Episode #13: Who Really Controls Your Food? With Basel Musharbash
About three dozen companies dominate the entire food supply chain, from farm to table.
Welcome to the podcast Organized Money. You can listen to today’s episode with antitrust attorney Basel Musharbash on Apple, on Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Most Americans know their food passes through many hands before reaching their plates, but few realize just how concentrated that chain of production has become. In this final episode of the season, antitrust attorney Basel Musharbash reveals how roughly three dozen corporations have come to dominate nearly every aspect of America's food system, from farm to table.
Drawing from his recent report “Kings Over the Necessaries of Life,” Musharbash traces this consolidation through pivotal moments in American history, from the sweeping reforms of the 1930s New Deal to the deregulation of the 1970s and 80s. He tells Matt and David how today’s agricultural giants wield their market power to shape everything from seed prices to distribution networks, often at the expense of farmers and consumers alike. You’ll learn about the literal monopoly in fertilizer in the U.S., how egg companies blamed price inflation on an outbreak in avian flu when the supply of eggs really didn’t go down, and more.
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Or Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
This is our last episode of the season, and we’ve had a blast bringing them to you. We will have more in our second season in the new year. Thank you so much for listening. If there’s a monopoly you’d like us to explore in season 2, or if you have anything else to tell us, please let us know by leaving a comment or by responding directly to this email.
Hello,
I’d like to suggest a few potential monopolies and oligopolies for coverage next season. Here’s the list, from less to more frivolous.
In medium-lift rockets and orbital tourism: SpaceX
In wind turbines: GE Vernova, Vestas, Nordex and Siemens
In electric trains: Alstom, Siemens, and Kawasaki
In diesel locomotives: Progress Rail and Wabtec
In buses: New Flyer, North American, Gillig and El Dorado
In deep-sea cable laying: Global Marine, Prysmia, NEC, SubCom, KCS
In high-purity quartz mining: the owner of the Spruce Pine mine in North Carolina
In geographic information systems software: ArcGIS, Mapbox and ESRI
In local TV and radio: Nexstar, Gray, Tegna, Hearst, Scripps, Sinclair and IHeartMedia
In comic book publishing: Marvel and DC
In live-streaming: YouTube and Twitch
Kai Rex hit the nail on its head. Real food, grown in real living soil tenanted by lots of small critters tastes and nourishes differently, better, than food grown in depleted soil, fertilized with chemical fertilizers. GMO seeds developed by the same companies that make huge profits from the sale of pesticides and herbicides are diminishing the nutrients in the foods that we buy. Take a look at "The Third Plate" by Dan Barber, he talks a lot about healthy plants ability to ward off pests and disease and how stressed plants, growing in depleted soils can survive with herbicides and pesticides but lack the minerals that we need from them leaving our bodies undernourished even as we stuff ourselves into obesity in an effort to survive. Thanks for scratching the surface of the disaster that our food system is in, I hope to hear more and better informed discussion about this vital problem.