When Austin Frerick looks out the window of his car in Iowa today, he sees a vastly different landscape than the one he watched pass as a child.
Grazing cows that once dotted the pastures have been replaced by windowless hog confinements. Farms that once made a painting of Iowa’s vast landscape now mostly rely on soybeans and corn, the latter used for ethanol.
Nearly 600 sections of Iowa’s waterways are impaired, many by agricultural and industrial pollution. A growing body of research links nitrate and pesticides to Iowa’s staggering cancer rates — the fastest growing rate of new cancers in the nation and the second-highest cancer rate, overall.
Grocery prices are at a record high, farmworkers often can’t afford the food they harvest and local markets are closing their doors, leaving rural food deserts in their wake.
As agricultural industries demand more and more acreage for row crop farmers to break even, the towns they used to anchor have hollowed out as younger generations move to more urban areas — in many cases, never to return.
“I almost view Iowa as an extraction colony — where all the wealth is leaving the state and is controlled by a few people and their minions,” said Frerick, 34. “The land is dead. Rural Iowans have a double whammy because they’re paying for it the most.”
Austin Frerick, Cedar Rapids author of “Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry.” (Kris Graves)
But not everyone is seeing declines in the ag system that has become more consolidated and vertically integrated over the last few decades. The barons, a group of seven corporate titans at the center of a new Cedar Rapids author’s book, are doing just fine.
“Most people know the food system isn’t working. They see food prices in the grocery store going up for no logical reason,” Frerick said. “The barons are reaping the profits and passing the cost on to us.”
But despite dark changes pushing out small farming in America, the agricultural and antitrust expert sees a bright spot on the horizon of Iowa’s potential: a place where variety and quality can not only coexist, but thrive with environmental sustainability, economic sustainability, and profitability.
“Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry,” gives a few hints on the way forward.
“I really do believe that Iowa could be the Italy of North America,” said Frerick. “It’s just a few greedy men holding us back.”
Over Busch Lites in a Des Moines dive bar, Frerick first learned about a couple who donated $300,000 to Gov. Kim Reynolds’ campaign in 2018.
Iowa Select Farms owners Jeff and Deb Hansen, the donors, owned a private jet emblazoned with the phrase “When Pigs Fly,” according to an Iowa political operative. The conversation led Frerick, a Grinnell College graduate, to write a 2021 Vox article about the couple, now known in his book as the “hog barons.”
“I just found this image to be such a powerful example of what happened to my home state over my life: the power of robber barons in the food system has overrun the state’s government to the detriment of the environment and its communities,” said Frerick. “But as I dug into their story, I realized that they’re just part of a bigger trend that has transformed the food system in places across the country and beyond.”
What: “Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry”
Who: Austin Frerick, with foreword by Eric Schlosser
Publisher: Island Press
Pages: 248
This book, complete with more than 60 pages of citations, is the seventh-generation Iowan’s attempt to grapple with how it happened through seven potent examples. Each one demonstrates a concept that grips the modern food chain with an iron fist.
In under 200 pages, readers will meet slaughter barons Joesley and Wesley Batista, owners of the Brazilian multinational powerhouse JBS, which has meatpacking plants in Iowa. They admitted to paying more than $150 million in bribes to 1,829 politicians between 2005 and 2017.
Readers will get acquainted with berry barons J. Miles and Garland Reiter of Driscolls, who control about one-third of the American berry market without growing a single berry. Through a model considered to be a remnant of American slavery, they contract out production of the berries — simply by owning the intellectual property of the fruit’s genetics.
And readers will marvel at the coffee barons in the Reimann family, owners of the JAB Holding Co. that now sells more coffee than Starbucks through holdings like Caribou Coffee, Bruegger’s Bagels, Krispy Kreme, Panera Bread and Keurig. The secretive family relied on wealth traced back to the Nazis to gobble up countless independent roasters, taking over the global coffee industry in less than a decade.
Through each example, the Yale University fellow paints a stark contrast that outlines the consequences of corporate consolidation, industry deregulation, monopolies and corruption he said have come to define American food.
“The cost of this corruption is that we can’t solve basic problems and government is no longer responsive to people’s needs,” Frerick said. “It increasingly functions to serve the barons’ interests.”
The way food is produced has huge implications for human and environmental health. It impacts the cleanliness of Iowa’s land and air. It affects the livability of the planet under the growing urgency of climate change.
Despite the dark phenomena that has rooted itself across industries, Frerick said there’s hope for those who want to plant change in the world.
Healthy markets are not a natural phenomenon. Like a garden, they require maintenance, he said.
With a carve-out for some exceptions, he argues it’s time to sunset the Farm Bill, put animals back on the land and aggressively phase out industrial animal operations like the ones operated by the hog and dairy barons.
He calls for the end of welfare standards that make it impossible to halt monopolies and oligopolies, rules to ban meatpackers from raising the animals they slaughter and rules to protect workers from danger and exploitation.
“If you don’t take care of it, an invasive species takes over,” he said. “Once we acknowledge how these decisions have shaped the food system we have now, we can opt to create a different system that better reflects our values.”
Locally, readers can take actionable steps, too. The author recommends pushing local institutions, like schools, to buy locally.
“These institutional buyers buy a lot,” he said. “The substantial dollars and reliable contracts that schools and other institutions provide would be a game changer for many local and sustainable producers who are struggling to compete with the big boys.”
www.thegazette.com
Grazing cows that once dotted the pastures have been replaced by windowless hog confinements. Farms that once made a painting of Iowa’s vast landscape now mostly rely on soybeans and corn, the latter used for ethanol.
Nearly 600 sections of Iowa’s waterways are impaired, many by agricultural and industrial pollution. A growing body of research links nitrate and pesticides to Iowa’s staggering cancer rates — the fastest growing rate of new cancers in the nation and the second-highest cancer rate, overall.
Grocery prices are at a record high, farmworkers often can’t afford the food they harvest and local markets are closing their doors, leaving rural food deserts in their wake.
As agricultural industries demand more and more acreage for row crop farmers to break even, the towns they used to anchor have hollowed out as younger generations move to more urban areas — in many cases, never to return.
“I almost view Iowa as an extraction colony — where all the wealth is leaving the state and is controlled by a few people and their minions,” said Frerick, 34. “The land is dead. Rural Iowans have a double whammy because they’re paying for it the most.”
Austin Frerick, Cedar Rapids author of “Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry.” (Kris Graves)
But not everyone is seeing declines in the ag system that has become more consolidated and vertically integrated over the last few decades. The barons, a group of seven corporate titans at the center of a new Cedar Rapids author’s book, are doing just fine.
“Most people know the food system isn’t working. They see food prices in the grocery store going up for no logical reason,” Frerick said. “The barons are reaping the profits and passing the cost on to us.”
But despite dark changes pushing out small farming in America, the agricultural and antitrust expert sees a bright spot on the horizon of Iowa’s potential: a place where variety and quality can not only coexist, but thrive with environmental sustainability, economic sustainability, and profitability.
“Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry,” gives a few hints on the way forward.
“I really do believe that Iowa could be the Italy of North America,” said Frerick. “It’s just a few greedy men holding us back.”
Meet the barons
Over Busch Lites in a Des Moines dive bar, Frerick first learned about a couple who donated $300,000 to Gov. Kim Reynolds’ campaign in 2018.
Iowa Select Farms owners Jeff and Deb Hansen, the donors, owned a private jet emblazoned with the phrase “When Pigs Fly,” according to an Iowa political operative. The conversation led Frerick, a Grinnell College graduate, to write a 2021 Vox article about the couple, now known in his book as the “hog barons.”
“I just found this image to be such a powerful example of what happened to my home state over my life: the power of robber barons in the food system has overrun the state’s government to the detriment of the environment and its communities,” said Frerick. “But as I dug into their story, I realized that they’re just part of a bigger trend that has transformed the food system in places across the country and beyond.”
At a glance:
What: “Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry”
Who: Austin Frerick, with foreword by Eric Schlosser
Publisher: Island Press
Pages: 248
This book, complete with more than 60 pages of citations, is the seventh-generation Iowan’s attempt to grapple with how it happened through seven potent examples. Each one demonstrates a concept that grips the modern food chain with an iron fist.
In under 200 pages, readers will meet slaughter barons Joesley and Wesley Batista, owners of the Brazilian multinational powerhouse JBS, which has meatpacking plants in Iowa. They admitted to paying more than $150 million in bribes to 1,829 politicians between 2005 and 2017.
Readers will get acquainted with berry barons J. Miles and Garland Reiter of Driscolls, who control about one-third of the American berry market without growing a single berry. Through a model considered to be a remnant of American slavery, they contract out production of the berries — simply by owning the intellectual property of the fruit’s genetics.
And readers will marvel at the coffee barons in the Reimann family, owners of the JAB Holding Co. that now sells more coffee than Starbucks through holdings like Caribou Coffee, Bruegger’s Bagels, Krispy Kreme, Panera Bread and Keurig. The secretive family relied on wealth traced back to the Nazis to gobble up countless independent roasters, taking over the global coffee industry in less than a decade.
Through each example, the Yale University fellow paints a stark contrast that outlines the consequences of corporate consolidation, industry deregulation, monopolies and corruption he said have come to define American food.
“The cost of this corruption is that we can’t solve basic problems and government is no longer responsive to people’s needs,” Frerick said. “It increasingly functions to serve the barons’ interests.”
The way food is produced has huge implications for human and environmental health. It impacts the cleanliness of Iowa’s land and air. It affects the livability of the planet under the growing urgency of climate change.
Solutions
Despite the dark phenomena that has rooted itself across industries, Frerick said there’s hope for those who want to plant change in the world.
Healthy markets are not a natural phenomenon. Like a garden, they require maintenance, he said.
With a carve-out for some exceptions, he argues it’s time to sunset the Farm Bill, put animals back on the land and aggressively phase out industrial animal operations like the ones operated by the hog and dairy barons.
He calls for the end of welfare standards that make it impossible to halt monopolies and oligopolies, rules to ban meatpackers from raising the animals they slaughter and rules to protect workers from danger and exploitation.
“If you don’t take care of it, an invasive species takes over,” he said. “Once we acknowledge how these decisions have shaped the food system we have now, we can opt to create a different system that better reflects our values.”
Locally, readers can take actionable steps, too. The author recommends pushing local institutions, like schools, to buy locally.
“These institutional buyers buy a lot,” he said. “The substantial dollars and reliable contracts that schools and other institutions provide would be a game changer for many local and sustainable producers who are struggling to compete with the big boys.”
What do berries, dairy, and pork have in common? This Cedar Rapids author explains.
“Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry,” the first book minted by Cedar Rapids author Austin Frerick, explores the intersections of American agriculture that have been ruled by an increasingly small number of powerful people.
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