Less
than 15 cents of your food dollar now goes to American farmers.
Two
giants now control 60% of all raw milk processed nationwide in the
US— a concentration that works to suppress the farm price of milk.
But the processor monopoly is more severe than that number suggests.
Because of rigged marketing rules and the perishable nature of milk,
farmers sell regionally, and these markets are even more locked down
by the Big Two. The largest — Dean Foods, an $8 billion behemoth —
controls 90% of dairy markets in Wisconsin and Michigan, 70% in New
England and 70-90% in several other states.
The
Big Four processing/marketing giants control production of 55% of all
turkeys, 59% of chickens, 66% of hogs, 70% of soybeans, 80% of corn
and 84% of beef.
Two
corporations (John Deere and CNH Industrial) control nearly half the
U.S. farm machinery market. Aside from price, these manufacturers
gouge farmers with such devious ploys as prohibiting them or local
shops from repairing their own machines. Instead, the companies
mandate expensive, time-wasting reliance on often distant
dealerships.
In
1996, farmers (and gardeners) could buy from some 600 independent
seed companies in the U.S. By 2009, only 100 remained. By 2016, just
ten corporations controlled 75% of the global seed
market. And in the short time since, a series of megamergers has
essentially eliminated the competition: Dow Chemical took over
DuPont; ChemChina swallowed Syngenta, the Swiss biotech conglomerate;
Germany’s BASF bought out multiple seed producers; and Bayer, the
voracious German colossus, has been allowed to consume Monsanto.
Today, two-thirds of the world’s crop seed supply is controlled by
only four private entities — with Bayer controlling a quarter to a
third of the global seed market. In just two decades, U.S. farmers
have seen the price of seeds for major row crops nearly quadruple,
even as the pay they receive for raising those crops has plummeted.
They’ve
genetically tampered with seeds to make corn, soybeans and other
crops withstand heavy applications of toxic, weed-killing chemicals.
And who are the biggest peddlers of these chemicals? The seed
monopolists. (Bayer sells $12 billion in ag chemicals, 21-22.9% of
the global agrichemical market.) Thus, farmers are now doubly
squeezed by higher-priced patented seeds and by the cost of the
expensive chemicals they require. Meanwhile, the seed monopolists
prohibit farmers from saving seeds from this year’s crop to plant
next year’s (a practice as old as agriculture). It’s a deliberate
restraint of trade that shackles farmers to abusive corporate
masters, nature to ever-more-toxic pesticide regimens and humanity to
monocultures vulnerable to pandemic crop disease and climate change.
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