SOUTHERN JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS JULY, 1975 A COMPARATIVE REGIONAL ANALYSIS OF THE WHOLESALE MARKETING MARGIN FOR CRUSHED COTTONSEED

Economic events since the 1972-73 crop year for cottonseed during the crop years of-1958-1973 have generated much interest in cottonseed prices. in order to (1) more clearly determine how the Cotton producers, observing a doubling of whole- marketing margin has behaved and (2) discover sale prices of cottonseed oil and meal during the differences, if any, among regional marketing last three years, have wondered whether they are margins. getting an equitable share of this increased income. They have largely stopped thinking of their cotton- REGIONAL BREAKDOWN seed as merely a means of payment for ginning charges and have begun to regard it as a potential Cotton is produced in southern portions of the source of supplementary income. United States, generally south of the 36th parallel. The limited objective of this paper is to ex- Four major cotton producing regions can be de-amine, by regions, the wholesale marketing margin lineated (Figure 1), each region containing all o