Daily Yonder – Ag and Trade | 12/30/2013 Unless rural people get organized to stand up to corporate power, the future of rural America will be grim, says veteran Nebraska agriculture attorney David Domina. If you care about rural communities, watch this speech — even if it means skipping a few cat videos. By Tim Marema If farmers don’t get organized and work together, they stand about as much chance of surviving as a lone bird flying into Read More …
National Farmers’ Union | Salina, Kansas | August 22, 1918 Declare the Five Big Packers Control One-Half of Meat Supply of Allied Nations — Have Used Their Power to Manipulate Livestock Market. President Wilson has made public the recently filed report of the special commission appointed some time ago to investigate the alleged monopolies tie to the control of the meat industry by the big packing companies. The commission declares that the five big packers control half of Read More …
By Richard Oswald Not too long ago, the worlds pharmaceutical companies lobbied Congress to drop strict safety guidelines saying those placed an undue burden on America. It was unconstitutional they said, by driving up the cost of medicine. US consumers shouldn’t care where medicine came from. It was none of their business actually, so long as they received adequate assurances of safety and effectiveness. It was the most efficient way, they said, to keep prices low. Pill imports Read More …
The most significant economic development of the last thirty years has been the trend known as globalization. It is characterized by the removal of national barriers to the movement of goods and capital within a worldwide financial system. The result has been the transfer of economic activity to countries of “lowest cost” in terms of wages, work practices and environmental impact Globalization has been “sold” to all concerned on the ground of economic efficiency. The free movement of Read More …
No one knows why James Hunter left his family for a two year gold prospecting tour in them thar hills. All we really know is a remote branch of the family tree once broke loose from his Missouri roots for the California Gold Rush. Maybe James wanted respite from routine … or plain old adventure. Or maybe he had gold fever. He found gold, probably not the bonanza he wanted, but when James returned there was just enough Read More …
BY LINA KHAN In July, the public learned that Goldman Sachs and several other large banks have morphed into giant merchants of physical goods, routinely shipping oil, running power plants, and amassing stocks of metals so large that Coca Cola accused them of hoarding. It was a disconcerting moment, as regulators realized that firms so recently known for their explosive mortgage-backed securities also deal in goods that can literally explode. These activities mean that banks supplying credit to Read More …
AAI Working Paper No. 13-05: by Author: C. Robert Taylor and Diana L. Moss Fertilizers are a critical input in the agricultural sector where industrial farming is heavily dependent on external inputs of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium or potash. A history of supra-competitive pricing by the few, large global producers of fertilizer inputs – coupled with characteristics that make the market conducive to anticompetitive coordination (i.e., collusion) – raise significant competitive concerns. This working paper qualitatively and quantitatively Read More …
Fifteen years ago, in responding to the question of why producers were receiving so little for their livestock, Dr. John Helmuth (economist, meat industry expert, and longtime critic of meat industry consolidation) said, “There is an economic term to describe this phenomenon: It is called stealing.” Compared to a competitive time in the industry in the 1970’s, the monopoly power of the big retailers and meat packers has left today’s cattle producers nearly $600 per head short of Read More …