https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-round-up-big-ag-vs-mak
Every five years, Congress passes what’s called the Farm Bill
The Farm Bill basically helps big processors through various financing, insurance, and subsidy programs that encourage the development of big farms that grow one or two main crops or use industrial livestock housing. The law is designed as a compromise. To oversimplify, urban Democrats want subsidized food for poor people in cities, while rural Republicans want subsidies for agribusiness and farmers, most notably corn and soy. It’s usually a scuffle, as a contact told me, between “food stamps versus subsidies for the big row crops, most of which goes to the top 10% of farms.”
But this compromise presumes that the agricultural system is working, and that we’re just kind of splitting the bounty.
. And yet, something has gone very wrong of late; we have recently become a net importer in terms of the value of agricultural commodities. Increasingly, to older farmers, it doesn’t seem worth it to produce food anymore.
One of the big reasons, of course is monopolization. The middleman takes the value, so domestic producers increasingly see less and less reason to produce.
JBS, National Beef, Tyson, and Cargill control 80-85% of cattle processing, with the rest spread among a smaller assortment of firms.
despite the highly consolidated nature of our food system, and what seems to be its slow breakdown, competition policy has traditionally played a very minor to non-existent role in debates over the Farm Bill
Farmers are mad that inputs like seeds and chemicals and fertilizers are consolidated and overpriced, and producers of chicken, pork, and beef feel they aren’t getting enough for their work from large processors.