LPE Project - Antimonopoly is about Democratizing the Food System (and the Rest of the Economy)

Sandeep Vanheesan, legal director, and Claire Kelloway, senior reporter, write in the LPE Project about the insufficient portrayals of antimonopoly policy in the field of agriculture. Their article shines a light on the misrepresented economic statuses of farmers across the states.

In their post, last month, Nathan Rosenberg and Bryce Stucki challenged narratives commonly used to advocate for antitrust enforcement in agriculture that broadly paint farmers as an aggrieved and struggling class. While we agree that sweeping generalizations of farmer insecurity can be misleading and divert attention away from those most exploited in the food economy, we also believe Rosenberg and Stucki’s accounting is an incomplete and unfair portrait of antimonopoly policy and politics. We respond to put forth a different narrative: that the historical and present-day purpose of antimonopoly law and policy is to distribute power downward and build, in agriculture and elsewhere, an economy that is fair and democratic. This includes mitigating corporate domination over farmers and the food system, but also promoting the very worker-owned farms that Rosenberg and Stucki endorse.

Although it is true that, as a whole, farm families have higher annual incomes and more wealth than the average American, median figures obscure the economic heterogeneity in farming households. In 2015, of the 817,000 U.S. farms with an owner that actually farmed for a living, roughly half made less than $350,000 in cash sales and lost money or barely broke even. These farmers still had an average household income just above the 2015 U.S. average, but more than 70% of that income came from off the farm. Even if some misidentified hobby farmers fell into this group, that still leaves a sizable fraction of farm families struggling to make a living from agriculture.

Read the full op-ed on LPE Project here.