Austin Frerick, Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America's Food Industry. Washington DC: Island Press, 2024. ISBN: 9781642832693.
Genre: corporate history
Subgenre: economics, monopolies, agriculture, United States, multinationals, politics, corruption
Format: hardcover
Source: Hutchins Library, Berea College.
This account of seven robber baron dynasties and the empires they created will likely be on my list of best nonfiction read in 2024 at the end of the year. This is also overall one of the best books I have read so far this year.
The book is arranged as follows:
- Foreword by Eric Schlosser. Schlosser is often known for his book Fast Food Nation (2001); he has written other works since then. I read Fast Food Nation some years back when it was still fashionable to assign it in some college classes. In fact, I read it back then because freshman composition classes were reading it for their classes, so as the librarian helping those students out with their research I figured I should read it. You can find my review of the book here. I do not always read every book campus students read; it is just not feasible, but when one sounds interesting I do try. Getting back to this review, in this foreword Schlosser does a good job of setting up the book and its context.
- Introduction.
- Chapter 1: The Hog Barons.
- Chapter 2: The Grain Barons.
- Chapter 3: The Coffee Barons.
- Chapter 4: The Dairy Barons.
- Chapter 5: The Berry Barons.
- Chapter 6: The Slaughter Barons.
- Chapter 7: The Grocery Barons.
- Conclusion.
- Book also features extensive notes for each chapter, so the book is well researched and documented.
At less than 200 pages, excluding the notes, acknowledgements, and index, the author covers a lot of ground. A strength of the book is that it is concise and gets to the point right away. It does not skimp on the details and gives us a solid and strong picture of these baron dynasties and how they control not just the American food systems but also food systems around the world.
One of the things the book does is:
"The following profiles of seven food industry barons show how each one built an empire by taking advantage of deregulation to amass extreme wealth at the expense of everyone else" (3).
Though robber barons like to portray themselves as self-made men, and they are mostly men, that is often far from the truth. They may have started out with a smart idea, concept, and/or product (give the devil his due), but they did not do it all on their own. They had various forms of help along the way. Some ways were legal, others not so much. Often, the American government and U.S. taxpayers helped pay for their exploitative and often morally questionable successes. In at least one instance the legacy of a Nazi fortune comes into play. In another instance outright crimes such as bribery and corruption come into play. No matter how they did it, the barons prospered and continue today pretty much unaccountable. If there has been any reckoning, it was mostly a very minor irritant in the form of relatively modest fines. In essence, they paid their fees and went on exploiting others, tightening monopolies, and making things worse for society in the long run.
The book is very easy to read. Corporate history books can often be long and dense, written for specialists. This book is written for regular secular readers. It explains concepts with ease, keeps jargon to a minimum, and it has a good narrative pace. We get the basic history of a baron dynasty from the start to how they made their fortunes to today. A common pattern is their ruthless cunning combined with an ability to exploit loopholes, gaps in laws, and breaking the law as needed. They may portray themselves as wholesome benefactors, as philanthropists even, but whatever token good works they do can never wash their bad deeds.
The author states that he did not write the book to just "gawk at
these barons," and he chose seven, but there were others he could have
chosen that are just as bad. The book then is about:
"In that way, this book is less about the specific barons themselves than it is about the conditions that facilitated their rise to power. I hope these stories give you a better sense of how the American food system was corrupted and why it matters for all of us" (5).
It's not just the barons. Governments play a role in enabling their power, often rewarding the exploitation. People in general are not that much better. In their constant desire for cheap food delivered fast at any time and season, they easily and willingly overlook the true costs of those cheap berries at the grocery store. In the end, the barons may be the villains, but they had plenty of accomplices along the way.
Overall this is an excellent read. If you know little about how the American food system really works, this is a solid and accessible book to help you learn. Much like Schlosser's Fast Food Nation, this is a book that belongs in college classrooms. On our campus, the following subject areas might or should consider it:
- General Studies.
- Peace and Social Justice Studies.
- Political Science.
- Economics.
- Business Administration.
- Agriculture.
I highly recommend the book for public and academic libraries. This is an essential read on American business and food systems. I ordered it for our library, and I will actively promote it in research consults if relevant and for reader's advisory.
5 out of 5 stars.
Additional reading notes:
The foreword opens looking back at Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations. Contrary to what some may have you believe, Smith was critical of monopolies and mercantilism. To Smith:
". . .merchants and manufacturers were 'an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public'" (qtd. in xi).
That sounds very familiar, and it is certainly applicable to the barons in the book.
Schlosser on unchecked market power:
""Unchecked market power allows corporations to charge unfair prices, stifle innovation, set the prices paid to independent producers, break labor unions, and cut wages. It is the central driving force of inequality" (xiii).
Why this book is so important:
"The way in which the United States produces and distributes its food has a profound effect on worker rights, animal welfare, air quality, water quality, the landscape, rural communities, public health, international trade, and the global climate. Even the DNA of sentient creatures is now owned, manipulated, and sold to American farmers by a handful of corporations. Four companies control 66 percent of hog genetics; three companies control 95 percent of broiler chicken genetics; two companies control 99 percent of turkey genetics" (xiii).
On a side note, when I talk, comment, or write about the bad economy, I often get some armchair economist or Internet pundit mewling the numbers are fine such as wages, unemployment, etc. As I often say none of the "experts" ask past the well to do. To them, I would love to give them this book to read and then try to claim with a straight face that the economy is good. It is not, and saying otherwise is at least intellectually dishonest. Ask the small farmers losing family farms. Ask the exploited migrant workers in slaughter plants. Ask them and many others if they think and experience that the economy is fine.
The template of the American success story, some of which may be outright bullshit, not unlike the old Ragged Dick stories:
"An immigrant family comes to the United States with little more than two pennies to their name, opens a small business, and works hard year after year. As the family members slowly build the business, successive generations take on the responsibility of running and growing it. The business prospers, and its leaders become prominent citizens, giving back to the community that helped them succeed. Museums, schools, and hospital wings soon bear their names" (29).
As we learn in the book, the coffee barons built their fortune by
supporting the Nazis in Germany. If you recall history, so did the
chemical giant IG Farben. You can read about IG Farben in Hell's Cartel (link to my review).
As
for the dairy barons, the dynasty founder exemplifies that these folks
are not really "self-made men." They may have political savvy and
business ability, but they had a lot of help:
"They perfected the
art of using public resources--whether they were water, land, tax
breaks, subsidies, or politicians themselves-- for private gain. They
are not self-made barons; the system made them, and continues to promote
them, even as many family dairies have been lost" (73).
By the way, I always find it highly hypocritical when Americans bitch and moan about other nations subsidizing parts of their economy while they keep quiet about their own subsidies. At least other nations often do it for a good cause and not just to add money to a robber baron's pockets.
How to get, or get back, healthy markets:
"Healthy markets are not a natural phenomenon. As a society, we make decisions about how markets are structured, about the rules that govern them and what constitutes fair play, about who holds power and who does not. Once we acknowledge how these decisions have shaped the food system we have now, we can opt to create a different system that better reflects our values" (78).
That assumes that decent people in the United States get their heads out of their asses long enough to stop watching MILF Manor or whatever reality crap they are watching and maybe bother to think about something other than getting everything cheap costs be damned. I am not optimistic on that front.
Why telling people to just "opt out" of the system is basically bullshit. Telling people to "buy organic," for example, is useless and to be honest seriously elitist:
"Here is the thing: the multinational corporations co-opted the alternative system. Stonyfield Farm and Siggi's Dairy are now owned by Lactalis, a French yogurt giant with annual revenues in the tens of billions. Annie's Homegrown was acquired by General Mills. The theory of alternative consumption ultimately just created a bifurcated system, with healthy options at a higher price point for a few and the same unhealthy processed foods for everyone else. It didn't do anything for workers or local businesses or family farms. The reality is that any solution to these problems that does not directly challenge power is doomed to failure" (181).
Finally for me, from the notes, three books I am adding to my TBR list to read down the road I hope:
- Christopher Leonard, The Meat Racket. It sounds interesting, but it is a 2014 book, so a bit concerned it may be getting out of date especially since it is also pre-COVID.
- David de Jong, The Nazi Billionaires (2022). This one may be a while since it is subject to my reading boycott; it is published by a Harper Collins imprint.
- Chloe Sorvino, Raw Deal (2022).
Book qualifies for the following 2024 Reading Challenge:
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