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“Kings Over the Necessaries of Life”: Monopolization and the Elimination of Competition in America’s Agriculture System is a comprehensive report providing definitive evidence of corporate control over who gets to farm, how they farm, what food gets produced and sold in this country, and how much consumers must pay for it.
Commissioned by Farm Action and written by antitrust attorney Basel Musharbash, this landmark investigation details the policy choices and corporate actions that got us here by diving into the history of antimonopoly policy in American agriculture and conducting in-depth investigations into each major sector of today’s agricultural economy.
This report is the cornerstone of Farm Action’s first-of-its-kind Agriculture Consolidation Data Hub, which also features concentration data broken down by sector, short fact sheets on consolidation in each industry, and more.
Around three dozen corporations now dictate the lines of development and terms of trade for almost every industry involved in the growing, processing, and distribution of food in America. Decades of lax antitrust enforcement have culminated in these unprecedented levels of concentration. Meanwhile, corporations rake in record profits, farmers and workers get squeezed, and consumers pay the price at the grocery store. As the report shows, however, America has been here before, and it was government regulation of monopolies that freed farmers, workers, and consumers from corporate control. Today, we have reached a critical point where such enforcement and regulation are once again necessary.
