Marketing Spreads for Soybean and Cottonseed Oils Used in Salad Dressing

Excerpts from the Introduction: Salad dressings as a group have become an important part of the daily diets of consumers in the United States. Per capita consumption increased from 2.6 pints per person in 1940 to 7.4 pints in 1966. During this period there were changes in product formulation and in the number of brands available. For example, consumers paid twice as much for a pint of cooked salad dressing in 1966 as in 1940; the average retail price was 41.2 cents in 1966 compared with 20.7 cents in 1940. Salad dressings are required by the Food and Drug Administration to contain at least 30 percent fat. Soybeans and cottonseed are the sources of about 99 percent of the oils used in salad dressing products. The major shift in the utilization of various types of fats and oils in recent years created considerable marketing problems for agencies assembling, processing, and distributing these products. The objectives of this study are to determine marketing margins covering payments for services provided by marketing agencies in transforming soybean, cottonseed, and other vegetable oils into salad dressing, and distributing salad dressing to consumers; to ascertain margins associated with major and minor brands of salad dressing, and retail outlets by six different area locations; and to evaluate farm-to-retail price spreads for salad dressings.