deliver them the chickens, they tell them the exact specifications of the barn, the temperature, the feed, how much feed, and so forth. And then they compete against each other in what's called the tournament system.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah. So you as the farmer, are actually responsible for a lot of the capital investments that are needed to raise chickens. Meanwhile, the big integrators, like a Tyson or Purdue, they provide a lot of the inputs. So the baby chicks themselves, they'll tell you, like, what medicines to use, what kind of food. And so in the eyes of the farmers, they feel like they are absorbing a lot of the big risks here while not really having a lot of control over stuff that ultimately affects the end product.

[Matt Levine]

And then the tournament is you have this pool of farmers in an area and your pay for some period is how far above or below the average of that pool.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yes. You're pitted against each other.

[Matt Levine]

You're pitted against each other. There's like a fixed pot. And then each round, you know, some people had the best chickens or the, the heaviest chickens or whatever it is, and some had the worst and so forth. And so it's very constrained type of farming. If you imagine farming in Iowa in some idyllic sense, which I think some people still do, but I think we also know it's big industrial business. It's not that vision.

[Ron Krishewski]

Yeah.

[Katie Greifeld]

Sort of like retailers, like not owning their real estate. It's like, weird that the capital requirement comes from the individual small farmers. And these big companies aren't making the capital investments.

[Joe Weisenthal]

It seems to be a super beneficial way of structuring their business for the big companies. Right. You could see why they like it. And by the way, like asset light. Yeah, that's exactly it. And they will argue that, like actually providing the initial round of chicks and the food and the medicine is like a big cost center and they are taking that on. But again, like all the farmers we spoke to had pretty similar complaints, right?

[Katie Greifeld]

Because it's not like Uber. It's not like literally they're just like, you know, like a matching app. Like they have a lot of.

[Matt Levine]

Yeah, yeah, that's right, that's right. But you know, sometimes like with Uber you're like, oh, you could like be an entrepreneur. You know, like they pitch at that. But in the end, the rules of the business are heavily constrained and it's all within the context of Uber and policy changes that Uber can make, et cetera. It's similar to that in that there is a cap on one's ability to be sort of like actually a business owner in the sense given how constrained it is.

[Katie Greifeld]

Oh, you can be a farmer, you can like run a farm. But it's like, no, really, you're just like following their orders.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Speaking of Uber, it also gets to something else in the modern US economy, which is sort of the prevalence of the middleman and the power that they wield over the economy. So Uber basically matches passengers with drivers and it makes a lot of money from doing that. If you look at the farming industry, for every dollar that comes out of agriculture, farmers get like 20 cents. The other 80 cents is going to someone else. And a lot of these someone else turns out to be middlemen like the, you know, the distribution networks, the integrators in some respect, the packaging, things like that.

[Matt Levine]

And there's the role of the pricing algorithm setting companies too. So this is really interesting because we talk to all these like antitrust experts, et cetera. And there are like various targets of the integrators themselves, whether they're uncompetitive things. And this has come up over the years. But another thing that's come up across a range of industries, again chicken as the lens to uncover other aspects of the economy is can you have tacit price setting systems not via people getting in a smoke filled room and doing nefarious things, but via a third party pricing entity that everyone uses as some agreed upon oracle. And people make this claim in all kinds of different industries these days. And again, I'm not a antitrust lawyer expert, I don't have a view on this, but it is certainly one area that the antitrust focused people are like eager to see sink their teeth into.

[Katie Greifeld]

We talked about this on our podcast about farmer's markets because there's like a Cornell project that like gives basically like market price information to people running stalls at farmers markets. And I sort of jokingly suggest that that that is analogous to like, you know, the DOJ brought a case against RealPage in the rental business and then you talk about they brought a case against acristats in the sort of big agriculture business.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Lurking beneath every antitrust case is a discussion over whether you're actually breaking the law or it's. It's just good business.

[Katie Greifeld]

Right. It's wild because it's like, you know, in the olden days like you'd get together in a room and you'd be like, oh, these are our prices, these are our prices. And you'd like wink or whatever and it'd be like we've agreed to set prices here. There's no like explicit agreement. But it's just like if everyone has each other's prices then there is an argument that I'm not really sure is true. It seems to be true. There's an argument that, that like allows them all to.

[Matt Levine]

It's a coordinating mechanism.

[Katie Greifeld]

Yeah, it's a coordinating mechanism. If I know everyone's prices, I can undercut everyone by a penny and I can, you know, gain market share. And that doesn't seem to be.

[Matt Levine]

I know the question is in some these instances whether you get penalized or whether now I don't have any. I do not know whether this ever came up in the agristats claim in some of the interest in agristats. But isn't one of the arguments, at least in RealPage that some of the allegations are that there was some penalty to landlords who deviated or that there was some. Right.

[Katie Greifeld]

I don't think it's quite that but I think it's that RealPage is both like providing the information and also providing a pricing recommendation. And so RealPage pushes those up, let's say. But if you're providing pure information, like I think if you have a literal.

[Matt Levine]

If I have an spy etf, I'm going to look at the ticker on the Bloomberg terminal first before I sell it.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Right, you'll do market research.

[Matt Levine]

Yeah, yeah. Did that actually happen in the old days? Like people like oh, smoke filled room, wink. Like did that really happen? Or is that just a metaphor that we use to describe coordination?

[Joe Weisenthal]

Are you asking Matt, if you're asking.

[Katie Greifeld]

Matt as a lawyer, the most famous cartel is OPEC where they meet in a room. Right. And there have been recent cases, you know, like the FTC is a little concerned about some like us shell producers going to those meetings and like there's like a dinner. And like was the dinner to discuss raising prices or not? Like, the people say no. The FTC says yes. It's like a little, there was definitely a dinner. What did they talk about at the dinner? There's a famous story, and I'm not forgetting on where, where it was. There's a famous story of a company, like there was a formal policy that they would say we are not going to collude with componen competitors. And then they'd wink to say they were. And then like they sent out a memo or like there's like a recording of someone saying I didn't wink. Like it's like, it's like a famous story in antitrust enforcement.

[Joe Weisenthal]

But Matt, to your point, your point earlier about like, okay, if you could see everyone's prices or you have like a rough guideline about what's going on with prices, why don't you just undercut your competitors? This is something that we talk about in the first episode when we're talking about the consumer experience and inflation. And the answer is, well, if you only have a hand of big companies that are doing this, you know, first of all, the incentive is not necessarily there to try to get into a price war. This is the classic like antitrust argument. If you consolidate companies and they raise their prices, they have more market power. But there's another aspect going on in the past few years which is we had the big pandemic. We had avian flu, we had labor shortages, we had all these massive one off specific events. And when that happens, you know, consumers hear about them. And so if companies, companies say, well, we have to raise our prices because of avian flu or because of the pandemic, consumers are more willing to kind of accept that and they have fewer alternatives. Right. If everyone is doing it at the same time because of these same like exogenous shocks, then where are you going to go to get cheap eggs or chickens?

[Katie Greifeld]

Check out beak Capitalism on the Odd Lots podcast feed.

[Enrique]

Wherever you get your podcasts from the Delta Sky Club. Welcome back, Ms. Klein, to the JetBridge. Delta Air Lines relies on 5G solutions from T Mobile for business to power operations and serve customers faster. Together we're putting 5G into the hands of ground staff so they can better assist on the go travelers with real time information throughout the airport. This is elevating customer experience. This is Delta Air Lines with T Mobile for business. Take your business further@t mobile.com now.

[Austin Freirek]

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[Katie Greifeld]

Do you guys know about the Georgia Doc?

[Joe Weisenthal]

No, like Doc, like D O C K. This rings a bell. Actually.

[Katie Greifeld]

I wrote about this years ago and I don't know if it's still a thing. There have been like periodic waves of antitrust interest in the chicken industry and there was one in like 2017, 2018 that I used to refer to as Chicken Libor. There's a thing, an index called the Georgia Doc Index, which was set by a guy, his name was Artie Schrontz. He worked for the like Georgia Department of Agriculture or whatever, and he would call chicken producers every day, every week or whatever and say, what price are you getting for like two and a half pound chicken? Which as I learned from your podcast, no one produces two and a half pound chickens anymore. So the people would like make up a number and they'd tell him the number and he'd write it down and that would go into the Georgia Dock Index. And then a lot of like chicken supply contracts were set as like a, you know, premium.

[Joe Weisenthal]

So presumably they were pushing it up.

[Matt Levine]

It's Chicken Live.

[Katie Greifeld]

So like there were allegations that they were, you know, reporting too high prices to the Georgia.

[Joe Weisenthal]

We have another episode for our 12 part series.

[Matt Levine]

It's interesting, over the years you learn like how many indices that exist that you can find a chart of are essentially put together like this. Years ago, probably about like nine years ago, I remember talking to someone who was working at Bloomberg actually, and there was like some scrap metal index and it was just like you call. There were like a handful of junk metal yards that you call up and then you get the price. Actually, you know, speaking of another one is lumber. And what's really interesting. So the company that creates the lumber index, I think it's called random lengths, actually, and they're the ones who create the benchmark futures. They also have a very interesting thing. So they do this, they call various places, how much did you sell a piece of lumber for each day? And then what's actually cool is you can read the contract and they talk about all of the ethical things that like the rules of the question because they are aware that all indices such as these create situations potentially like Georgia Docs or Libor. And so they actually have a whole set of rules about the collection process that addresses basically exactly this question.

[Ron Krishewski]

I thought you were going to bring up the dog kill index. That's.

[Matt Levine]

This is Tracy's obsession.

[Ron Krishewski]

But I don't think anyone is pushing up the price of that benchmark article.

[Joe Weisenthal]

This was one of our questions at a recent Bloomberg quiz was like, which of these indexes is actually real? Which of these terminal indexes? And the one that was real was the dog kill index. Almost no one got that right.

[Matt Levine]

Yeah, that's a. How many.

[Joe Weisenthal]

No one believes that that actually exists. You know, we used to have a Columbia listeners.

[Katie Greifeld]

The dog.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Oh, yeah. So it's basically the number of dogs that die in the possession of airplanes when they're in air transit.

[Matt Levine]

This is a very macabre.

[Ron Krishewski]

I know.

[Joe Weisenthal]

But speaking of macabre indexes, we used to have a Columbia kidnapping index too, but I think they discontinued that once they died down a bit.

[Ron Krishewski]

Some deep lore.

[Matt Levine]

This is lore.

[Ron Krishewski]

I do want to talk about the price of eggs more because that's another index.

[Katie Greifeld]

Right? There's like.

[Ron Krishewski]

Yeah, well, it's sort of become one of, at least in my circles, one of the most watched indexes because you talk about inflation and the thing that people complain about is gas and eggs. And I mean, Tracy, you were mentioning that there's well explained reasons why the price of eggs has been so volatile, bird flu being one of them. And I'm never quite sure where we are in the cycle of bird flu because it's an issue and then it feels like it died down again. Now we're talking about bird flu again. And I just don't know where we are in terms of how worried I should be about bird flu.

[Joe Weisenthal]

So when we started the series, we did not really expect eggs to become this huge political talking point, but they did during the election and where we are with bird flu. Okay, so we had a really big spike in 2022 and we saw the price of eggs shoot up that since died down. But if you look at the egg price index on the Bloomberg, there's more than one, by the way. We have a bunch of different ones. You can see they're starting to go back up again. And that's because we are getting more bird flu reported. The interesting thing is we're starting to get it in other animals too. So you, you know, cows, pigs are the really worrying one because pigs have like a genome that is very similar to humans. And so the concern is that if it gets into pigs, it'll mutate into something.

[Ron Krishewski]

That would be my question, like at what point, Personally, I need to be concerned about contracting bird flu in some way.

[Joe Weisenthal]

When more pigs start getting bird flu and when it starts mutating, some smart.

[Matt Levine]

People I know are like anxious, yeah.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah, yeah, you need a pig mutation index on the Bloomberg terminal. That would be really worse.

[Ron Krishewski]

Gotta get our best and brightest on us. That's worrisome. Well, before I spiral, let's just keep it to like the chicken industry. Cause I do wonder, I mean, how does it spread? One of the parts that was a hard listen when it came to this episode was listening to, I think it was Craig Watts describing how he had like 30,000 chickens in 20,000 square feet. It sounds like these birds are just on top of each other. So I mean, how quickly does bird flu spread and what does that mean for the industry?

[Joe Weisenthal]

So you're right, this is one of the downsides of industrial scale chicken farming, which is you have a lot of birds and you have them in a relatively crowded space. Joe has heard me tell this story before. Not many people know that I was born in Arkansas and so I spent time there with my grandma and she used to take me to like chicken farms for fun or something. I don't know why, but I would walk into these like giant warehouses thinking like, oh, this is going to be fun. I'm going to play with like fluffy baby chicks and I love chickens, blah, blah, blah. And you'd walk in and you'd be like looking around and there are a lot of dead chickens. They're just like lying there. You know, they get cleaned up once a day or so. But there's a lot. So yeah, this is the issue. So you have crowded conditions. It's very difficult to segregate farm chickens from the wild bird population. Like wild birds that have avian flu can still get in. They can eat the grain, infect it that way. And so that's one reason why it's been really hard to stamp out speaking on this point.

[Matt Levine]

You know, another interesting angle here is the sort of externalities of industrial. What's his name? Austin Freirek. Yeah, one of the guys. And talk about the wastewater runoff, et cetera. And so, like, like I said, I am an optimist about the existence of cheap protein, and I think it's a marker of a wealthy society. But there are some interesting costs that we have to seriously. And one of them is environmental and what it does to sort of the various water streams and some of these areas where there is a lot of industrial farming and excrement gets in the water, which is really bad, obviously. And so there are, you know, obviously bird flu itself, and the potential for that to move into other animals is scary. But then there are also this sort of, like, slower burn issues, and why in some farming communities, there's been, like, a pushback about, like, how much more of this do we want and how much everyone else has. Cheap chicken is sort of slow degradation of the environment around it so depressing.

[Joe Weisenthal]

We'Ve left you speechless.

[Katie Greifeld]

Is there, like, an artisanal chicken farming ecosystem or is that just there must be at those.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Well, I mean, backyard chickens would be one way of doing that.

[Katie Greifeld]

If you go to a store to buy, like, the fanciest chicken you can find, is it still from a giant warehouse or. Or.

[Joe Weisenthal]

That's actually a good question. I know of one. Again, I'm slightly obsessed with chickens. I know of one, like, avian geneticist in the northeast who breeds really interesting chickens, and he's sort of like, on a small scale. So maybe they do exist.

[Ron Krishewski]

Well, on a slightly bigger scale. I interviewed the CEO of Vital Farms last week, and one of their advertising points is that it's like, 107 square feet per chicken. So that was really interesting. He also said, I thought this was interesting, too, on his most recent earnings call. Our challenge right now, as always, is that I can't get the chickens to lay more eggs in the short run. So a lot of demand and not a lot of eggs. But, I mean, that's interesting again, that they're advertising on that point that we give these chickens all this space.

[Matt Levine]

Are brown eggs just, like, better than white eggs? I feel like we have. They don't look as nice. So I think people just assume they must be either better for the environment or healthier. Is there anything to that?

[Joe Weisenthal]

Have you seen the Easter egger Chicken chickens. No, these are the ones that lay eggs in all different colors. So like blue and green and white and brown.

[Ron Krishewski]

How do you. My stupid question. How do you get them to lace feed them different?

[Joe Weisenthal]

No, no, you don't. They just do it. The one thing I don't know is like, whether one Easter egger produces like, only green eggs and then another Easter egger will produce, like, only pink ones.

[Ron Krishewski]

I thought that the bunny rabbits laid the Easter eggs.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah, that's right.

[Ron Krishewski]

Katie, you're thinking that chickenization. I said that.

[Matt Levine]

Right, Right, yeah.

[Ron Krishewski]

Do other animal industries look like this? Does the pork industry look like this? What does the cow industry look like? Is it as depressing?

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah. So this is another talking point from the podcast, which is this very, you know, up until now, unique model of producing chickens, where the big integrators are outsourcing a lot of those big capital risks, is becoming more common in agriculture itself. So the big example, Joe brought this up earlier would be pig farming in Iowa. And it gets to interesting questions in business about who should bear the ultimate costs of a business. We kind of talked about that earlier. But again, to Joe's point earlier, it gets to interesting questions about who should bear the environmental costs. So maybe all of America is okay with Iowa, like being responsible for raising our pigs and having to deal with like, manure runoff and stuff like that and spoiling its water systems. But probably Iowa is not.

[Matt Levine]

Can I just say, like, after having done this series, I don't really view it as depressing. I don't want this to be seen as like, you know, some sort of Jeremiah against the chicken industry. I just think there's a lot of interesting tensions. Right. Like there's benefits to industrial scale chicken farming. There's complicated market aspects of industrial chicken scale farming. There's amazing consumer outcomes like the chicken sandwich wars and. And like, those are very delicious. And there are costs, whether it is the risk borne by the farmers, the risk of disease, and the risk of environment. It's a mix. Right. Like, I don't. But I didn't perceive the whole project to be like an anti chicken thing at all.

[Joe Weisenthal]

No, I want both the people and the chickens to be happy. That's my version of an ideal future.

[Ron Krishewski]

Well, that's like I can't, as an animal freak, can't get past the chickens and like, you know, them falling over because, like, they've been.

[Matt Levine]

Yeah.

[Ron Krishewski]

Where, you know, they can't stand up straight. I don't know if this came up in any of your discussions, but, like, where Are we on lab grown chicken? Because I.

[Matt Levine]

Another thing.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah, we did another episode.

[Ron Krishewski]

That, like, cheap protein is great for a society. It's the marker of a successful society. But surely there's a way to achieve that without what's happening to these animals really showing my true colors on this podcast.

[Matt Levine]

You have your turn.

[Ron Krishewski]

No.

[Matt Levine]

Okay. It's no judgment.

[Ron Krishewski]

I was for several years, and then, you know, I lost.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Joe was vegetarian, too.

[Matt Levine]

I was. I was raised vegetarian. I had my first meat when I was age 24.

[Ron Krishewski]

Whoa.

[Matt Levine]

When I moved to New York, I was like, all right, there's just too much good food there.

[Katie Greifeld]

I never looked back.

[Matt Levine]

Yeah, I didn't. I didn't. And I, like, went straight. I was like. I tried.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Wait, what was it? Do you remember?

[Matt Levine]

So I ate a piece of sushi, which is a little weird because people are like, I was raw, but I looked at people like. And then a week later, I was, like, eating steaks.

[Ron Krishewski]

That's a hard launch.

[Matt Levine]

Yeah, it's a hard, hard launch.

[Enrique]

Yeah.

[Matt Levine]

My parents were hippies, and so I was raised vegetarian. Yeah.

[Ron Krishewski]

I was a vegetarian for, like, ages 11 to 14. I feel like I stunted my growth. I'm shorter than both my parents. But anyway, it doesn't matter.

[Matt Levine]

You're a podcaster.

[Ron Krishewski]

Nothing does.

[Katie Greifeld]

Thanks for coming on, guys.

[Matt Levine]

Thanks for having us. That was a blast.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah. Thank you for letting us talk about chicken.

[Ron Krishewski]

No one made a chicken sound or a pun or.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah, no, you made one pun.

[Katie Greifeld]

I did.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah. I was very proud of you.

[Matt Levine]

Wait, what did I say?

[Joe Weisenthal]

I can't remember. But you did make one.

[Katie Greifeld]

And that was the Money Stuff Podcast. I'm Matt Levine.

[Ron Krishewski]

And I'm Katie Greifeld.

[Katie Greifeld]

You can find my work by subscribing to the Money stuff newsletter on Bloomberg.com.

[Ron Krishewski]

And you can find me on Bloomberg TV every day on Open Interest between 9 to 11am Eastern.

[Katie Greifeld]

We'd love to hear from. You can send an email to moneypodlumberg.net Ask us a question and we might answer it on air.

[Ron Krishewski]

You can also subscribe to our show wherever you're listening right now and leave us a review. It helps more people find the show.

[Katie Greifeld]

The Money Stuff podcast is produced by Anna Mazarakis and Moses Andam.

[Ron Krishewski]

Our theme music was composed by Blake Maples. Special thanks this week to Carmen Rodriguez.

[Katie Greifeld]

Brendan Francis Newnham is our executive producer.

[Ron Krishewski]

And Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's head of podcasts.

[Katie Greifeld]

Thanks for listening to the Money Stuff Podcast. We'll be back next week with more stuff.

[Ron Krishewski]

Thanks for listening to the Money Stuff Podcast if you never want to miss a story, become a Bloomberg.com subscriber today. Check out our special intro offer right [e-mail] podcast offer or click the link in our show notes. You'll also unlock deep reporting, data and analysis from reporters around the world.

[Enrique]

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[Joe Weisenthal]

You're all set.

[Enrique]

This is Enrique Enriching Customer Experience. This is Tractor Supply with T Mobile for Business. Take your business further@t mobile.com now.

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