Get the latest tech news
Monopolies across the grocery supply chain squeeze consumers, small businesses
Monopolies across the grocery supply chain squeeze consumers and small-business owners alike. Big Data will only entrench those dynamics further.
A recent book, Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry, written by Austin Frerick, details how a handful of families came to dominate meat processing, commodities such as corn and soy, and nearly every sip of coffee on the planet. A New York Times Magazine article on federal antitrust enforcers and poultry tycoons details how even large fast-food chains such as KFC can be goaded into higher prices, dictated by even bigger chicken companies. The report, titled “Feeding America in a Time of Crisis,” ultimately confirmed complaints that anti-monopoly advocates and smaller grocery industry firms had voiced for years, that power buyer retailers demanded that suppliers prioritize their orders, by imposing short deadlines and steep fines for noncompliance.
Or read this on Hacker News