1932 to 1937 — “The Collective Farm Policy was a terrible struggle, Ten million died. It was fearful. ” – Joseph Stalin

1934 — “[Our] future is becoming visible in Russia.” Assistant Secretary of Agriculture — Rexford Tugwell

“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?” —Maurice Strong

“Each year, [Strong] explains as background to… the novel’s plot, the World Economic Forum convenes in Davos, Switzerland. Over 1,000 CEO’s, prime ministers, finance ministers, and leading academics gather in February to attend meetings and set economic agendas for the year ahead. With this as a setting, he then says: ‘What if a small group of these world leaders were to conclude that the principle risk to the earth comes from the actions of the rich countries? …In order to save the planet, the group decides: Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring this about?’

“‘This group of world leaders,’ he continues, ‘forms a secret society to bring about an economic collapse. It’s February. They’re all at Davos. These aren’t terrorists. They’re world leaders. They have positioned themselves in the world’s commodities and stock markets. They’ve engineered, using their access to stock markets and computers and gold supplies, a panic….. This is Maurice Strong. He knows these world leaders. He is, in fact, co-chairman of the Council of the World Economic Forum. He sits at the fulcrum of power. He is in a position to do it. ‘I probably shouldn’t be saying things like this.'”

Daniel Wood, “The Wizard of the Baca Grande,” West Magazine (Alberta, Canada), May 1990.

September 1995 – Catherine Bertini, Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Program, and former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Agriculture, stated “Food is power. We use it to change behavior. Some may call that bribery. We do not apologize.” UN’s 4th World Conference on Women: Beijing, China. — LINK

We cannot divorce what is happening to the US dollar from the food supply. In 2020, Americans allocated the highest proportion of their average pre-tax household income (APTHI) to housing (25.4%), transportation (11.6%), and food (8.7%). In 2022 food is expected to increase by 7.3% to 12.9%, transportation by 5.8% to 15.9%, and housing by 5.3% to 33.1%. LINK

Tucker Carlson does a great riff on the problem:

I already presented a chart on money devaluation. The price of gold indicates the steady devaluation of the US dollar as its purchasing power is diluted by the ever increasing supply of fiat money. This is important to know as we go into high gas prices ==> higher food prices. Now we are looking at the possibility that the US Dollar will lose its Reserve Currency Status. Some think that could cause the ‘exported inflation’ to come flooding back.

Inflation: The Biggest Export of the United States? 

Alternate view from Gary North (Austrian Economist)

As of July 2013, currency in circulation—that is, U.S. coins and paper currency in the hands of the public—totaled about $1.2 trillion dollars. The amount of cash in circulation has risen rapidly in recent decades and much of the increase has been caused by demand from abroad. The Federal Reserve estimates that the majority of the cash in circulation today is outside the United States.

New York Fed

If you look at the price of gold, you can see how the value of the dollar has dropped and how the minimum wage no longer has the buying power it had in 1959. You could also look at minimum wage vs the price of a gallon of gas. From $0.31 in 1959 (minimum wage = $1.00 or 3.2 gal/hr in pay) to $4.41 on March 22, 2022 (minimum wage = $7.25 or 1.64 gal/hr in pay)

However the price of diesel fuel has even more of an impact than gasoline, on the cost of living. Before 1993, the allowable sulfur level in diesel fuel was 5,000 parts per million (ppm). From 1993 until 2006, allowable sulfur was 500 ppm. And beginning in 2006, EPA began to phase-in more stringent regulations to lower the amount of sulfur in diesel fuel to 15 ppm. This caused the cost of diesel to go from well below that of gasoline to $0.95 cents more than gasoline today. This has a major effect on the transportation costs of all commodities AND the production of food.

THE SET-UP BY MR GLOBAL

Four privately owned grain traders control 90% of the grain. They are Cargill, Louis Dreyfus, Andre, and Bunge. Dan Amstutz, who worked for 25 years as a grain trader and VP at Cargill drafted the original text of the WTO Agreement on Agriculture. He also wrote the 1996 Freedom to Farm Act that was passed a year after the USA entered the WTO. The Grain Traders say this about Amstutz: “Throughout his very successful career Dan Amstutz represented and championed the ideas and goals of NAEGA membership “ (That’s the North American Export Grain Association.) Dan Amstutz did not represent the interests of farmers or consumers when he wrote that draft, or that farm bill. Instead he represented the interests of the Transnational Ag Cartel. NAEGA: Dan Amstutz Tribute

AGRICULTURE AND MONOPOLY CAPITAL

TABLE 1

Broilers (meat Chickens): 55% of production

Tyson-Foods, Gold Kist, Perdue Farms, ConAgra

Beef: 87% of slaughter

IBP, ConAgra (Armour, Swift, Monfort, Miller) Cargill (Excel), Farmland Industries (national Beef)

Pork: 60% of slaughter

Smithfield, Ibp, ConAgra, Cargill

Sheep: 73% of slaughter

ConAgra, Superior Packing, High Country, Denver Lamb

Turkey: 35% of production

ConAgra (Butterball), Wamper Turkeys, Hormel (Jennie-O), Rocco Turkeys

Flour Milling: 62% of milling

Archer Daniels Midland, ConAgra, Cargill, Cereal Food Processors

Soybean Crushing: 76% of processing

Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill, Bunge, Ag Processors

Dry Corn Milling: 57% of milling

Bunge, Illinois Cereal Mills, Archer Daniel Midland, ConAgra (Lincon Grain)

Wet Corn Milling: 74% of Milling

Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill, Tate and Lyle, CPC

Source: W. Hefferman “Concentration of Agricultural Markets” Unpublished paper; Dept of Rural Sociology Univ of Missouri-Columbia (October 1997)

Forty percent or more of the processing of all agricultural commodities in the Midwest are controlled by the four largest firms. Although debate continues in the United States and in other countries on what constitutes an oligopolistic or near oligopolistic market, much of the economic literature suggests that when four firms control 40% of the market they are able to exert influence on the market unlike that in a competitive system….

by WILLIAM D. HEFFERNAN (1998)

It’s interesting that in the time it took me to write this article the paper above was pulled from the internet. However it was captured by the Wayback Machine. The following article is also no longer available on the Internet, however it was not archived so I am reproducing what I saved here. (Remember this was the bill written by Dan Amstutz, the same guy who wrote the WTO Agreement on Ag.)

THE FREEDOM TO FARM ACT — (Senate hearing – March 28, 2000)

MR. WELLSTONE: Mr. President,…
…in 1996, both houses of Congress approved a new farm bill, described then as “the most sweeping change in agriculture since the Depression. It would get rid of government subsidies to farmers over the next seven years.”

….The bill has made sweeping changes in agriculture–it has produced one of the worst economic crises that rural American has ever experienced….The Freedom to Farm bill is not saving tax payers money, in fact we have spent $19 billion more in the first 4 years of the 1996 farm bill than was supposed to be spent through the 7 year life of the law….However, what has resulted is the precipitous loss of family farmers because this legislation has not provided small and moderate sized farmers with a safety net. Instead payment loopholes have been inserted in legislation that has allowed the largest argibusiness corporations to receive the lions share of government support.

In my State of Minnesota, family farm income has decreased 43 percent since 1996 and more than 25 percent of the remaining farms may not cover expenses for 2000….In addition, merger after merger in the agriculture sector leaves producers wondering if they will be able to survive amidst the new giants of agribusiness…. …unless we address the current trend of consolidation and vertical integration in corporate agriculture, nothing else we do to maintain the family size farms will succeed.The farm share of profit in the food system has been declining for over 20 years….From 1994 to 1998, consumer prices have increased 3 percent while the prices paid to farmers for their products has plunged 36 percent. Likewise, the impact of price disparity is reinforced by reports of record profits among agribusinesses at the same time producers are suffering an economic depression….In the past decade and a half, an explosion of mergers, acquisitions, and anti-competitive practices has raised concentration in American agriculture to record levels….

[long list of ag consolidation by product]

According to the economic literature, markets are no longer competitive if the top four firms control over 40 percent. In all the markets I just listed, the market share of the top four firms is 40 percent or more. So there really is no effective competition in these processing markets.But now, with this explosion of mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, marketing agreements, and anticompetitive behavior by the largest firms, these and other commodity markets are becoming more and more concentrated by the day…..

Dead link: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?r106:S28MR0-0011:

Freedom to Fail: How U.S. Farming Policies Have Helped Agribusiness And Pushed Family Farmers Toward Extinction

 “ According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, almost 90 percent of the total income of rancher or farmer households now comes from outside earnings….

The driving force behind U.S. farm policy is the 1996 seven-year farm program titled the Federal Agricultural Improvement and Reform Act — with the ironic acronym (FAIR). The bill, dubbed “Freedom to Farm” by its bipartisan proponents, put an end to the New Deal system of production controls and eliminates federal price supports. It provides farmers with a guarantee of fixed but declining payments to end in 2002, and allows flexibility to plant whatever they like.

Prior to Freedom to Farm, if the price for a market commodity — such as soy, wheat or corn — dipped below the price floor, the government would cover the difference, thus ensuring that price wouldn’t fall below the cost of production. Freedom to Farm eliminated price floors and removed “production controls” including land set asides and farmer-owned grain reserves. By giving farmers some ability to limit the amount of commodities on the market, these policies had given farmers some control over the price for their crops. Finally, the FAIR legislation gradually transitions away to the point of eliminating farm programs after the year 2002….

The effects of Freedom to Farm have been immediate and devastating. Proponents touted the program as a way to increase exports and the price of crops. But “Freedom to Farm” has failed miserably on both accounts. Exports of corn, wheat, soybeans and sorghum have dropped by nearly 10 percent since enactment of Freedom to Farm. More importantly, prices have collapsed, with corn going from $3.24 a bushel in 1995-1996 to $1.90 in 1999-2000, wheat dropping from $4.55 to $2.50, soybeans declining from $6.72 to $4.70 and sorghum plummeting from $3.19 to $1.60…..

Ben Lilliston and Niel Ritchie

When people started learning that farmers were losing money growing food the USDA SPRANG INTO ACTION. They revised the calculating method and started including the hypothetical RENTAL VALUE OF THE HOME AS PART OF THE FARM INCOME!

LAND CLEARANCES

The last time the Banksters collapsed the US economy they stole all the privately held US gold, thanks to FDR. This time they want our land. And not just USA farmland but everyone’s. LINK

Removing farmers from the land to increase profit and to provide cheap labor for factories is nothing new.

The Highland Clearances

In the late 1700s and early to mid 1800s Crofters and highlanders were systematically removed from their lands and their livelihoods to make way for sheep farming which was much more profitable at that time. The first mass emigration was in 1792 when many of the people were forced to leave the land that had been farmed by them and their forefathers to go to America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Those that did not emigrate were forced to live in cities or on poor unfarmable land by the rugged sealine. They were not sea farers and did not know how to make a living from the sea. Often their small crofts and out buildings were razed to the ground with fire. Sometimes with the elderly still in them.

These brutal Highland clearances devastated the Gaelic culture, split up families and clans and removed entire communities from the lands that they had farmed for centuries leaving them no option but to emigrate for a better life, as in Scotland they were left fairly destitute.

Many of those that did not emigrate were instead moved to cities such as Glasgow. In 1840, as many as 30,000 Gaelic speaking highlanders moved from farming their small tracts of land and tending a few animals to the English speaking city where they had no skills and were forced into factories. The population grew so quickly that housing was a huge problem with many families sharing one room….

History, HACCP and the Food Safety Con Job

With World War II, America saw its agricultural system intentionally subjected to political policies that radically transformed it. What was once a decentralized system that provided a means to self sufficiency and independence for tens of millions of farmers was purposefully centralized into a capital-intensive fossil-fuel dependent system that restructured local economies, permitting their wealth to be extracted by what are now transnational cartels dedicated to the so-called free market and globalized trade at all cost.

This transformation was the result of organized plans developed by a group of highly powerful – though unelected – financial and industrial executives who wanted to drastically change agricultural practices in the US to better serve their collective corporate financial agenda. This group, called the Committee for Economic Development, was officially established in 1942 as a sister organization to the Council on Foreign Relations. [Both belong to The Rhodes/Milner/Round Table Group -GC] CED has influenced US domestic policies in much the same way that the CFR has influenced the nation’s foreign policies.[1]

Composed of chief executive officers and chairmen from the federal reserve, the banking industry, private equity firms, insurance companies, railroads, information technology firms, publishing companies, pharmaceutical companies, the oil and automotive industries, meat packing companies, retailers and assisted by university economists – representatives from every sector of the economy with the key exception of farmers themselves –

CED determined that the problem with American agriculture was that there were too many farmers. But the CED had a “solution”: millions of farmers would just have to be eliminated.

In a number of reports written over a few decades, CED recommended that farming “resources” – that is, farmers – be reduced. In its 1945 report “Agriculture in an Expanding Economy,” CED complained that “the excess of human resources engaged in agriculture is probably the most important single factor in the ‘farm problem'” and describes how agricultural production can be better organized to fit to business needs.[2] A report published in 1962 entitled “An Adaptive Program for Agriculture”[3] is even more blunt in its objectives, leading Time Magazine to remark that CED had a plan for fixing the identified problem: “The essential fact to be faced, argues CED, is that with present high levels farm productivity, more labor is involved in agriculture production that the market demands – in short, there are too may farmers. To solve that problem, CED offers a program with three main prongs.”….

 Nicole Johnson

Sound familiar?

And do not forget that NAFTA plus taxpayer-subsidized grain in the EU and the USA was used to wipe out Mexican farmers. “…According to a study by Jose Romero and Alicia Puyana carried out for the federal government of Mexico, between 1992 and 2002, the number of agricultural households fell an astounding 75% – from 2.3 million to 575, 000…” Small Farmers And The Doha Round: Lessons From Mexico’s NAFTA Experience

After driving farmers and others from England and Europe to settle in North America and Australia, allowing them to tame the new land and make it productive, Mr Global/City of London is ready to takeover.

Betting the farm – CNN

As world population expands, the demand for arable land should soar. At least that’s what George Soros, Lord Rothschild, and other investors believe….

And if you cannot buy it at the ‘right price’ then you go and drive farmers & ranchers off their land. Most are aware of the Bundy ranch mess. The Bureau of Land Management director was Sen. Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) former senior adviser. A commenter checked out Nevada land transfers and found BLM was grabbing ranches and transferring ownership to Harry Reid’s family members for a $1.00. The BLM’s official reason for encircling the Bundy family with sniper teams and helicopters was to protect the endangered desert tortoise, which the agency had previously been killing in mass due to “budget constraints.” However the BLM has purged documents from its web site stating that the agency wanted Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy’s cattle off of the land his family had worked for over 140 years in order to make way for solar panel power stations. Free Republic reposted the BLM documents for posterity. One of them, entitled “Cattle Trespass Impacts” directly states that Bundy’s cattle “impacts” solar development, specifically the construction of “utility-scale solar power generation facilities” on “public lands.” Rory Reid (Sen. Harry Reid’s eldest son) represents the Chinese firm ENN Energy Group and JA Solar…. GEE he sounds like Hunter Biden doesn’t he?

And then it spread to Oregon: What LaVoy Finicum May Not Have Known and You Should (about Uranium One)

Although those two land /energy wars are the most well known they are not the only ones.

L.A. County’s Private Property War – The Antelope Valley Land Clearance

…..On Oct. 17, 2007, Marcelle opened the door to a loud knock. Her heart jumped when she found a man backed by two armed county agents in bulletproof vests. She was alone in the cabin, a dot in the vast open space of the Antelope Valley, without a neighbor for more than half a mile. She feared that something had happened to her daughter, who was visiting from Montreal.

“It has a bedroom, bathroom, kitchenette, all that.” Joey Gallo, a disabled vet facing homelessness under county orders, with his friend Lucky.

The men demanded her driver’s license, telling her, “This building is not permitted — everything must go.” Normally sassy, Marcelle handed over her ID — even her green card, just in case. Stepping out, she realized that her 1,000-square-foot cabin was surrounded by men with drawn guns. “You have no right to be here,” one informed her. Baffled and shaking with fear, she called her daughter — please come right away.

As her ordeal wore on, she heard one agent, looking inside their comfortable cabin, say to another: “This one’s a real shame — this is a real nice one.”

A “shame” because the authorities eventually would enact some of the most powerful rules imaginable against rural residents: the order to bring the home up to current codes or dismantle the 26-year-old cabin, leaving only bare ground.

“They wouldn’t let me grandfather in the water tank,” Jacques Dupuis says. “It is so heart-wrenching because there was a way to salvage this, but they wouldn’t work with me. It was, ‘Tear it down. Period.’ ”

In order to clear the title on their land, the Dupuises are spending what would have been peaceful retirement days dismantling every board and nail of their home — by hand — because they can’t afford to hire a crew.

Tough code enforcement has been ramped up in these unincorporated areas of L.A. County, leaving the iconoclasts who chose to live in distant sectors of the Antelope Valley frightened, confused and livid. They point the finger at the Board of Supervisors’ Nuisance Abatement Teams, known as NAT, instituted in 2006 by Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael Antonovich in his sprawling Fifth District. The teams’ mission: “to abate the more difficult code violations and public nuisance conditions on private property.”

L.A. Weekly found in a six-week investigation that county inspectors and armed DA investigators also are pursuing victimless misdemeanors and code violations, with sometimes tragic results. The government can define land on which residents have lived for years as “vacant” if their cabins, homes and mobile homes are on parcels where the land use hasn’t been legally established. Some have been jailed for defying the officials in downtown Los Angeles, while others have lost their savings and belongings trying to meet the county’s “final zoning enforcement orders.” Los Angeles County has left some residents, who appeared to be doing no harm, homeless…..

Turns out that Our old friend Warren Buffet was the one who ultimately benefited from this set of Land Clearances.

Warren Buffet Buys Antelope Valley Solar Projects (World’s Largest) for $2.5 Billion

So what the heck is going on??

25x’25: Increasing Agriculture’s Role in Domestic Energy

So there is a LOT of money to be made in using former farmland to produce green energy. I will address some of that in the next article.

The Other ½ of the Land Grab is Verticalization

These are feel good articles but they give you an idea of what is happening.

Vertical Integration – National Chicken Council

Vertical integration of the broiler industry allows producers to combine different biosecurity and sanitation practices, housing technologies and feeding regimens to improve food safety. This structure allows greater governance over each aspect of food safety from the breeder farm to the hatchery through the processing plant.

Vertical integration allows the industry to maintain strict biosecurity measures, vaccination programs and testing for bacteria such as Salmonella at breeder farms and hatcheries. In the feed mill, feed is frequently heat-treated to prevent the spread of any bacteria between the feed and the birds. At the grow out house, strict biosecurity measures, pest management control and the “all in all out” concept controls the spread of disease between the birds, houses and flocks.

Once the birds are removed from the grow out houses, they are promptly delivered to the processing plant where strict testing regimes are in place throughout the plant to minimize the spread of bacteria.

Strict records are maintained and steam lined throughout the entire process regarding testing results, vaccination schedules, biosecurity and sanitation protocols.

Growing chickens under contract
Today, more than 90 percent of all chickens raised for human consumption in the United States are produced by independent farmers working under contract with integrated chicken production and processing companies. Most of the other ten percent are company-owned farms and less than one percent are raised by individual growers.

The contract growing system provides many farmers an additional source of income outside of crop farming, livestock farming, or production of other agriculture commodities. When growers enter into an agreement with a chicken processor to raise broilers, they get a guaranteed market and thus avoid market risk (that is, the risk of being unable to sell their products or having to sell at a loss). They also have a reliable source of income and access to production resources such as “technical advice, managerial expertise, market knowledge, and . . . technological advances” (ERS, USDA, 1999) provided by the company.

Contract terms vary from company to company; most outline the division of responsibility between growers and contractors. In general the “grower cares for the chickens, and usually provides land and housing facilities, utilities, labor, and other operating expenses, such as repairs and maintenance . . . The contractor provides chicks, feed, veterinary supplies and services, management services or field personnel, and transportation for the birds to and from the farm” (ERS, USDA, 1999).
Through the contract growing system, processors reduce uncertainties in production and marketing by controlling quality and quantity of their products, and diversify their operations to better meet consumer demands of high quality, economical chicken products.

The chicks are hatched at company-owned hatcheries, vaccinated against poultry diseases, and delivered to the grower’s farm, where he (or she) houses them in large, specialized structures called growout houses. The company also delivers feed, which the farmer distributes to the flock through a mechanical system.

When the birds reach market age and weight in six or seven weeks, the farmer is paid on the basis of weight gained by the flock, which is influenced by the farmer’s skill and good management. This incentive system is considered a time-honored way of rewarding growers who do a better-than-average job. Successful farmers are committed to the business and understand the need to improve their facilities and adapt to changing conditions….

The Food Safety Modernization act regulated independent farmers out of business. It also transferred liability from the corporate processing plant to the farmer via “tracability.’ We looked into raising chickens on our farm. What they do not mention is you are actually paid about a $1.00 an hour for your labor. (If your kids are doing a lot of the labor, then it is not as big a deal.) You have to have chicken houses that meet USDA standards (Remember the new regulations?) and these are SOLD TO YOU by the corporation. Funny how those standards change just after you have paid those houses off so you have to buy NEW. Just like the truck driving companies that lease/sell you the truck you drive, you end up a slave to the corporation via contract. SEE: Lease Owner Operator Plans – 10 Reasons to RUN the Other Way!

China’s Shuanghui to Buy Smithfield Foods – WSJ

China’s largest meat processor struck a surprise $4.7 billion agreement to acquire Smithfield Foods, a deal that would mark the biggest Chinese takeover of an American company. Shuanghui’s offer was a 31% premium to Smithfield’s Tuesday closing price of $25.97 on the New York Stock Exchange. The company’s shares jumped 28% to close at $33.35 Wednesday following [the] news

Smithfield Food’s Vertical Integration Strategy

…..Their core business focus was on mainly pork, and beef to a lesser extent. The company opted for an aggressive growth strategy which is primarily based on amongst others a geographic expansion:

They carried out 32 acquisitions since 1981. They expanded into foreign markets – Smithfield made acquisitions in Canada, France, Romania and Poland. Acquired meat processors in Poland and Romania; including a hog farming operation in the latter country….Most importantly, they followed a vertical integration strategy into the pork business: This entailed a full or partial integration (depending on location), with operations ranging from operations in hog farming, feed mill, meat packing plants and distribution. They also carried out joint ventures . Established joint ventures in Spain, Mexico, and China …

Lessons From Smithfield Foods

COMPANY STRATEGY
In 2001 Smithfield outlined its strategy as having four pillars:

(1) vertical integration,

(2) advanced genetics, [Remember Monsanto’s Pig Patents.]

(3) strategic acquisitions and

(4) value-added & branded products

 Living High on the Hog: Factory Farms, Federal Policy, and the Structural Transformation of Swine Production
(THINK OF CHINA’s PURCHASE of Smithfield when reading this:)

Feeding the Factory Farm The significance of these findings is clear. To the extent that federal farm policy has reduced the market prices for the main components of hog feed, it has reduced costs for operations that buy feed—specialized, industrialized operations. We calculate the cost savings to industrial operations at an average of $947 million per year between 1997 and 2005, or a total of $8.52 billion over the nine-year period. This discount was not available to smaller operations that grew their own feed. The availability of low-priced hog feed on the market may have contributed to a structural transformation in hog production, encouraging the growth of industrial operations by giving them a cost advantage over diversified competitors. These cost advantages may have had less to do with efficiency gains accruing to larger operations than with U.S. government policies that reduced corn and soybean prices below production costs.

So American tax payers are paying to feed Chinese owned hogs and Cattle and Poultry…

How vertical integration is impacting food and Agribusiness

…Vertical integration, by definition, is the combination in one company of two or more stages of production normally operated by separate companies. This is typically done for reasons that tie back to quality control, reduced costs through economies of scale and even increased market share due to the high barriers of entry.

Backward integration occurs when a company acquires a key supplier or takes over a process typically done earlier in the value chain. In recent years, retailers have taken the spotlight, with a few exceptions, as follows:

Kroger, Albertsons, Meijer vertically integrate dairy products: Milk, cheese, butter and ice cream are commonly sold under a private label and these companies have set up manufacturing sites and dairy farms to bring production in-house. As of 2018, Kroger produced around 40% of its private label milk in-house.²

Walmart opens 250,000-square-foot milk processing facility in Fort Wayne, Indiana: The move will expand Walmart’s in-house private label milk brands. The company began production in late 2018.³

Costco announces a $400m investment in poultry production facility in Nebraska: The company will control every aspect — from egg hatcheries through to the processing of birds. Costco expects production to begin in late 2019 and ramp up to full production over one to two years.4

Amazon acquires Whole Foods for over $13b: Amazon now has access to customer data, private-label product lines and several hundred physical locations that are visited by affluent consumers.

General Mills partners with Gunsmoke Farms to convert 34,000 acres (53 square miles) of farmland in South Dakota to organic: This will guarantee a stronger supply of wheat for their organic brand Annie’s, which can be tailored to General Mills’ standards.5

Walmart creates its own supply chain for Angus beef: “As clean labels, traceability and transparency become more and more important to customers, we’ve made plans to enter into the beef industry creating an unmatched system that allows us to deliver consistent quality and value,” said Scott Neal, Senior Vice President, Meat, Walmart U.S. “By enlisting a number of best-in-class companies to take part in the supply chain, we’ll be able to provide customers with unprecedented quality, provide transparency throughout the supply chain and leverage the learnings we gain across our business.”

What we the consumer are never told is that once penetration pricing strategy (below cost) is used to capture a major market share, by bankrupting the small competitors, a business can then set a price to maximize profitability. Of course when all of those companies have interlocking boards….

 Economic Dimensions of Global Cartels, Detected 1990-2017: Food and Agriculture Markets. Purdue University Research Repository. doi:10.4231/RP5C-P425

The State of Corporate Concentration, 2013