Publications
Meatpacking giant JBS recently acquired the Mountain State Rosen (MSR) lamb processing plant in Greeley, Colorado. The plant processed as much as one-fifth of all U.S. lamb and served ranchers from 15 states, but JBS plans to shut it down, leaving ranchers stranded.
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Food & Power Reporter Claire Kelloway reports on an investigation into an allegation that agribusiness giants Bayer, Corteva, BASF, Cargill, and others tried to crush an online ag retailing startup, the California-based Farmers Business Network (FBN). The allegation represents an abuse of market power by leading agribusinesses to maintain control over seed and agrichemical markets in an era of retail disruption.
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Personalized pricing was a popular topic at the National Retail Federation’s annual convention in New York City this month, reports Food & Power Reporter Claire Kelloway. Grocery stores can leverage a combination of data analytics and customer identification and tracking tools to offer real-time individual pricing and promotions, both online and in-store. While the practice may still be in its infancy, some experts believe that personalized prices will become the standard in food retail and beyond.
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Claire Kelloway reports that the USDA thwarted a decade of efforts to help farmers seek justice for discrimination, retaliation, and unfair treatment by meatpackers. Trump’s USDA introduced new criteria to determine whether a meatpacker violated the Packers and Stockyards Act. This latest proposal omits several critical farmer protections from the previous rule and introduces new language that could codify abusive industry practices.
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The Farm System Reform Act would halt construction of new concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) and phase out all large CAFOs by 2040, while also holding corporate meatpackers more accountable for environmental degradation and farmer exploitation.
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Open Markets Food & Power researcher and reporter Claire Kelloway published an op-ed on the Washington Monthly on November 21, 2019 on how America’s biggest dairy co-op is trying to become even bigger. Kelloway writes that one critical reason dairy farms feel pressure to consolidate is because milk retailers, buyers, and, processors have spent years consolidating around them. Now, a merger between major milk monopolists threatens to deal another blow to ailing dairy farmers, and its not clear if federal enforcers will do anything to stop it.
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Open Markets Food & Power reporter Claire Kelloway covers how after U.S. and Chinese trade officials reached a deal to lift China’s five-year ban on U.S. poultry imports, the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) submitted a final rule permitting China to export chicken to the U.S. from birds raised and slaughtered in China for the first time in the agency’s history. She argues that the only clear winners in this grand bargain are multinational meatpackers that can profit from selling the lowest cost poultry, no matter where it came from.
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A a coalition of students, farmers, ranchers, fishers, and food workers rallied outside the Philadelphia headquarters of cafeteria operator, Aramark, to demand the corporation invest in more just and sustainable food systems. Open Markets' Researcher and Reporter Claire Kelloway spotlights their campaign targeting a system of contracts and kickbacks between dominant food corporations and the three largest food service management companies, Aramark, Sodexo, and Compass Group.
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Open Markets' Food & Power reporter Claire Kelloway reports on the "Stop the Stealin'" rally where nearly 500 cattle producers from 14 states rallied in Omaha, Nebraska to denounce corporate control over cattle markets and to demand that the Trump administration do something to fix it. She also covers developments in the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund (R-CALF)’s case for why beef checkoff funds should not go to private entities without ranchers’ consent. Here's her latest on Food & Power.
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In 2015, a group of Peruvian shepherds working for sheep ranchers in the western U.S. filed an antitrust suit alleging that the ranchers had colluded to hold down wages and avoid competing for labor. A judge initially dismissed the case and a three-judge panel on the Tenth Circuit agreed this July. The plaintiffs petitioned for another chance at their day in court. Open Markets Food & Power reporter Claire Kelloway asserts that the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeal’s recent decision sets a precedent that, if adopted by other courts, could legalize cartel activity across the entire economy against both workers and consumers.
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Claire Kelloway writes in Food & Power about how the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control is investigating whether or not Amazon’s Los Angeles location meets state qualifications for a liquor store.
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Will out-of-state investors own a sizable portion of Costco’s chicken production? One investor from North Carolina has applied for permits to build at least 132 chicken houses across nine locations in four Nebraska counties, according to public documents reviewed by Food & Power. Read Claire Kelloway's latest story on how one private equity fund could own a quarter of the chicken houses for Costco’s project in Nebraska.
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"Do farmers truly own their tractors if they aren’t allowed to fix them?" writes Open Markets Food & Power reporter Claire Kelloway. "That’s the question posed by the growing Right to Repair campaign." Read her latest piece on the Federal Trade Commission's Right to Repair workshop that brought together small business owners, state lawmakers, trade group representatives, and advocates to explain the different ways manufacturers prevent buyers from fixing their products, and whether or not they are justified.
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This week, livestock farmers and advocacy groups from across the country flew to Capitol Hill to share stories of exploitation by large meatpackers and call for greater farmer protections. At issue is a pending rule by the USDA that will clarify farmers’ grounds to sue meatpackers for retaliation, discrimination, and other abusive practices.
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Walmart sells 50 percent or more of all groceries in one in every ten metropolitan areas and nearly one in three “micropolitan” areas across the country, according to a report by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, out last week. In 38 of these regions, Walmart sells 70 percent or more of all groceries.
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Open Markets Food & Power reporter Claire Kelloway covers the story of a new law in Maine granting loggers and haulers the right to bargain collectively with forest owners and sawmills. Maine’s new law expands the antitrust exemption for farmers’ cooperatives to include loggers and haulers. Yet the need for the exemption reveals a much deeper question about how we interpret antitrust laws and who is, and is not, allowed to economically cooperate.
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Last week, several senators called on the USDA to stop giving federal trade-related farm aid to foreign-owned corporations, particularly Brazil’s JBS, the largest meatpacker in the world. This follows a bill by Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., that would require USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service to only purchase foods from American companies, when available. Read the latest story by Open Markets Food & Power reporter Claire Kelloway on how the debate around foreign corporations receiving federal contracts misses the larger question of whether or not these contracts will trickle down to farmers at all.
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A recent study documenting consolidation and specialization in Alaska’s fisheries over the past three decades illustrates a broader trend taking hold in coastal communities across the country. Catch share programs, a new fisheries management system, are turning fishing rights into tradable commodities, driving up the cost to fish and consolidating fishing rights into the hands of a few wealthy owners.
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