Posted on 07/20/2014 11:26:33 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
From our fields to our forks, huge corporations have an overwhelming amount of power over our food supply every step of the way. Right now there are more than 313 million people living in the United States, and the job of feeding all of those people is almost entirely in the hands of just a few dozen monolithic companies. If you do not like how our food is produced or you don't believe that it is healthy enough, it isn't very hard to figure out who is to blame. These mammoth corporations are not in business to look out for the best interests of the American people. Rather, the purpose of these corporations is to maximize wealth for their shareholders. So the American people end up eating billions of pounds of extremely unhealthy food that is loaded with chemicals and additives each year, and we just keep getting sicker and sicker as a society. But these big corporations are raking in big profits, so they don't really care.
If we did actually have a capitalist system in this country, we would have a high level of competition in the food industry. But instead, the U.S. food industry has become increasingly concentrated with each passing year. Just consider the following numbers about the U.S. agricultural sector...
The U.S. agricultural sector suffers from abnormally high levels of concentration. Most economic sectors have concentration ratios around 40%, meaning that the top four firms in the industry control 40% of the market. If the concentration ratio is above 40%, experts believe competition can be threatened and market abuses are more likely to occur: the higher the number, the bigger the threat.
The concentration ratios in the agricultural sector are shocking.
-Four companies own 83.5% of the beef market.
-The top four firms own 66% of the hog industry.
-The top four firms control 58.5% of the broiler chicken industry.
-In the seed industry, four companies control 50% of the proprietary seed market and 43% of the commercial seed market worldwide.
-When it comes to genetically engineered (GE) crops, just one company, Monsanto, boasts control of over 85% of U.S. corn acreage and 91% of U.S. soybean acreage.
When so much power is concentrated in so few hands, it creates some tremendous dangers.
And many of these giant corporations (such as Monsanto) are extremely ruthless. Small farmers all over America are being wiped out and forced out of the business by the predatory business practices of these huge companies...
Because farmers rely on both buyers and sellers for their business, concentrated markets squeeze them at both ends. Sellers with high market power can inflate the prices of machinery, seeds, fertilizers and other goods that farmers need for their farms, while powerful buyers, such as processors, suppress the prices farmers are paid. The razor-thin profit margins on which farmers are forced to operate often push them to "get big or get out"—expanding into mega-operations or exiting the business altogether.
Of course the control that big corporations have over our food supply does not end at the farms.
The distribution of our food is also very highly concentrated. The graphic shared below was created by Oxfam International, and it shows how just 10 gigantic corporations control almost everything that we buy at the grocery store...
And these food distributors are often not very good citizens either.
For example, it was recently reported that Nestle is running a massive bottled water operation on a drought-stricken Indian reservation in California...
Among the windmills and creosote bushes of San Gorgonio Pass, a nondescript beige building stands flanked by water tanks. A sign at the entrance displays the logo of Arrowhead 100% Mountain Spring Water, with water flowing from a snowy mountain. Semi-trucks rumble in and out through the gates, carrying load after load of bottled water.
The plant, located on the Morongo Band of Mission Indians’ reservation, has been drawing water from wells alongside a spring in Millard Canyon for more than a decade. But as California’s drought deepens, some people in the area question how much water the plant is bottling and whether it’s right to sell water for profit in a desert region where springs are rare and underground aquifers have been declining.
Nestle doesn't stop to ask whether it is right or wrong to bottle water in the middle of the worst drought in the recorded history of the state of California.
They have the legal right to do it and they are making large profits doing it, and so they are just going to keep on doing it.
Perhaps you are thinking that you can avoid all of these corporations by eating organic and by shopping at natural food stores.
Well, it isn't necessarily that easy.
According to author Wenonah Hauter, the "health food industry" is also extremely concentrated...
Over the past 20 years, Whole Foods Market has acquired its competition, including Wellspring Grocery, Bread of Life, Bread & Circus, Food for Thought, Fresh Fields, Wild Oats Markets and others. Today the chain dominates the market because it has no national competitor. Over the past five years its gross sales have increased by half (47 percent) to $11.7 billion, and its net profit quadrupled to $465.6 million. One of the ways it has achieved this profitability is by selling conventional foods under the false illusion that they are better than products sold at a regular grocery store. Consumers falsely conclude that these products have been screened and are better, and they are willing to pay a higher price.
The distribution of organic foods is also extremely concentrated. A little-known company, United Natural Foods, Inc. (UNFI) now controls the distribution of organic and natural products. Publically traded, the company has a contract with Whole Foods and it is the major source of these products for the remaining independent natural food stores. This relationship has resulted in increasingly high prices for these foods. Small manufacturers are dependent on contracts with UNFI to get their products to market and conversely, small retailers often have to pay a premium price for products because of their dependence on this major distributor. Over the past five years, UNFI's net sales increased by more than half (55.6 percent) $5.2. billion. Its net profit margin increased by 88 percent to $91 million.
Everywhere you look, the corporations are in control.
And this is especially true when you look at big food retailers such as Wal-Mart.
Right now, grocery sales account for about half of all business at Wal-Mart, and approximately one out of every three dollars spent on groceries in the United States is spent at Wal-Mart.
That is absolutely astounding, and it obviously gives Wal-Mart an immense amount of power.
In fact, if you can believe it, Wal-Mart actually purchases a billion pounds of beef every single year.
So the next time someone asks you where the beef is, you can tell them that it is at Wal-Mart.
On the restaurant side, the ten largest fast food corporations account for 47 percent of all fast food sales, and the love affair that Americans have with fast food does not appear to be in danger of ending any time soon.
Personally, if you do not like how these corporate giants are behaving, you can always complain.
But you are just one person among 313 million, and most of these big corporations are not going to consider the ramblings of one person to be of any significance whatsoever.
Collectively, however, we have great power. And the way that we are going to get these big corporations to change is by voting with our wallets.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of Americans seem quite satisfied with the status quo. So the population as a whole is likely going to continue to get sicker, fatter and less healthy with each passing year, and the big food corporations are going to keep becoming even more powerful.
Store brands are just large brands with a little less quality and a different label.
Sure, but people largely buy whats on the shelves. They spend billions on marketing to tell us what to buy and it mostly works.
If you customers don’t have any money do you really care?
/johnny
Most of them have been coerced by dear leader because he bullies them and food stamps is good for business.
Even giant corporations have to get money from customers. Broke, or dead customers are a bad business plan.
/johnny
If you don;t mind the 3rd world mouth-breather spitting in your food, gringo.
Yeah right. They spend the money to tell you what tastes great and makes all the girls in bars look great.
Why else would anyone drink Budweiser?
On a global level you target the customers with money no those without.
This article misses a VERY important point.
If a “big company” puts product in the store that doesn’t sell they’ll go out of business. That’s because another “big company” wants that shelf space, NOW.
The “big company” isn’t controlling our food. We are. We make choices every time we go to the grocery store that determine what will be there next time. The “big companies” are simply very good at monitoring what we want and delivering it. It’s what they do. They also try to influence us. Buyer beware.
But when it comes to choosing a government, we only get to make a choice every few years instead of every trip to the grocery store. That makes the government less responsive to us, unlike the store where there is real time competition every day, all day. We don’t have two governments competing at the same time. The competition is only allowed every few years and we must live with the results.
Government has control. As to the stuff available in the market, we need to blame ourselves (or our neighbors).
This is of course why one of the few objective measures of American health, life expectancy, continues to increase.
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005148.html
Ahh nice straw man argument.
Nothing wrong with naturally occurring glutamate.
But see that is not what we are talking about.
MSG is added to processed foods in levels far above that which occurs naturally say like in a tomato.
The reason is it enhances the flavor of processed foods. BUT like anything one eats or ingests way too much of something is far more harmful than not eating it at all.
When researchers want fat mice they get ones that have been fed high levels of MSG.
Its not rocket science Sparky...
Anyone with an IQ above 70 can figure out that food you grow in your garden is better for you health-wise than the slop that is brewed in some factory that has all manner of crap added to it so it won't spoil or taste bad when it gets to the consumer.
You never bothered to learn much about biology and chemistry, did you? That being a fact, why are you here talking about biology and chemistry when you know absolutely nothing about it? Why is it the people who know the least about something are always the first to pretend like they do?
How is the chemical composition of added glutamate different from naturally occurring glutamate?
Since you ingest 10 times more glutamate from naturally occurring sources than you do from added sources, why are you afraid of it? Your fear makes absolutely no sense if you understand the subject, but you don't so you fear what you don't understand.
Scientists don't feed rodents MSG to make them fat.....unless they happen to be looking for grant money from scientific illiterates. Hmmm, are you in the business of allocating grant money?
/johnny
You may have convinced yourself that your commentary at the end is true. Those of us in the know realize you don’t know what you’re talking about.
GeronL said way more in his post than this article ever does, and then summed it up nicely with his last sentence in #57.
Have yourself a good day
Mostly works? LOL!!
Is that why 90% - 95% of all new product launches fail? How is that possible if they are "telling" us to buy these new products?
Maybe consumers are a lot smarter than you think.
I think that those major corporations do a magnificent job in supplying Americans with an infinate variety of foods and beverages at affardable prices....leave them alone...
You flappin your gums again?
ALL store brands are main line products packaged in private label boxes....they don't even slow down the production line, just change packages...
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