Source:
https://expose-news.com/2023/02/13/corporations-are-taking-control-of-the-worlds-food/
A report published at the end of 2022 by The ETC Group reveals how a handful of corporations with the help of Big Tech are taking over the world’s food supply.
The report, titled ‘Food Barons 2022 – Crisis Profiteering, Digitalization and Shifting Power’, offers a snapshot of the world’s “Food Barons” – the biggest players up and down the industrial food and agriculture chain. It examines the leading corporations that control each of 11 key industrial agrifood sectors: seeds, agrochemicals, livestock genetics, synthetic fertilizers, farm machinery, animal pharmaceuticals, commodity traders, food processors, Big Meat, grocery retail and food delivery.
The findings show that many agrifood sectors are now so “top-heavy” they are controlled by just four to six dominant firms, enabling these companies to wield enormous influence over markets, agricultural research and policy development, which undermines food sovereignty.
Unfortunately, the report pays lip service to the World Economic Forum/United Nations’ false climate change narrative and it also favours racial justice. What exactly is meant by “racial justice” is unclear. If it is a show of solidarity with the “social justice warriors” of the neo-Marxist Critical Race Theory – the dominant ideology behind the Black Lives Matter social movement – this is again unfortunate. However, a misguided belief in these ideologies has not affected the essence and integrity of the report even though the authors cite an understanding of the relationship between the two as part of the basis of the report:
The report is a comprehensive review packed with important qualitative and quantitative information such as the digitalisation of agriculture and tables showing the dominant corporations in each agrifood sector. We briefly highlight these below.
The report also details important and often overlooked topics such as:
- Post-Patent & Generics Drive Pesticide Proliferation (pg. 8);
- New Techno-Fixes: 1) Gene Editing; 2) RNA Pesticide Sprays (pg. 27); and,
- The (bio)digital takeover of food and agriculture (pg. 130).
We don’t go into these sections of the report here but they are a must-read for anyone who feels the use of these technologies is in any way beneficial.
The Digitalisation of Agriculture
Health Impact News used the Food Barons report in an article to highlight Big Tech’s plan to take over the food supply. “Everything and anything related to digital computer technology these days are being labelled as Artificial Intelligence (“AI”), the new marketing buzzword for Big Tech to lure money from investors, so it should not surprise us that Big Tech is now attempting to apply AI to food production,” Health Impact News wrote and includes some extracts from the Food Barons report:
This is the reason why billionaire technocrats, such as Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, are now among the largest owners of farmland in the United States.
Related: Farmer Bill and his wife, the private owners of more farmland than anyone else in America
As the ETC report so eloquently states, here is the “dream farm” of the Technocrats. It is a “farm of one” where technology does all the work and rakes in the profits:
With Big Tech’s encroachment into agriculture, we have now moved from Is this food safe to eat? to Is this even “food” and is it edible?
As the ETC report reveals, as consolidated Big Food was before covid, they used covid to consolidate even more, so that today just a few corporations control most of the world’s food. “Data,” supplied by Big Tech and their AI, is what allows this tremendous consolidation of power.
Read Health Impact News’ full article HERE.
Corporations That Control the World’s Food Supply
Asset Management Corporations
Before listing the dominant actors in each agrifood sector, the report begins by showing the shareholders of some of those corporations.
Recent decades have seen a massive increase in land grabbing and venture capital speculation in food and agriculture assets worldwide, with the latter trend exemplifying the “financialisation” of the Industrial Food Chain. In this way, the driving purpose of food systems moves ever further away from feeding people to feeding profits. More recently private equity and asset management firms are flocking to global food and agribusiness. At the close of 2020, the private equity industry managed more than US$7.5 trillion in capital, with increasing influence over the levers of corporate power in food and agriculture. For example, just three of the world’s largest asset management firms collectively control more than one-quarter of all institutional shares of some leading agribusiness corporations.
Agrochemicals and Pesticides
In the wake of recent mega-mergers, at least five of the leading pesticide companies also dominate the world market for commercial seeds and traits. The pesticide and seed sectors became inextricably linked with the commercialisation of molecular biotechnologies in the mid-1990s (e.g., herbicide-tolerant genetically modified plants). Today they are being further linked by Big Data strategies.
Despite the astonishing level of corporate concentration in the global commercial seed sector, the vast majority of the world’s farmers are self-provisioning in seeds, and farmer-controlled seed networks still account for an estimated 80-90% of seeds and planting material globally. Over the past 40 years, the world’s largest agrochemical firms have used intellectual property laws, mergers and acquisitions and new technologies to take control of the commercial seed sector. Today, pesticides and commercial seeds are no longer distinct links in the industrial food chain. However, ETC Group continues to provide corporate rankings and market share for seeds and agrochemicals as separate sectors. The ‘pure-play’ seed company (that is, a company that focuses primarily on seeds) is a rarity among the leading companies.
Synthetic Fertilizers
The global fertilizer industry is fragmented; however, it has historically operated in export cartels organised by fertilizer type (sometimes government-sanctioned and involving state-owned companies). State ownership/investment in fertilizer production and trade is still common. Many fertilizer companies are expanding offerings to include so-called speciality fertilizers (e.g., containing micro-nutrients and/or microbe-based formulations) and digital agriculture.
Livestock Breeding and Genetics
The industry typically selects for genetic traits to maximize production (i.e., rapid growth and high yields) and to facilitate the production, processing and transport of uniform animal protein products on a massive scale. Industrial breeds can’t survive without high-protein feeds, expensive medications and climate-controlled housing.
Machinery for Big Ag
Today, the world’s largest farm equipment companies are gearing up to control digital ag technologies and farm data as their number one strategy for expanding market share. Digitalised agriculture implies other machinery used down on the farm – drones, sensors and devices that run apps, for example – as well as internet connectivity.
Animal Pharma
The animal pharmaceutical industry (also known as the animal health industry) sells commercial products for livestock productivity/health and companion animal (pet) health, including medicines and vaccines, diagnostics, medical devices, nutritional supplements, veterinary and other related services. This sector does not include livestock feed and pet food products (although in some cases it may include medicated feed additives).
Agricultural Commodity Trading
The colossal firms that control global commodity trading are among the most powerful and least-transparent companies in the industrial food chain. The total value of global agricultural commodity markets is difficult to estimate because much of the information is proprietary and supply chains are opaque: three of the world’s top-ranking ag commodity traders are privately held, and one is state-owned.
Big Meat and Protein
The corporate meatpacking industry involves the slaughtering, processing, packaging and distribution of animal protein from livestock. Increasingly, the industrial meat sector is also linked to the production of “alternative proteins” – i.e., high-protein foods processed from plants, insects, fungi, or via cell-culture or fermentation (synthetic biology) techniques – aimed at replacing or co-existing with conventional animal and fish-based proteins on the market.
Food and Beverage Processing
The food and beverage industry focuses on the post-harvest processing of raw agricultural commodities into consumer products – both foodstuffs and feedstuffs for human and animal consumption.
Grocery Retail
The world’s largest grocery retailers sell both non-food products (“non-edible grocery”) and food. According to retail industry analyst Edge by Ascential, worldwide consumer spending on retail food & beverage totalled $8,271 billion (US$8.3 trillion) in 2020.
Food Delivery
The Food Delivery sector refers to digital, on-demand platforms for ordering and paying for prepared food and, increasingly, groceries and other retail items. Restaurants/retailers fill the orders and couriers deliver them to customers within a prescribed timeframe.
Selected Extracts from the Report
The following extracts from The ETC Group’s report are self-explanatory and so require no additional comment.
Related: UK’s Competition Watchdog proposes changes to Competition Laws because “Climate Change”
Global governance is expressed through corporatism and the rise of conglomerates. A particular example of corporatism and social control can be found within global food systems, the ways they are monopolised and managed. And the control and management of global food supplies have been a corporate and political priority for decades, with US-based conglomerates leading the charge. As Henry Kissinger remarked in 1970:
“Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people.”
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