Wenonah Hauter is the executive director of Food & Water Watch, a D.C.-based watchdog organization focused on corporate and government accountability relating to food, water, and common resources. She has worked and written extensively on food, water, energy, and environmental issues at the national, state, and local levels.
In this hard-hitting attack on the power wielded by a handful of agri-businesses, Wenonah Hauter shows how they have had their way thanks to the efforts of well-paid lobbyists and groups like the Grocery Manufacturers of America which have weakened antitrust provisions and food safety and labor laws. Large-scale industrial operations account for only 12 percent of U.S. farms but make up 88 percent of the value of farm production. And the consequences of this foodopoly are dire.
"The financialization of food and farming has wreaked havoc on the natural world," Hauter writes. "The long list of the consequences of industrialized agriculture includes the polluting of lakes, rivers, streams, and marine ecosystems with agrochemicals, excess fertilizer, and animal waste." The loss of family farms has led to an exodus of local businesses that depended on them. Meanwhile animals suffer on factory farms, and heavily processed foods are causing obesity and other health problems in millions of children.
Hauter sees no way out of this nightmare except a systemic change which will break up the monopolistic control of the agri-industrial complex. Her excellent book does what it can to bring this complex matter before the eyes of the American public. We hope that the changes she suggests will be acted upon by progressives across the country. It will take a well-organized grassroots movement to turn things around and put an end to corporate control of what we eat.
