Latest Stories — Food & Power

Why You Should Pay Attention to the Heinz/Kraft Merger

Mergers and acquisitions in the food sector rarely draw the eye of supermarket shoppers. But name recognition has brought last week’s announced merger of H.J. Heinz Co. and Kraft Foods Group Inc. to the fore of business news. After all, these companies’ products are household staples — most readers of this article probably have a Heinz or Kraft product in their refrigerator right now. While this merger may seem innocuous — who cares that the mac and cheese company owns the ketchup company? — there could be serious ramifications for consumers and producers.

Mergers & AcquisitionsLeah DouglasApril 8, 2015consolidation, Heinz, Kraft, mergers, Leah Douglas

The Last State Standing Against Corporate Farming Weighs A Change

State Senator Ken Schilz introduced LB 176 in the Nebraska state legislature in January to overturn a 15-year-old law – the Competitive Livestock Markets Act – that bans corporations from owning livestock except in the days immediately before slaughter. Known colloquially as the “packer ban,” the law was intended to force corporations to buy their animals from independent producers, thereby supporting a competitive livestock market. What would the impact of this law be on hog farmers?

Poultry & LivestockLeah DouglasMarch 24, 2015Nebraska, packer ban, Smithfield, Leah Douglas, pork

Why You Might Pay More Than Your Neighbor for the Same Bottle of Salad Dressing

Retailers are positioning themselves to charge customers based on their willingness to pay—so that my Burberry-dressed neighbor pays more than my thrifty neighbor for the same product. How are retailers tracking our shopping habits, and what does it mean for you?

RetailLina KhanJanuary 19, 2014price discrimination, retailers, Lina Khan

Personal Pricing, Like Really Personal

At the National Retail Federation annual conference, retailers discuss how to use big data to personalize customer prices. Tactics include in-store cameras that track which products you’re examining, so Kroger can send you a coupon for chips as you’re still roaming the salsa aisle. Or if you buy cat food towards the end of the month, you’ll be e-mailed a special offer on the 25th, rather than showered with ads all the time. But do the savings outweigh the creepiness?

RetailLina KhanJanuary 16, 2014DOJ, FTC, price discrimination, Lina Khan

Big Beef

Imagine if the federal government mandated that a portion of all federal gas taxes go directly to the oil industry’s trade association, the American Petroleum Institute. Imagine further that API used this public money to finance ad campaigns encouraging people to drive more and turn up their thermostats, all while lobbying to discredit oil industry critics—from environmentalists to those calling for better safety regulations or alternative energy sources.That’s a deal not even Exxon could pull off, yet the nation’s largest meat-packers now enjoy something quite like it. Today, when you buy a Big Mac or a T-bone, a portion of the cost is a tax on beef, the proceeds from which the government hands over to a private trade group called the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. How did this system come into being? And what is the NCBA doing with all that money?

Monsanto’s Scary New Scheme: Why Does it Really Want All This Data?

Imagine cows fed and milked entirely by robots. Or tomatoes that send an e-mail when they need more water. Or a farm where all the decisions about where to plant seeds, spray fertilizer and steer tractors are made by software on servers on the other side of the sea. This is what more and more of our agriculture may come to look like in the years ahead, as farming meets Big Data.

Lina KhanDecember 29, 2013monsanto, price discrimination, Lina Khan, Big Data

The Rise of Big Chocolate

It’s an industry that’s largely invisible to consumers, yet central to feeding the world’s sweet tooth. Cocoa processing — the process of turning raw cocoa beans into powder, liquor, and butter — is a major step in creating the candy bars and truffles that line store shelves. And thanks to a recent pair of recent business deals, it’s an industry that may never be the same.

DairyLina KhanNovember 12, 2013cargill, chocolate, hershey's, mars, dairy, Lina Khan

The Kings of Candyland

Believe it or not, there used to be a wide variety of regional candy bars stocking grocery store shelves. But over the last 50 years, the biggest companies have gobbled up the smaller ones to create a highly concentrated industry. How did Hershey's, Mars, and Nestle take over our shelves of sweets?

DairyLina KhanOctober 31, 2013candy, chocolate, consolidation, dairy, Lina Khan

A Year After Sandy, Food and Fuel Supplies are as Vulnerable as Ever

A year ago, Hurricane Sandy revealed harrowing realities about the basic systems New Yorkers rely on every day. The reality is that private food and fuel systems everywhere are already extremely fragile, and grow more so almost by the day. At best, Sandy-like shocks cause temporary price spikes. At worst, these ruptures can trigger the sort of panic that can forever change the character of a community.And, so far, no government has even begun to study these risks.

Sid MahantaOctober 28, 2013hurricane sandy, resiliency, Sid Mahanta

New York's Looming Food Disaster

In New York City, locating a bite to eat is rarely a difficult task. The city is a food paradise or, depending on your mood, a place of overwhelming glut. But when Superstorm Sandy pummeled New York last fall, it revealed the terrifying potential for sudden food shortages.Disturbingly, city officials have little concrete data on how reliant their food system is on the private food distribution industry, and whether society is teetering a mere "nine meals away from revolution" (an ominous old expression that appeared in The Atlantic all the way back in 1945). Worse yet, they have little understanding of the logistical changes that have revolutionized how companies warehouse and distribute the food on which New Yorkers depend.

Sid MahantaOctober 21, 2013food supply, hurricane sandy, resiliency, Sid Mahanta

The Folks Who Sell Your Corn Flakes are Acting Like Goldman Sachs—and That Should Worry You

In July, the public learned that Goldman Sachs and several other large banks have morphed into giant merchants of physical goods, routinely shipping oil, running power plants, and amassing stocks of metals so large that Coca Cola accused them of hoarding. It was a disconcerting moment, as regulators realized that firms so recently known for their explosive mortgage-backed securities also deal in goods that can literally explode.But that was only half the story.

Lina KhanSeptember 11, 2013commodity, hedge funds, markets, trading, Lina Khan

Obama's Game of Chicken

Today, most chicken farmers are growing their animals on contract for huge meatpackers, a system that some farmers call "worse than sharecropping." The Obama Administration promised to investigate how concentration in the chicken industry was negatively impacting farmers. But then, mysteriously, their investigation disappeared. What happened?

Poultry & LivestockLina KhanNovember 1, 2012chicken, contract farming, tyson, Lina Khan