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Episode 114: The State of the American Food System with Austin Frerick
Regenerative Agriculture Podcast
Revoking Monopolies in the American Food System
Exploring the parallels between trust busting in big tech and the need to break up monopolies in the American food system, with a focus on challenges within the USDA and the importance of anti-monopoly measures for smaller scale processors to thrive.
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Speaker 2
that gives me help well when you you invoked Teddy Roosevelt and the the Gilded Age a moment ago so is there really the political appetite and the collective political will to engage in trust busting and to revoke the monopolies that exist I mean
Speaker 1
you're seeing it now in big tech I mean the appointment of Commissioner Lina cons the FTC is incredible I mean you have this young woman who is bringing all these monopoly cases against Google Amazon Apple Facebook she mean she stopped quite a few mergers she stopped the the Kroger Albertson mergers she just stopped what was the one this week a big hotel chain was merging she's also good copy I mean she just kind of reads like she's sticking it to the man so the problem here is that USDA has a antitrust carve out authority for me packing I mean I'm personally a fan at this point of stripping USDA for parts including giving that antitrust authority and meat back to the FTC I just I don't have a lot of hope for USDA
Speaker 2
can you explain that when you when you see you don't have a lot of hope for the USDA why is that
Speaker 1
to get in the weeds I blame checkoffs checkoffs are those you know those government mandated taxes and it comes out of this Wall Street Farm Bill where now that we're over producing a few commodities checkoffs have been around since the new deal but they really ramped up to stimulate demand you know your got milks your pork the other white meat kind of thing and most of them you know they were just advertising campaigns but you've seen them really transition I argue my dairy baron is really about this how my dairy burn really captured the dairy checkoff is not only it's to me it's really corrupted and captured the land grants a lot of the checkoff money is now used to finance junk science but more importantly it creates this revolving door in DC where like take vilsack I mean between the existence of secretary who's working as an industrial dairy lobbyist and so to me the checkoffs really control the conversational agriculture in America a lot of the agriculture publications rely on checkoff money I mean the government accountability office has issued several reports on just how broken this iron with USDA is but nothing changes we're talking over like a billion dollars here that there's very little transparency over I know ranchers hate it the most because they're the ones being really short-changed but I think because of the control checkoffs have or the USDA I don't really have a lot of help for the USDA the way secretary perdue under Trump reorganized the department to put the meat antitrust authority under the same branch of government as the meat promotion the checkoff authority and that's me it's really nerdy but like that you're having both the person who's promoting the industry also being the cop that just doesn't work
Speaker 2
out yeah speaking of the promoters also being the cop this actually leads me to another question that I wanted to ask but I'm going to go back first to the trust busting conversation when I asked you the question about the current political climate the current political will you answer the question in the framework of well what is happening currently is we're preventing mergers from happening and that's a very necessary and important component but actually what needs to happen now I would argue is we need to go back and break up some of the monopolies that exist we need to repeat the standard oil experience and not once and not twice but many times and with a number of different organizations and is there the political will and the political appetite for that I
Speaker 1
really think so I mean this you're talking about it since the election of Reigen we've been under this pro monopoly framework I talk about my book out comes from Robert Bork Nixon's Hatchet Man this intellectual framework really validated the consolidation we see in the American economy this young woman wrote a paper in college that went viral saying we need to break that Amazon she's returning to that old brand ice Teddy Roosevelt thing it takes a while I mean you have to mean that the big thing we face right now I'm breaking up companies is you have the courts are so captured by industry such a pro industry the federalist society that you really have to overcome a lot of case law but here's thing she's the hot young thing every young lawyer wants to be like her I mean she goes into law school in law school in America at the pack room that comes here so you're getting a lot of young lawyers in America being trained to have this breakup mentality you're going to see hopefully down the road this breakup mentality in the judiciary if right people get appointed but I mean keep in mind with Teddy Roosevelt he was president by accident I mean these things can change on a dime so you've got to lay the groundwork now and so you can you know you just shift these ships and so I mean that's we have two presidential candidates that are super old who knows what would happen a few months from
Speaker 2
now we have two that are super old and we have one who's independent who has a track record of doing exactly the types of things that we're asking for yeah
Speaker 1
I mean we live such a volatile time I'm not a big believer in long-term plans and so you don't know what that I mean this independent person could win who knows about candidates will be there at the last day you don't know you might you might not be a big believer in long-term plans but car go with beg to differ um I actually I
Speaker 2
want to I want to shift to a slightly different piece that I want to capture in here as well which is I would argue that while it's true we need uh we need to break up some of the monopolies the other piece that the USDA is responsible for going back to a point that you made about the the regulators also being the promoters is that if we just simply removes the regulatory barriers if we made it easier from a regulatory perspective for let's say smaller scale meat packers and processors to thrive and they didn't have the significant regulatory burdens just give people more market access that would drive innovation in a remarkable degree to a two remarkable degree I believe
Speaker 1
you need to do the structural things first because it's like that's the whole Michael Pollum thing like sure you can remove it but GBS is not giving you an ounce of market share and it's a ruthless company will destroy you or they'll buy you out like I mean that's the whole changing the system with your fork mentality you have to go after these companies with a hammer I mean you're right and you got to break them up you got to break them up in order to allow these people these these innovative companies to thrive or also this be stuffled out like that's just to me in the modern story of the American food system is anything that's challenging the system just just gets drowned in the bathtub yeah
Speaker 2
I
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