Why Unfettered Capitalism Is Bad for Your Diet

By Paula Crossfield, Huffington Post. Posted May 25, 2009.

One of the biggest fallouts of this phenomenon has been the price paid in rural America. From Heffernan and Hendrickson's report:

"In the past, when family businesses were the predominant system in rural communities, researchers talked of multiplier effects of three or four. Newly generated dollars in the agricultural sector would circulate in the community, changing hands from one entrepreneurial family to another three or four times before leaving the rural community. This greatly enhanced the economic viability of the community.

Large, non-local corporations ... see labor as just another input cost to be purchased as cheaply as possible. The "profits" then are allocated to return on management and capital and are usually taken from the rural community. They go to the company's headquarters and are then sent to all corners of the globe to be reinvested in the food system.

One can ask the question, why were agriculturally based rural communities, with an ample natural-resource base, more economically viable than mining-based rural communities, which also had an ample natural resource base? The answer lies primarily with the economic structure of the major economic base. Increasingly, our agriculturally based communities, like regions with major poultry operations, are looking like mining communities."

Having an hourglass of production power also means the creation of giant facilities to produce our food as fast as possible. E. coli bacteria present in a giant shared sink with thousands of servings of spinach has the potential to do more harm than a similar, isolated incident on a small farm would.

In creating factorylike facilities to process and package our food, we are exponentially increasing the risks of food contamination. This is the single best argument for decentralizing the food system.

But yes, there is still yet another reason to bust up these trusts: Agribusiness has had excessive influence on our government. Represented by a billion-dollar lobby in Washington, agribusinesses have maintained a revolving door, bringing lobbyists, lawyers and board members into powerful public positions.

One of the other problems that arises when megacompanies begin to influence government in this way is that they then become "too big to fail," when we should be asking ourselves (to quote Mike Lux) if they were "too big to exist" in the first place.

However it happened, the facts are clear: Cargill, ADM, Monsanto, Tyson and Smithfield are probably breaking the law, and that law needs to be enforced.

It may be that the government for too long has been complicit in creating predatory pricing via billions of dollars in subsidies handed out to the factory farmers of mostly genetically modified corn and soy, but I would like our new administration to take a good look at possible price fixing; aggressive marketing, especially to children; intimidation practices, including Monsanto's intimidation of farmers who have been found to have GMO contamination in their fields, also their intimidation of seed cleaners, and of previous governments; barriers to entry, for example, the assumption of massive amounts of debt on the part of the farmer to build CAFO facilities and thus getting trapped in a contractual agreement with Smithfield, Tyson, etc; and tying, for instance, Round-Up Ready seeds require the use of Round-Up pesticides, meaning that both markets are cornered by Monsanto.

It's time to admit that hyper-efficiency is not working. It may seem counterintuitive, but being a little less efficient creates room for checks and balances. We need redundancy and some fostered competition. It is the only way to assure the health of our nation and the safety of our food supply.

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