Well worth the read.
"How America’s food giants swallowed the family farms"
(and degraded natural resources)
https://www.theguardian.com/environ...HRYbBnUnBG1dvY_UuMm0Sz3Cz-qdy-kMVlONoULvj9RqY
"How America’s food giants swallowed the family farms"
(and degraded natural resources)
https://www.theguardian.com/environ...HRYbBnUnBG1dvY_UuMm0Sz3Cz-qdy-kMVlONoULvj9RqY
...“When we very first were married, we had cattle and calves,” she says. “We raised hogs from farrow to finish, and we had corn, beans, hay and oats. So did everyone around us.” ....while the Kalbachs have hung on to their farm, they long ago abandoned livestock and mixed arable farming for the only thing they can make money at any more – growing corn and soya beans to sell to corporate buyers as feed for animals crammed by the thousands into the huge semi-automated sheds that now dominate farming, and the landscape, in large parts of Iowa...." ....“The system has been set up for the benefit of the factory farm corporations and their shareholders at the expense of family farmers, the real people, our environment, our food system,” ....
...“The thing that is really pervasive about it is that they control the rules of the game because they control the democratic process. It’s a blueprint. We’re paying for our own demise.
“It would be a different argument if it was just based upon inevitability or based on competition. But it’s not based upon competition: it’s based upon squelching competition.”..."