The consolidation of the food industry is a result of a cheap workforce, and thus cheap imports. Back when people got paid more for their labor, including the farmers, the food processing facilities were close to both the producers, and the markets. This was because the local farmer had enough income to stay in business, and not sell out their farm to have the land developed into McMansions, and endless Big Box strip malls. Thus there was a large enough local supply to keep a local food processor in business. Today it takes a corporate farm to produce food cheap, and they are often far from the local markets.  The food instead is imported into the local from anywhere in the world. Remember that New Jersey was once the Garden State because of the food it grew, and sold to New York.

I was just discussing this on my blog. How local farming if it gets popular will simply get gobbled up by the big guns...

Thanks so much for giving me info so that I can continue to be right. That's like my favorite hobby.

What ever happened to entrepreneurs in agriculture. Why can't these dairymen, farmers, and hog raisers sell a finished product? We need real farmers markets.

I heard about Chino California dairymen closing up because they didn't want to clean up their dung. They could have easily built a methane digester, and produced their own electricity.

When I was in California recently, I bought fresh produce from a local stand, including flowers. I also visited an ostrich farm. They charged admission, sold us the food to feed their ostriches, sold ostrich meat, empty eggshells, and even charged a quarter for a chip of a broken egg! As we were leaving, I commented that they didn't charge for parking, yet.

Farmers here in Illinois don't bother with anything except corn and soybeans. Maybe a few hogs or cattle. Nobody bothers to sell pork or beef direct.

Ron Wagner

I'm always chagrined when people talk about the "large corporations" owning things.

But, most corporations have a few people who tightly hold big portions of those assets -- the Top 3% who own 84% of everything.

So, for a story like this, it's not about Wal*mart or conglomerates.  

You have to ask the question why people have to work their whole life to buy a $400,000 house on a plot of land that couldn't grow enough food for a ocelot.

.... its also the willful ignorance of the consumer.    these mega-corporations are able to gobble up market share and take out better, smaller and more natural farms by providing what the consumer will buy.

There is ample information available (at least in the US) regarding the policies and internal processes of companies like Tyson, etc. and if people bothered to look, they would most likely make different choices.

But the truth is unpleasant, and causes one to feel bad for the animals and bad for themselves.  So instead of adjusting behavior they look away and turn up the ipod. This is not just a corporation problem - its a society-wide issue where consumers do not have to bear the full consequences of their actions (whether its CO2, water use, etc.)

Imagine if we paid the full price of food, water, electricity or transportation, when all of the ecological services were incorporated into the costs of these items.  

any ideas on how to do that?

I just slaughtered a chicken (Ginger) the other day. It was my first. I got 6 chickens a couple of months ago, and they've been providing me with eggs; one of them got her leg grabbed by a raccoon, resulting in a compound fracture. So I invited my buddy over and we killed her and then plucked her and made her into soup.

Ginger was a breathing thing, and she used to let me hold her, and when she got hurt, she stopped running around and clawing at the ground and so it was her time.

Just a story.  

When consolidation is discussed, it is such a large and intangible problem. Many people seem to discuss it as a given, a fact of the market. But in little ways, as we all know, we can separate ourselves from that market and stop being zombies. We can decide to value things that drive economists mad: the intangibles, the externalities. That is when local markets will work, when the market is no longer an excuse, but an efficient vehicle that actually provides the goods that allow us real options. Unfortunately, that means that some distortions (subsidies for grain and oil) may have to be replaced with other distortions (environmental regulations, land use laws).

Ramble ramble.

Tom, I'd be curious to know whether you think that the drive for combining CAFOs with corn-ethanol plants -- both because of the availability of a co-product, dried distillers' grains and solubles (DDGS), and because the manure can be digested to produce process gas -- is contributing to the trend towards greater concentration in (at least the cattle segment of) the livestock industry?

Like with all else, the public needs to be educated on these matters.  Most people don't know (or care to know) where their food comes from or its cost--to the environment, to poorer people in other countries, sometimes, who produce it at the expense of their their own well-being.  
Funny that kids aren't taught about agriculture in school--aside from those kids in more rural areas.  Divorced as our culture is from the land, perhaps putting these ideas back into the curricula would go a long way towards ensuring that future populations don't make the same mistakes.

Some 40+ years ago my father warned his four kids that huge companies were buying up small farms and that one day, since we all have to buy food to eat, they were really going to come down on us.  And he didn't mean price-wise.  

His prediction seems to have borne fruit (pun) and had some meat to it (pun).  Can't think of how to pun a veggie.  Being 74 now, I don't worry about it too much.  And, it would appear that there's not a whole lot of people that do, so far (present company excluded).

I would like to share three quotes that sum up what I believe about the general public and America's industrial-food culture (sorry if they seem out of context):

"Eating puts us in touch with all that we share with other animals [and plants], and all that sets us apart. It's what defines us."

"To eat with a fuller consciousness of all that is at stake might sound like a burden, but in practice few things in life can afford quite as much satisfaction."

and finally,

"Eating industrial meat [and other industrial produce/products] takes an almost heroic act of not knowing, or, [eventually] forgetting."

- Quotes taken from Michael Pollan in his book, The Omnivore's Dilema, A Natural History of Four Meal  (2006)

I have no statistics for you, but I can attest that it is the big hog producers here in Iowa that people are worried about. When I visit my uncle's farm, you can't smell the hogs (few in number) until you get to within about 50 yards from the barn. But he's (according to the article) in the minority -- it's not HIS farm people don't want nearby -- it's the major producers. Because that will smell like hog ackey for miles away.