Fight the Power… of the New Colonisers

Austin Frerick, author of Barons, says this is crucial to build a better system

For the past week, I’ve been humming the very catchy refrain in Avicii’s “Wake Me Up”. The first sentence of the chorus, to be precise, that goes, “So wake me up when it’s all over”. 

Obviously I can’t match Aloe Blacc’s wonderful vocals but that line sums up my feelings about the state of the world in general and the political landscape in Europe in particular.

So it was invigorating to chat at length with Austin Frerick, an expert on agricultural and antitrust policy who has written - wait for it - a rollicking book on how monopolies and monopsonies are ruining America’s food system and what can be done to reverse the situation. 

It left me hopeful and energised. I hope it will do the same to you too. 

Did you know that… 

• Pigs in Iowa outnumber human residents by a ratio of more than seven to one and produce a volume of manure equivalent to the waste of nearly 84 million people? 

• Cargill is now the largest private company in America, larger even than the Koch Industries, and handles more than 25% of the world’s grain trade? 

• JBS Foods, the world’s largest meat processing company, butchers almost enough meat daily to give a 112-gram portion to every citizen of Australia, Canada, Poland, Spain and Italy combined? 

Now you do, thanks to Austin Frerick, author of Barons, Fellow at Yale University’s Thurman Arnold Project, and formerly with the Open Markets Institute and the U.S. Department of Treasury. 

For a book about such weighty matters as antitrust, how America’s food system came to be dominated by a handful of extremely powerful people, and filled with shocking factoids such as the ones above, Barons is an easy, captivating read. 

As a seventh-generation Iowan, his recollections about where Iowa was and where it is now and his family’s link to farming and food systems also keep the book firmly rooted in the personal and relatable category, despite the topic’s academic nature.

So of course I had to speak to him for Thin Ink. The conversation has been edited lightly for length and clarity. 

Q: How has the response to the book been? I mean, for a book on monopoly, you wrote it like a thriller, so it's very accessible but it is still, in a sense, niche, right? 

A: It's funny, my publisher thought this was a niche book. An academic book. What's actually surprised me the most is how much the business traveller has really taken to the book. It’s selling really well in airports. 

I feel like The New York Times crowd is focused on the high end restaurant and not on the labour component or the story of the food itself. There's such a disconnect, I think, in the book world and the food writing space.

Q: That’s really interesting because that’s one of the nuts we’ve been trying to crack at Lighthouse Reports as well. Like you have these people consuming all the food videos on Instagram and TikTok and the food shows on Netflix. How can we get them interested in food systems and the inherent inequality around it? Have you had any light bulb moments? 

A: That is honestly something I struggled with for the last few years. I worked on this book for five years, and as weird as it sounds, I always say talking about the book is like stand up comedy. You're trying out your jokes, your rhetoric, you’re reading the audience. 

For the first few years of this book, I didn't have the robber barons framework. But when I realised it's about using brands people know, and telling them, “Oh, there's like a thriller type story here”. Each of my chapters is really a structural story, but I'm hiding it in a punchy narrative. Kind of like hiding the vegetable in your food.

But you're right about the food system stuff. What blows my mind is that Americans spend $80,000 on a kitchen, but then they buy garbage to eat. 

I think it also says something about the state of media in America, where so much of the news outlets that would report these structural stories, like the Des Moines Register, have essentially been gutted. I was reading you guys' work (on farmer representation) and the parallels just kept blowing my mind. 

A lot of those folks you guys talked about and wrote about… to me, they're just capital asset managers, but they cosplays as farmers. 

Q: Gosh, yes (laughs). One thing that struck me while reading the book is the massive discrepancy between this push and rhetoric around free market and consumer choice, and yet what's happening in the food industry is the exact opposite of it. How do you explain it? 

A: I had a simple “aha” moment a few years ago when I was sitting in on a business school class and you realise the goal of any corporate executive is monopoly. So the whole notion of free market is you want to take away the guard rail so you can consolidate power. 

It’s all empty rhetoric, and then once you lock in your monopoly, you do regulatory capture. Honestly, the only farmer in the free market, really, in America, is at the farmers market. I mean, they're not getting any subsidies. 

Q: In your book, you also called these barons the new colonisers. Can you explain a little bit more and what the parallels are? 

A: So I never want to romanticise the past in the food system, especially in the American context, because it's rooted in genocide and slavery but there were a lot of meaningful progress to reform and equalise the system. And what we've really seen in what I call The Second Gilded Age.

Some people call it Neoliberalism but it's a return to these really dark undercurrents, like my Berry Barons chapter. They're engaging in a modern day sharecropping quasi-plantation model.

It started with chickens in America, the model that was applied to poor black farmers in the South. It’s called chickenisation (Thin: see here and here), where you see a race to the bottom. Because, turns out, if you squeeze farmers and workers, it's really beneficial to a corporation. So you see these really dark colonial models take hold because they're going to be profitable. 

Q: You also wrote about how consolidation actually leads to extremist views. I want you to elaborate on this, particularly because I just feel like this is where the world is right now. 

A: My favourite chapter and the thesis of my book is my Coffee Baron chapter. I tried to be subtle about it, but then I don't see the point of being subtle anymore, because monopolies finance fascists. 

I mean, so much of what a family farm is, is a balanced ecosystem. People are their own employer. When those systems give way and people are now working for capital asset managers, they're angry, you know? Part of working in these hog confinements, your job is hauling dead pig bodies every day. Imagine the trauma and what that means for your dignity.

And as this industrial model takes hold and these rural areas become extraction colonies, we shouldn't be shocked to see the politics of anger fill that void.

After World War Two, the Congress commissioned a study on how did this happen and one of the big findings was that monopolies finance fascists. So there was trust busting essentially. Hitler's largest donor was a company called IG Farben. There's a fantastic book called Hell's Cartel on this. Hitler walked into the room and said, “I’ll help you sell more chemicals”. And they were like, “Great, here's a big cheque”. Years later, they made and sold the chemicals used in the gas chambers.

After World War Two, the company was broken up into like seven or nine different companies, including one which is the modern day Bayer-Monsanto. You become a robber baron because you’re willing to cross ethical lines other people aren't willing to cross, and that bleeds into the political system, because economic power  wants political power.

Q: But there's also this persistent idea that family farms or small farms are nice and good for biodiversity, climate resilience, a diverse diet, etc, but that they don't feed people, and therefore you need intensive operations. I’ve heard that from so many people. What do you think of that? 

A: I just don't buy that. I'm sorry. 

Take the dairy industry in America. The average American milk consumption is going down, but our dairy production is going up because we're making more cheese and ice cream. On top of that we're producing too much in areas that shouldn't be having dairy production because of the climate, like New Mexico and California. 

America's already dealing with an obesity crisis. Why are we trying to get people to eat more fat? So it's hard to entertain that idea that we need these industrial models to feed the world, because what's underlining that hollow rhetoric is usually, “Let's use our destructive model on them, instead of helping them build their own models”.

So, I usually view that rhetoric as Trojan horse. It's not sincere rhetoric. 

There's a lot of reporting on the corporate capture of pharmaceutical research, but you do not see the same in agriculture. You have so many Ag economists in America on the dole of industry and they don't disclose it. So you have a lot of these talking heads (that say this). 

Q: Do you see what's happening in America's food industry as a harbinger of what's to come for the rest of the world. Or do you see it as parallel movements? 

A: This model is all about feeding the beast and we’re seeing clashes on that, even in North America. Mexico basically is rejecting industrial Iowa corn. Canada's rejecting industrial American dairy. They’ve seen what those models do. I think the U.S. and EU were clashing too, before the Ukraine war broke out. 

There's a food sovereignty component to this too. There's a colonial-ness to the desire for multinationals to dump our food models on sovereign nations. 

Q: You’re right about the U.S. and EU clashing. When the EU came up with the Farm to Fork strategy, the U.S. was very critical. 

A: I think that should have gotten way more attention in America! 

To go back to the earlier question about the American model leading the world, I mean, the American model is going to have a “Come to Jesus” moment. It has to.

Number one, ethanol is going to die. I mean, the Biden administration has been really aggressive about transitioning American auto fleet to EVs and hybrids, and that will kill ethanol. The second is that any way you cut it, agriculture's the second largest contributor to the Climate Crisis, and we've done nothing of substance these last few years. At some point, the rubber’s going to have to meet the road. 

Q: My concern is whether that’ll be too late. In Europe, Farm to Fork is essentially dying a slow death because of all the lobbying. Now the EU is going to have a very, very right-wing parliament and some countries are going to have super right-wing governments. And they won’t be interested in doing anything of substance. Do you have any thoughts on what's happening in Europe? 

A: I mean, I can’t get over the parallels of you guys' reporting on groups pretending to be on the side of farmers. There’s some reporting in America of a dark marriage between Big Ag and Big Oil because of the use of fossil fuels. The Koch brothers are actually massive in agriculture - I don't think people realise that - but they’re in the nitrogen fertiliser business. 

I mean, a family farm doesn't have money to lobby. They don't usually have time. But the Iowa Farm Bureau, for context, if you pull their 990 tax return, it has about $100 million a year operating budget. They have two jets. So their narrative sets the top line. 

A corn field outside Des Moines, Iowa. Photo by me.

Q: Are you optimistic or pessimistic that we will actually tackle these problems? 

A: Honestly, it depends on the day. (Laughs)

I mean, here’s the thing. Greed always goes too far. The Gilded Ages always come to an end. I do think we're gonna have a cleansing moment. This system can't keep it going. But this is where I get really depressed because… it's always the most marginal people that have to pay the consequences of it. 

I mean, we're obsessed with the farmer, but one in 10 Americans who actually work in the system are people like my mom and dad, who pick, process, transport, and cook the food, you know? That’s mostly women of colour and they're bearing the brunt of this. 

And honestly, in the European context, I hope you guys don't lose your cultural identity from this. The under-appreciated thing in America is the homogenisation. Local farmers and local businesses maintain culture. When you lose that, you really lose your culture and your sense of identity. 

I can't say this enough. Iowa is the canary in the coal mine, and you don't want to go down that coal mine.

Q: Speaking of Iowa, I was in Des Moines nearly two years ago and was shocked when I found out how all the grains I saw growing - corn and soy - were mostly for fuel and feed and not for food, and that Iowa is the hog capital of the U.S. because of course we couldn’t see those hog farms from the road or the air. So it was so interesting to read that in your book as well. 

A: Yeah, (the soil) is wasted. Isn't that wild? I really do see Iowa as the canary in the coal mine for the American food system. You have the best soil in the country. You also have second highest cancer rate. It's one of the most obese states. It's like this highly corporatised and industrialised system just breaks a community. 

The fact that most your waterways… you can't go into in the summer to cool off because they're just too toxic. That didn't happen overnight, and you just get kind of numb and used to it.  

Q: What do you want readers of your book to walk away with? What’s the message you want to give them? 

A: That the system we have now is radical. It is radical that one man can rear a million hogs. 

Everything we're talking about is actually traditional. Like, I want to put animals on the land. What a radical concept! From an American context, no one’s articulating a positive vision for the food system or for rural America. And my experiences on this book tour is that people really crave a positive vision. Because who isn't happy after a good meal? 

My message is that we can choose to have a different system. It doesn't have to be this way. I want to have a really honest conversation of where things are because you have to understand how they got to where they are so you can fix them. 

Q: I really like one of the things you wrote about is how the suggestions or solutions are for individuals but we really need to talk about the system itself. That’s what we’re trying to do as well. Instead of blaming the consumers for not living a certain life, or not buying a certain thing, it’s to show the system is rigged. Having said that, do you have any advice for consumers who want to make a difference?

A: I don't actually like the word consumers, because of the notion of consumption. Rhetoric is so important here. I mean, so much rhetoric around the food system now is designed to keep people out, or wall people out. 

But honestly, school meals, I actually think are a really powerful vehicle for a positive system wide change, because they buy so much. Your individual consumption won't change much, but if you pair up that local farmer doing it right with your school, that stabilises them. 

A lot of farmers will tell you they don't like the market. You get rained out. It's not a consistent income, but schools buy a lot of carrots consistently, so you're essentially keeping your money local. It's good politics. That’s what you can do individually… is to change the food system in your local school, your local college.

Because as we try to phase out this other system, we have to essentially help foster a new system. Most people are good people. In writing this book over five years, you meet a lot of people. It's a few really greedy people who are bad. 

Q: Will there be Barons 2?

A: I don't know. The wild thing is at a lot of my book talks, people come up and like, “Oh, you should look at this Potato Baron or this Carrot Baron.” So I have a whole document going. But I think of it more as what structural points do I want to talk about? And then I find a narrative to tell that. Who knows? 

Q: Anything else you’d like to add? 

A: My last thing is - focus on the positive. What should the food system look like? What should a post-neoliberal better-for-the-climate system look like? No one's gonna give you a space at the table and the Vilsack types (THIN: the current Agriculture Secretary in the U.S.) will control the conversation. You have to embrace the David versus Goliath-ness as well. 

They win when you don't pay attention and they win with time, so understanding that, and having that sense of urgency and aggressiveness is key. 

To me the best model here is actually the success of the big tech anti-monopoly people. No one gave them a seat at the table. They fought for it. And like, the appointment of Lena Khan as the Federal Trade Commissioner in America is a game changer. You're seeing a living historical figure and there's a good chance she's going to break up Big Tech. 

On top of it, she's a celebrity for young lawyers. She walks in any law school in America, the room's packed. She is someone taking on power. In an era where people feel so powerlessness, they find that so inspiring. Even in Iowa, she did an event on fertiliser consolidation in a small town and she got 100 people. That is the hope. 

Thin’s Pickings - The Election Edition

Pro Tip: Have a glass of wine or beer before you read these, because you’ll need it.

1. Back Forty: Real problems, fake news, and consequences for EU climate policy - Food & Environment Reporting Network
   A sharp, concise piece from Paul Tullis about the origins of farmer discontent in the Netherlands and how that helped paved the way for the ascent of the far right.
   

2. Passing the Buck & Losing - System Change
   Ann Petitfor didn’t mince her words in blaming the “politically stupid, sadistic finance ministers” for the role they played in undermining Europe’s environmental ambitions and helping the far right to gain power.

3. Wake up! After these elections, Europe is again in danger - The Guardian
   Timothy Garton Ash’s read of the election results and what this means for the green transition and military support for Ukraine. But will anyone take heed of his warning?

As always, please feel free to share this post and send tips and thoughts on mastodon @ThinInk@journa.host, my LinkedIn page, twitter @thinink, or via e-mail thin@thin-ink.net.