Industrial Agriculture and Agribusiness Consolidation
BACK TO: Food System Sustainability Issues
Industrial agriculture is sometimes considered a great success. But is it? It has had large, complex effects on our environment, our economy, and our urban and rural social fabric. A new awareness of the costs is beginning to suggest that the benefits are not as great as they formerly appeared. Many of the costs of industrial agriculture have been hidden and ignored in short-term calculations of profit and productivity, as practices have been developed with a narrow focus on increased production. The research establishment that underpins modern industrial agriculture has until recently paid little heed to the unintended and long-term consequences of these systems.
- Union of Concerned Scientists
Multinational agro-food companies want to be seen as generous global citizens who can continually improve the menu of food choices for wealthier consumers, while at the same time solving the problem of hunger in poor countries through new technologies and free trade agreements. But behind such benign and carefully-crafted slogans as “supermarket to the world” lies a more complex reality. The trend toward consolidation at every stage along the food production chain has dramatically impacted the global economy and distribution of income and wealth. Corporate spending on lobbying and campaign finance ensures that food companies and their trade associations will have far more influence on trade and regulatory policy than most voters realize.
Meanwhile, farmers, processing and retail workers are all squeezed by the monopoly power of food conglomerates so large that they can set farm wokers’ and others’ wages and farmgate prices substantially below levels that would ensure a decent standard of living. The food companies’ inflated profit margins also come at the expense of the environment: pesticide residues, soil erosion, air and water pollution, loss of biodiversity and inhumane treatment of animals are all exacerbated by the industrial approach to agriculture favored by the major food companies.
- Agribusiness Accountability Initiative
- Union of Concerned Scientists
Hidden Costs of Industrial Agriculture
Failure to Yield: Evaluating the Performance of Genetically Engineered Crops
- Agribusiness Accountability Initiative
Agribusiness Accountability Project Library articles:
Consolidation in Agriculture
Power Buyers, Power Sellers: How Supermarkets Impact Farmers, Workers and Consumers
Other Issue Briefs
- Yes! Magazine Flyer
Just The Facts: When Corporations Rule Our Food
- World Food Security: A Catholic View of Food Policy in the New Millennium
by Martin M. McLaughlin, Center of Concern, 2002.
Transnational Corporations and the Global Food System
- United Nations Conference on Trade and Development
Tracking the Trend Towards Market Concentration: The Case of the Agricultural Input Industry
- University of Missouri Department of Rural Sociology Datasheet:
Concentration of Agricultural Markets
- Joe Horner, Dairy Economist, Commercial Agriculture Program, University of Missouri
Trends in the U.S. Dairy Industry
- Food and Water Watch
Dairy 101
- Corporate Accountability International
Value [The] Meal
Factsheet
- William H. Friedland, University of California
Agrifood Globalization and Commodity Systems
- Etc. Group Communiqués
Global Seed Industry Concentration 2005
World’s Top Ten Seed Companies 2006
Who Owns Nature? Corporate Power and the Final Frontier in the Commodification of Life
- Rural Advancement Foundation International, 1998
Seed Industry Consolidation: Who Owns Whom?
- International Coalition of “No Patents on Seeds”
The Future of Seeds and Food Under the Growing Threat of Patents and Market Concentration
- SOS Food
The leading group in the New York metro area organizing to stop genetically engineered food. We are a grassroots organization. Our mission is to challenge destructive practices of industrial agriculture and offer sane and sustainable alternatives.
