Consolidated food production is more vulnerable to disruptions from diseases and plays a role in spreading them.
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By rolling up and vertically integrating an inherently local industry, Big Waste corporations pushed out thousands of local businesses, drove up trash collection costs, and created incentives to send goods to landfills.
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From COVID-19 supply chain disruptions to inflated food prices, Hendrickson and her co-authors argue that our consolidated food system vests too much decision-making power in a few private actors who do not have the public interest at heart.
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Last week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced 10 new appointments to an independent committee advising food safety and inspection policy.
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A group of farmers and ranchers last week joined the leading meatpacking workers’ union to demand greater protections for meatpacking workers, acknowledging a shared fight against mistreatment by large meatpackers in the wake of COVID-19.
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Meatpacking plants have become national hot spots for the novel coronavirus.
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COVID-19 has upended America’s food supply. With the loss of big buyers in restaurants and school districts, farmers without a place to sell their foods are dumping milk, tilling crops back into the ground, and euthanizing egg-laying hens.
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Wholesale beef prices have jumped to record levels, as shoppers stockpile meat in response to the global coronavirus pandemic. But this run on beef isn’t helping cattle ranchers. On the contrary, cattle prices have plummeted since January, putting many ranchers on the brink of collapse.
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Baldwin, Florida, a town of roughly 1,600 residents west of Jacksonville, lost its last grocery store in 2018. Residents were left with a Dollar General and a 10-mile drive to the nearest full-service store. The town council couldn’t attract another grocery chain to take over the store, but they did own the property. So the council and Baldwin Mayor Sean Lynch decided the town would get in the grocery business and re-opened the store.
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Last week, nearly 500 cattle producers from 14 states rallied in Omaha, Nebraska to denounce corporate control over cattle markets and to demand that the Trump administration do something to fix it.
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Walmart sells 50 percent or more of all groceries in one in every ten metropolitan areas and nearly one in three “micropolitan” areas across the country, according to a report by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, out last week. In 38 of these regions, Walmart sells 70 percent or more of all groceries.
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Many rural residents – including many farmers – do not want large concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) in their communities, as evinced by a growing number of efforts to halt new CAFOs or sue them for environmental damage. But a newly popular corporate structure for hog production makes it increasingly difficult for residents to even determine who owns a CAFO let alone seek justice through civil suits.
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