4th April 2025
The Barons Who Rule What We Eat
Author Austin Frerick explains Big Ag’s powerbrokers—and how Trump’s tariffs could upend American farming.
- Artis CuriskisFellowBio
Mother Jones illustration; Kris Graves; Island Press
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Growing up, Austin Frerick recalls the fields of Iowa as lush and full of farm animals. Now, when he visits his hometown of Cedar Rapids, he sees a more barren landscape. The shift, or as he describes it, “the collapse of Iowa,” inspired the seventh-generation Iowan to look into the wealth and power that’s shaped the state, and subsequently, the American agriculture and food systems. Frerick’s widely-praised book, Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry, explores the titans who have amassed near monopolistic market domination of what we eat every day–and the systems that enabled them to amass power.
Chapter by chapter, Frerick profiles a family or company dominating the hog, grain, coffee, dairy, berry, slaughter, or grocery industries. Some are household names like Driscols and Walmart; others, like the Batista family who run the world’s largest butchering company, keep their names off their products. The profiles cover how each baron came to and maintained power, whether through government corruption, rapid acquisitions, or developing production models that dodged labor or environmental regulations.
The barons’ growth reveals how, in both visible and invisible ways, their products are intertwined in the larger food system. Ultimately, Frerick connects their actions—from building enormous hog confinements to skirting safety laws—to the various health and climate threats ailing communities across Iowa, America and the globe. Mother Jones recently caught up with Frerick to discuss the 2024 book and what it says against the backdrop of Trump’s plans, a growing MAHA movement, and skyrocketing food costs.
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Where did your interest in agriculture and food systems begin?
Cedar Rapids is a corn town, so much of your cereal, so much of your food, is manufactured there, and so it’s painted into the background.
Also, part of my family is from up in the part of Iowa that used to be the prettiest; The Driftless region with rolling hills, dairy; and now there’s no animals on the land. You smell them, but you don’t see them. And you see the collapse of the family farm which has hollowed out these towns.
There’s this imagery—people think of Iowa as like this Field of Dreams. But that’s not Iowa anymore. Field of Dreams Iowa died in my lifetime, and I think about that all the time.
How did you first learn about the agriculture barons?
I had an internship at a think tank, and they asked me to proofread school district data, and I sorted it by non-white, free and then reduced lunch rates; And I kept noticing the same seven small towns in Iowa. I was like, What’s going on here? Turns out they were all slaughterhouse towns. So I did my college thesis on this. I interviewed a principal where he told me about the additional support services that schools are required to bring because of the working poverty a lot of these students are growing up in. And in the next instant, he literally said, ‘The packers are great. They give me unlimited hot dogs for the back-to-school bash.’ And it was my advisor who said, ‘Do you not realize what’s going on there? That’s power. He can’t connect the fact that like all these issues are because of the slaughterhouse. These are modern day company towns.’
Your book centers on how these barons rose to become pillars of our global food system. How did they come to be?
This laissez faire era rewards a race to the bottom and the most ruthless players. Like most hog farmers, they weren’t willing in Iowa to shove their pigs into a metal shed where they don’t see a blade of grass. You reward the worst actors. And I think so much of the current American economy gets the worst people winning.
“Iowa should be the Tuscany of North America. It has some of the world’s best soil yet it has an obesity crisis, a water crisis, and a cancer crisis.”
Also, I think the food industry is the most concentrated space in America, but also the least appreciated. Look at Cargill (a multinational company that trades agriculture commodities and produces ultra-processed ingredients like corn syrup). It blows people’s minds when I tell them they’re the largest private company in America–they’re bigger than the Koch brothers. No one knows who they are, because they have a lot of middlemen who are not consumer facing. Even when they are consumer facing, a lot of times they own multiple brands, so you don’t even realize how consolidated that space is because you have this illusion of choice.
How do the monopolies or oligopolies established affect the food we eat and what we pay?
We spend more money than the United Kingdom, Spain, Mexico, Canada, Greece, Japan, France, Germany, Sweden, Australia, Italy. So it’s like literally, we spend $1,000 more per person per year than some in the United Kingdom. So right now, the system is expensive, which, first of all, we shouldn’t be shocked about. That’s economics 101: concentrated markets gouge. It’s what they do. But second, something that I’ve come to appreciate is how much the system makes bad tasting food. We’re actually paying more for garbage.
And how do these barons impact the environment?
Textbook monopoly is innovation: taste and price. But the environment, everything in the environment, there is a shifting of cost. They call it negative externalities in economics. You see it in Iowa. I view Iowa now as an extraction colony, like it’s really a 19th century coal mining town in terms of the power dynamics. The family hog farmer essentially died in my lifetime and this mass of industrial hogs took its place.
So Iowa has like 25 million hogs a year and they defecate three times more than us, so that’s manure of 75 million people. At the same time the regulatory structure has collapsed. And so Iowa is drowning in shit. The waterways were an open sewer, like 50 to 63 percent of the waterways in Iowa are too polluted for you to go in.
And then the last scary new thing we’re seeing is Iowa has the second-highest cancer rate in the country. And it’s clear it’s tied to the agricultural system in Iowa.
Iowa really is the canary in the coal mines of the American food system. Iowa should be the Tuscany of North America. It has some of the world’s best soil yet it has an obesity crisis, a water crisis, and a cancer crisis.
In February, the Senate confirmed Brooke Rollins as Trump’s USDA secretary. What can we expect from her leadership, and how does that look in comparison to the legacy of Tom Vilsack, the former USDA secretary?
More of the same. I really don’t see a policy difference between her and Vilsack. I would love to be proven wrong. To be fair, there hasn’t been a good secretary in my lifetime at USDA. But Vilsack failed to rein in the meat monopolies, these companies gouging everyone, gouging farmers, gouging at the store, employing children in slaughterhouses. He not only failed to do something, they actually got larger under the Biden administration.
In the most recent election, the rising cost of groceries was a major issue. Still, since Trump won we’ve seen him claim it will be hard to lower the price of groceries. What role do these barons have in the pricing of goods?
When you have so few players in the space, it’s so easy to act like a cartel and gouge. I think the best example, just the extent of the price gouging by the barons, is that McDonald’s is the largest buyer of beef in the world. Usually, you treat your largest customer the best: They say bark, you say woof. McDonald’s filed a lawsuit against the beef packers this fall for price fixing. So if you’re gouging your largest, best customer, that tells you everything.
I think that the really scary thing now is even Walmart’s getting hurt. Walmart’s like the king of kings, it’s the head honcho. People judge your grocery store based on the price and quality of the meat and dairy case. And Walmart’s response to being gouged by the barons is taking things into its own hands and making vertical plays into both beef and dairy by building its own beef plant in Wichita and then three dairy plants in America. I believe it wants insight into cost structure, so that way it knows when it negotiates with these barons it knows what it costs to produce a gallon of milk. I think the most powerful person in the American food system right now is a Walmart buyer.
Last congress extended the farm bill by one year as part of an effort to avert a government shutdown, so now it’ll likely be brought back up sometime this year. It’s become an industry defining bill. Can you share the gist of the farm bill and how it has shaped agriculture into a baron ruled system?
Essentially, you have a quarter of it incentivizing people to over produce grains (through crop insurance systems), and then the other three fourths of it is a food assistance subsidy to the working poor of America. And I think the Farm Bill is collapsing in front of us right now because [Congress] can’t push it through. They’re trying to essentially pass a status quo Farm Bill, and they can’t even get it done. And I think partly it’s the MAHA influence, where younger men are obsessed with their bodies and so they’re repulsed by the Farm Bill. I mean, in fact, we get subsidies for Oreos, but not healthy food. And so you’re kind of seeing that break off into the MAHA. Senate Republicans want to pass it. House Republicans are much more like, let’s blow this thing up. And I think that’s what’s gonna be really curious to see.
It’s not like we’re eating more hogs. It’s more for export, and a lot of it’s to places like Mexico and China. Why are we destroying Iowa to feed China and Mexico?
I think the most likely outcome, actually, is they’re going to gut SNAP [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program], which is basically going to screw poor people or the working poor.
But again, one idea [Republicans] had, that I thought was a good idea, was they actually want to put SNAP under HHS, take it away from USDA. I think that’s a good idea. I don’t think they’ll actually do it. I assume everything they’re going to do is in the interest of the barons and the oligarchs.
Does change have to happen at state and local level first?
To me, that’s like the curse and blessing of the laboratories of democracy…You get things like unemployment insurance starting in Wisconsin and going national. Or, hopefully down the road, we see free school meals of Minnesota go national. But on the dark side, you see it play out too in the food system. In North Carolina, a state senator deregulated the hog industry that allowed this really exploitative industrial model to take hold and Iowa just copied it. One thing to keep in mind too about this hog production: It’s not like we’re eating more hogs. It’s more for export, and a lot of it’s to places like Mexico and China. Why are we destroying Iowa to feed China and Mexico?
I really do think there’s no party more tied into China than the Republican Party of Iowa. I mean, (former Iowa governor) Terry Branstad was Trump’s ambassador to China. The whole model of Iowa is overproduction and dumping these surpluses abroad. They can’t imagine a world of like, ‘Maybe we do less industrial pork, maybe we grow carrots, maybe we grow sheep?’ The really dark undercurrent is there’s all the xenophobic rhetoric, but [Iowa Republicans] are the most tied into that model.
RFK Jr. and the MAHA movement seem keen to ban pesticides, seed oils, and ultraprocessed foods, many of which are central to some of the massive agriculture barons noted in your book, from Driscoll’s genetic work to Cargill’s high fructose corn syrup. How do you anticipate Big Ag industry leaders to respond to this?
Well, first of all, I think they have already started exerting some influence because no MAHA people got into USDA. So like, let’s just start there, they don’t have power. My takeaway from that whole thing is there really is a bipartisan chance to do something meaningful. Here you have a weird coalition of everyone just not seeing the system work. I mean, that is, you have the MAHA types latching onto it.
The barons tend to use the classic playbook. They drag things out. And so they’re going to try to delay the MAHA and hopefully the passion falls away.
Another policy change that agriculture may face is navigating the ongoing tariffs. Some Canadians are refusing to purchase produce made in the US. How does it impact these big Ag businesses?
So much of the American Farm Bill now is designed to over produce a few things. So we essentially need to dump our surpluses abroad at the same time. These free trade agreements essentially allow the races to the bottom for produce production. Forty percent of your vegetables and 60 percent of fruit comes from outside the borders. Kind of like a T-shirt, when these supply chains move offshore, you see transparency collapse.
“This system is incredibly fragile, and it’s not sustainable.”
But also keep in mind, farmers can’t compete on price, so they exit the market and then end up doing more corn and soy. These tariffs could break the current Farm Bill model in America, where we’re producing too many hogs for our consumption. We need to sell them to China. But also if a tariff war were to break out, what’s going to happen? What Trump did last time was essentially spend billions of dollars to do bailouts, to buy the surplus and take it off market. If anything, the tariffs are going to cost a lot of money.
What gives me hope is this system is incredibly fragile, and it’s not sustainable, and it’s going to break at some point. What we’re seeing with eggs is going to become normal, because you’re playing Russian roulette with disease in this industrial meat and dairy system. When you pack that many genetically similar animals into a metal shed, you’re going to get these massive disease outbreaks, and they will only continue to happen. So at some point you got to be like, is it worth it, or do we need a different production model? And these super concentrated systems are fragile. They’re going to keep breaking.
In the coffee baron chapter you note how in many cases researchers and economists earn a hefty income providing evidence that encourages monopolistic behavior. How does this impact everyday citizens? And what do you anticipate the future of this research industry?
I think the most corrupt academic discipline in America right now is agricultural economics. When you start talking to folks, you realize every commodity has go-to hack academics. I talk about a certain Ag economist at Iowa State, who is just the go-to academic for the hog baron. Even though, for example, we know that working at a slaughterhouse is one of the most dangerous jobs in America, and the hog baron wants to speed up the kill lines to make more money, magically, this Ag economist says this is good for Iowa farmers. He’s also in business with a hog baron. He is a corporate witness for them, and he usually doesn’t disclose it. So not only is it corrupting the literature, it’s corrupting the public discourse. And, to your average American, here’s a fancy sounding title from an academic from a university saying this is not a real issue. It’s helping to hide the crisis among the workers, the climate, and the food system.
In a time where agriculture is, as you note in your book, largely dominated by these oligopolies. Where is the most progress being made to disrupt these barons?
There’s two questions I always get asked when I do book events. One is, do you worry about your safety, and it’s always from a nice old lady. The second one is always, and this is usually from audience members at the more coastal events: Why are these people voting against their economic interest? And that question always bothered me because it was a Democrat [Vilsack] in Iowa that undermined the rebellion of people fighting with hog barons. I think there’s a degree of people, especially in these more rural communities, that just don’t trust anyone anymore. They want to blow up the whole system.
Here’s the thing: people for decades have been talking about monopolies, but no one’s done anything. We all agree that we’re being short changed by these barons. You have to articulate to folks what the system could be so that people feel like they can overcome that.
Start locally. The first anti-monopoly laws in the world started in Iowa, were written by Iowa farmers mad about being gouged by grain elevators. It rippled across the country and then the federal government essentially did a version of that bill. There’s a lot of people doing it right.
I really learned while writing this book that most people are trying to do the right thing. They’re just running uphill. And it’s just the greed of a few people holding us back. The system we have now is radical. So much of what we talked about is traditional. I just want animals on the land.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
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Source: The Alan Turing Archive
