A rural sociologist from the University of Missouri, provides a useful image for
thinking about the U.S. food system. In a recent article, Professor William
Heffernan likens the food system to an hour glass, with about a million farmers
producing food at the bottom and over two hundred million eaters consuming food
at the top. Connecting the growers and the eaters are the food processors,
represented by the neck of the hourglass in the middle.
The strong trend over the past few decades is for that neck in the middle to get
longer as food is shipped greater distances, and more narrow as the
concentration of corporate control of food processing increases. Professor
Heffernan reports that only four corporations control 40 percent or more of the
markets for each of many common commodities including poultry meat, beef, pork,
sheep, wheat, soybeans, and corn processing. Some of the largest companies are
involved in several commodities.
Currently, eighty cents of each dollar spent on food in this country is used to
get the food from the farm to the store or restaurant. That 80 cents on the
dollar pays for processing, transportation, packaging, advertising and
marketing. The farmer gets a mere 20 cents or 20 percent. The firms in the
middle get the rest. The USDA recently reported that processed foods represent
the largest manufacturing and distribution segment of the U.S. economy and
account for one-sixth of total industrial activity.
The report also notes that there is much greater vertical integration with one
company producing feed or seed, raising animals or crops and then processing and
transporting the final product to market. Vertical integration and contract
production, the norm now for raising broilers, turkeys, and some fruits and
vegetables in this country, are not beneficial to family farms.
Seedling, the quarterly newsletter of Genetic Resources Action International,
provides an informative list of the world's largest food processors and
agribusiness companies in its recent issue. Eleven of the top eighteen are
based in this country, including the largest (privately-held Cargill), the third
largest (Philip Morris), and the fifth, sixth and seventh largest (Conagra,
Pepsico and Coca Cola, respectively). Other US firms among the eighteen largest
include Archer Daniels Midland, Anheiser Busch, Heinz, Campbell Soup and
Kellogg.
Each public company on this list publishes an annual report for its stockholders
which is available to anyone free upon request. In these glossy publications,
global food corporations brag about their worldwide market share and the year's
long list of acquired companies. Philip Morris boasts of its nearly 50 percent
share of the U.S. cheese market, its largest-selling luncheon meats and world
leadership in roast and ground coffee. Pepsico reports that it sells over half
the snack chips in this country and, with its three fast food chains, has more
restaurants than McDonald's or anyone else in the world. Pepsico is also getting
more of its fast food into school lunch programs. Nestle, the second largest
food company, is based in Switzerland. It brags that it sells about 55 percent
of all the cat food, infant formula and bottled water in the world while it
continously takes over smaller companies everywhere.
Increasing control of the flow of food enables these large processors to drive
down the prices paid to farmers (which puts more farms out of business) and to
raise prices charged to consumers. Enormous corporate size and political power
ensure that they can take maximum advantage of a whole range of taxpayer
subsidies for grain, energy, manufacturing, distribution and waste disposal.
These annual reports proudly feature hundreds of different sweet, fatty, highly
processed and packaged foods that each company produces and markets. It's
nearly impossible to find any healthful fresh fruits, vegetables, or whole
grains among the products sold by these agribusiness giants. If the flow of food
between the soil and our mouths is increasingly dominated by these companies,
the long-term prospects for our health are not good.
The hourglass image allows us to see more clearly why eliminating the neck and
connecting growers and eaters more directly with gardens, community farms and
local agriculture is such a powerful and necessary strategy for a healthly
future.
This is Bill Duesing, Living on the Earth
(C)1997, Bill Duesing, Solar Farm Education, Box 135, Stevenson, CT 06491