Several forces are converging to encourage the agricultural industry to form more tightly aligned supply chains. Efficiency, synergies, inter-firm pooling of resources, customer responsiveness, and risk sharing are the four key objectives that firms seek to improve by forming such chains (Besanko, Dranove, &Shanley, 2000). Efficiencies are often gained by more accurately sharing information between parties in the chain. For example, a pork processor may be able to manage the flow schedule of hogs through the slaughter plant by contracting or even owning the production stage of the pork chain. And complementary inter-firm synergies resulting from, for example, alliances between research and development (R&D) and manufacturing firms and downstream distribution and marketing firms can also be captured with effective supply chains.