Table 3. — Linear trends of fisherman's share in the retail markets of different finfish products during 1950-7! and shellfish 



products during 1959-71' 



Fisherman's share in the retail market 



Pex 

 Pr 



X 100. The time series of calculated annual values of fisherman's share is used as the 



independent variable for the regression analysis of each fish product. Pr = retail price; Pex = ex-vessel price adjusted to a value equivalent 

 to the quantity sold to the consumer. 



(Tables 1 and 2). But the fisherman's share of 

 36.6% in the finfish market was much lower than the 

 farmer's share in beef and pork markets, which were 

 65% and 45% respectively. 



Beef and pork are sold in large quantities in the 

 market. Compared with fish products, beef con- 

 sumption during 1969-71 averaged about 10 times 

 greater and pork consumption 6 times greater. To 

 handle the large quantities of meat products, each 

 meat packing plant is operated on a much larger scale 

 and with more automation than a fish processing 

 plant. It is likely that, due to economics of scale, 

 meat packing has an edge over fish processing in 

 being able to lower packing and marketing costs 

 (National Commission on Food Marketing, 1966b). 

 Fish are not sold in as large quantities as meat in the 

 retail market. Demand for fish products is less elas- 

 tic than that for beef and pork (U.S. Department of 

 Agriculture, 1967).*' Owing to the large sales of meat, 

 meat prices, particularly beef prices, are more often 

 offered by retail stores as the "price leaders" to 

 attract customers. Beef and pork prices are, there- 

 fore, cut to the lowest possible levels (National 

 Commission on Food Marketing, 1966a). These cuts 

 reduce the margins on beef and pork sales and raise 

 the farmer's share accordingly. 



" The price elasticity of demand for beef was estimated to be 

 -0.76: for pork. -0.82: for fish and seafood. -0.07 at the retail 

 level (U.S. Depanment of .Agriculture. 19671. 



TREND OF PRICE SPREADS OF FISH 

 PRODUCTS 



While the fisherman's share is expressed in per- 

 centage terms of the retail price, price spread is an 

 absolute value between price and cost. The price 

 spread of a food product can be divided into as many 

 margins as there are ownership transfers and availa- 

 ble price information. In this study, the prices of 

 each fish product are gathered at four levels — ex- 

 vessel, processing, wholesale, and retail (Fig. 2 to 

 14, and Appendix Tables 3 to 15). 



Ex-vessel Prices 



When all prices are adjusted to constant dollar 

 value, ^ prices at the ex-vessel level trended upward 

 for some species since 1950, particularly haddock, 

 sea scallops, American lobsters, and shrimp, and 

 downward for tuna and ocean perch. Because of 

 changes in stocks or runs.'" ex-vessel prices of 

 halibut, pink salmon, and blue crab fluctuated annu- 



" The constant dollar value of a commodity at any market level 

 is one when the current price of the commodity is adjusted to a 

 value as if the price has not risen because of inflation compared 

 with a certain pieriod as the base year. The adjustment is made by 

 di\ iding the actual prices of the commodity in a time series by the 

 corresponding indexes from the implicit price deflator series for 

 nondurable goods. In this study we use 1967 as the base year. 



'" Stock refers to the resource available for each species. Run 

 refers to the migration of a fish up a river to spawn. 



10 



