Jennifer Clapp, "Titans of Industrial Agriculture: How a Few Giant Corporations Came to Dominate the Farm Sector and Why It Matters" (MIT Press, 2025)

Apr 19, 2025

Jennifer Clapp, a Professor in the School of Environment Resources and Sustainability at the University of Waterloo, dives into the world of industrial agriculture and its dominate players. She discusses how a handful of corporations control agricultural inputs and the historical forces that led to this concentration of power. Clapp highlights the ecological and social impacts of industrial farming, while also exploring alternatives like agroecological practices. The need for policy reform and awareness of these challenges is emphasized throughout the conversation.

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INSIGHT

Origins of Agribusiness Domination

Agricultural input markets are dominated by few giant firms, a recent development in historical terms.
This consolidation arose from combined market, technological, and policy factors over more than a century.

ANECDOTE

McCormick's Machinery Breakthrough

Cyrus McCormick's mechanical reaper company expanded rapidly by leveraging labor scarcity and rail transport.
Early patents and dealer networks gave them a monopoly and economies of scale in farm machinery.

INSIGHT

Farm Machinery Spurs Consolidation

Farmers initially embraced machinery for labor savings but took on debt to afford it.
This led to farm expansion and consolidation, raising concerns about monopoly power early on.

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Every year, hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of farm machinery, fertilizer, seeds, and pesticides are sold to farmers around the world. Although agricultural inputs are a huge sector of the global economy, the lion's share of that market is controlled by a relatively small number of very large transnational corporations. The high degree of concentration among these agribusiness titans is striking, considering that just a few hundred years ago agricultural inputs were not even marketed goods. In Titans of Industrial Agriculture: How a Few Giant Corporations Came to Dominate the Farm Sector and Why It Matters (MIT Press, 2025), Dr. Jennifer Clapp explains how we got from there to here, outlining the forces that enabled this extreme concentration of power and the entrenchment of industrial agriculture.

Clapp reveals that the firms that rose to the top of these sectors benefited from distinct market, technology, and policy advantages dating back a century or more that enabled them to expand their businesses through mergers and acquisitions that made them even bigger and more powerful. These dynamics matter because the firms at the top have long shaped industrial farming practices that, in turn, have generated enormous social, ecological, and health impacts on the planet and the future of food systems. Beyond analyzing how these problems have arisen and manifested, the book examines recent efforts to address corporate power and dominance in food systems and assesses the prospects for change.

Among the first works to examine deep roots of corporate power in agriculture, Titans of Industrial Agriculture helps illuminate just how corporate actors have encouraged the “lock-in” of industrial agriculture, despite all its known social and ecological costs.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

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