To ensure fair competition and counterbalance predatory corporate consolidation, USDA must redistribute wealth and resources

WASHINGTON – Open Markets Institute published a report today — “Building Food Systems Resiliency Through Different Business Scales and Forms” — about how the Department of Agriculture must improve regulation of agriculture markets to ensure fair competition and to counterbalance predatory corporate consolidation through statutes such as the Packers and Stockyards Act. The report was originally submitted in response to the USDA’s request for comments titled, “Supply Chains for the Production of Agricultural Commodities and Food Products." Food & Water Watch and Friends of the Earth cosigned it.

The report focuses on how corporate consolidation contributes to supply chain fragility, focusing specifically on the meatpacking industry and grocery and wholesaling distribution. It also offers up models of food systems resilience like regional food systems, cooperatives, and other community-run organizational forms like solidarity networks and nonprofits.

Finally, the report suggests a series of actions the USDA can take to remove the risks of highly consolidated, corporatized food production and support resilience.

These actions include:

• Prevent further consolidation in meat processing

• Work with the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission to halt consolidation in retail and warehousing

• Ramp up creation of farmer- and worker- controlled cooperatives

• Revoke legal privileges for cooperatives that do not serve their members

• Protect and empower workers

• Reverse decades of discrimination by USDA

• Invest in Black and Indigenous producers and producers of color

• Prioritize community-focused organizations for procurement contracts

From the report:

“A truly resilient food system will promote food sovereignty, allowing all communities to have a say in what they eat and how its produced, including greater opportunities for all communities to directly participate in their own food production and distribution. This is one of the core promises of American democracy. And the USDA can help achieve this promise by regulating unfair corporate advantages and investing in marginalized communities and alternative modes of food production and distribution.

Read the full report here.

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