Naming and Shaming Food Barons: A Q&A with Austin Frerick Corporate consolidation in America’s food industry is making food more expensive and worse. What can we do about it?

@inequality.org’s @millsrodrigo.bsky.social interviews Austin Frerick, author of the new book “Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry,” which examines how corporate monopolies have resulted in higher prices and lower quality food for consumers.

More, larger monopoly = less choice for both producer and consumer

Video How Sysco acquiring Restaurant Depot could shake up the food industry Agriculture and food antitrust expert Austin Frerick discusses Sysco's $29 billion deal to buy Restaurant Depot and what it could mean for consumers.

Sysco buying Restaurant Depot -->>

This merger will hurt your favorite local restaurant or food truck. It combines America's largest broaderliner with the largest cash-and-carry.

My comments to ABC News
abcnews.com/video/131726...

Video How Sysco acquiring Restaurant Depot could shake up the food industry Agriculture and food antitrust expert Austin Frerick discusses Sysco's $29 billion deal to buy Restaurant Depot and what it could mean for consumers.

Here's the video: "This will hurt your favorite local restaurant or food truck" (my opening statement - the audio wasn't on at first). I also meant to say Costco, not Sysco, when talking about cash-and-carry. abcnews.com/video/131726...

"Happy Holidays" -- I just filmed a segment for ABC News at my in-laws' house and signed off by saying "Happy Holidays" lol (I wasn't sure what to say with it being Easter and Passover).

Since the 1980s we’ve been living in a Second Gilded Age where, as these firms amass power, they have been able to corrupt the system more and more to pad their bottom line. I think it says so much that Trump’s largest inauguration donor was my slaughter baron, JBS, said @austinfrerick.bsky.social.

Back to @grinnellcollege.bsky.social - next Wednesday!

Back to New Haven - next Wednesday!

thanks! im very lucky/grateful to do what i do.

Check out the alert Big Ag put out about my testimony later today.

Later that night --

Join us at the United Food & Commercial Workers International Union Hall, talking about what you can do.

Honored (and excited) to testify next week to the Minnesota House Agriculture Committee, presenting aspects of my book Barons.

Special thanks to @reprickhansen.bsky.social for inviting me.

What if Big Ag Didn’t Control Our Food? Austin Frerick shares big ideas for how to transform food in the United States. For Frerick, radical change starts with radical imagination

"The Land Report just came out with a Top 100 ranking of who owns the most land in America. The Walmart family now owns more land in America than all the farmland owned by black farmers combined."

What if Big Ag Didn’t Control Our Food? Austin Frerick shares big ideas for how to transform food in the United States. For Frerick, radical change starts with radical imagination

"To me the single best thing you can do to make food more affordable in America right now is do away with the ethanol mandate. It’s been more than 20 some years. Ethanol should [survive] on its own. It should not have a government mandate."

Big Ag Has Corrupted Our Food System. Here’s How We Can Rebuild. Austin Frerick explains how corporate monopolies captured farm bill policy, and how farmers and eaters can unite to fix our food system.

Antitrust expert Austin Frerick @austinfrerick.bsky.social explains how corporate monopolies captured farm bill policy, and how farmers and eaters can unite locally to fix our broken food system. barnraisingmedia.com/big-ag-has-c...

Big Ag Has Corrupted Our Food System. Here’s How We Can Rebuild. Austin Frerick explains how corporate monopolies captured farm bill policy, and how farmers and eaters can unite to fix our food system.

"Last week, the NYT ran a story saying farmers are going to let their crops rot because the prices are so bad. At the same time, we’re having a food affordability crisis. That juxtaposition captures how broken our food system is"

Review of Austin Frerick, Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry Author(s): Saito, Carolina | Abstract: Review of Austin Frerick, Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry

New Academic Review of Barons:
Journal of Law & Political Economy

"a powerful exposé of the transformation of the American food system... Frerick’s extensive empirical work adds a fresh perspective" 😜

What a year of putting on the miles - gave my final talk this year a few days ago in Great Falls, Montana. Thanks again to MOA for inviting me. 🥩🌾

What’s for dinner? If it’s beef, it’ll cost you. Eye-popping prices for steaks and burgers are mostly a supply problem, exacerbated by lack of competition in the meatpacking industry. The upshot is that beef is likely to remain expensive for a while...

“We’re not seeing normal herd expansion because farmers don’t think [cattle] prices will be there, and that goes back to market dominance” among meatpackers, Frerick says.

The Best Cookbooks of 2025, according to Good Food | KCRW Enjoy our cookbook picks for bakers, foragers, world travelers, vegans, party hosts, food policy wonks, and everyone else!

Honored to be included 😅🤗

..."what a writer! Absolutely engaging. For the foreseeable future, this is the book I'm recommending to anyone who wants to learn about our food system more deeply."

What do you think?

yup.

and thanks for reading it!

How the Trump Administration Is Deepening Food Monopolies: A Q&A with Anti-Trust Expert Austin Frerick “The land is producing the most that it has ever produced, but none of that wealth is staying there. So we shouldn’t be shocked that we’re seeing the politics of rage fill that void.”

“The first anti-monopoly laws in the world came from Iowa.”

How the Trump Administration Is Deepening Food Monopolies: A Q&A with Antitrust Expert Austin Frerick #iowa

We can't recommend @austinfrerick.bsky.social's writing on Big Ag highly enough. Check out our conversation with him from February of this year: www.foodandwaterwatch.org/2025/02/19/h...

How the Trump Administration Is Deepening Food Monopolies: A Q&A with Anti-Trust Expert Austin Frerick “The land is producing the most that it has ever produced, but none of that wealth is staying there. So we shouldn’t be shocked that we’re seeing the politics of rage fill that void.”

“I don’t even like the term ‘factory farm’ because I don’t want to give them the dignity of being called a farm,” antitrust expert @austinfrerick.bsky.social tells @greymoran.bsky.social:

Two Midwest authors on what it's like to expose Big Ag Austin Frerick and Sonja Trom Eayrs have published books in the past year that dive into the corporate capture of rural America.

"The Farm Bill is designed to [over]produce grains at the expense of everything else," Frerick said. "It’s built for Wall Street and no one else."

Read AGweek's coverage of the book talk Sonja Trom Eayrs and I gave in Landesboro, MN, earlier this month.

How the Trump Administration Is Deepening Food Monopolies: A Q&A with Anti-Trust Expert Austin Frerick “The land is producing the most that’s ever produced, but none of that wealth is staying there. So we shouldn’t be shocked that we’re seeing the politics of rage fill that void.”

“The land is producing the most that it has ever produced, but none of that wealth is staying there,” antitrust expert @austinfrerick.bsky.social tells @greymoran.bsky.social. “So we shouldn’t be shocked that we’re seeing the politics of rage fill that void.”

The soaring price of a steak Beef costs have risen sharply in many countries, adding to the pressure on living standards and bringing Donald Trump into conflict with ranchers

“Trump shouldn’t underestimate the Yellowstone effect,” says Frerick.

I spoke to the FT about how ranchers loom large in the public consciousness, and about the danger of siding with foreign corporations like JBS against independent American ranchers.

Since 1982, America has lost 80% of its dairies and 90% of its hog farms, mostly small, independent family operations.

(stat from @austinfrerick.bsky.social 's book "Barons.")

Whirlwind week 🍃💨

Monday: Princeton University
Tuesday: Land Stewardship Project in Lanesboro, MN
Wednesday: IACP Awards in Brooklyn

So lucky to be presenting Barons more than a year after publication