Barons

Starred review from March 4, 2024
In this eye-opening debut study, Frerick, an agricultural policy fellow at Yale University, reveals the ill-gained stranglehold that a handful of companies have on America’s food economy. Tracing the paths various corporations took to achieve market domination, he repeatedly demonstrates how their rise was aided by infusions of corrupting money into the political process. Frerick, who grew up in Iowa, came to this topic out of curiousity about why his state had changed so much over the decades. Once known for its “strong middle class,” Iowa is “now defined by... decaying towns,” Frerick writes, but “the most jarring change is that the animals have disappeared from view.” His investigation tracks how the Hansen family, through their company Iowa Select Farms, have “built an empire of hog confinements,” an innovation in the pork industry that is disastrously toxic for nearby communities. Despite overwhelming public opposition, the Hansens triumphed by capturing the regulatory system through lobbying, including for state policy changes that undermine county-level regulation. Such unsettling revelations are peppered throughout Frerick’s deep dive; for example, despite entering the coffee industry only a decade ago, “the mysterious Reimanns, a reclusive German family with historical ties to the Third Reich,” have become second only to Nestlé by buying up trusted independent brands like Green Mountain, Intelligentsia, La Colombe, and Stumptown. It’s a disquieting critique of private monopolization of public necessities.

February 23, 2024

Agricultural and antitrust policy expert Frerick's debut book studies seven leading food companies and their leaders. The companies dominate their industries--hogs, grain, coffee, dairy, berries, beef, and retail grocery--and the author considers what he argues are the harmful effects of consolidation within these fields. He says such businesses lack robust competition. Therefore, dominant companies can exercise their power largely unhindered; exploit their customers, employees, and suppliers; and extract wealth (instead of reinvesting) from the communities where they operate. He says all this is compounded by the weakening of antitrust policy in much of the U.S. economy. He maintains that the seven sectors of the food industry are all consolidated, centralized, and corrupt. He advocates for breaking the power of the monopolistic firms; transforming them into systems where food is produced and sold locally at affordable prices; and paying people who work in the food industry fair and higher wages. VERDICT For readers with a serious interest in public policy and food production.--Shmuel Ben-Gad

Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2024
Frerick, whose career has been devoted to matters of agriculture and antitrust, profiles the corporate leaders of seven food-related industries whose successes spell disaster for the American consumer, for free trade, and for the environment. These ""barons"" have created virtual monopolies in such industries as coffee production, hog farming, dairy production, and the retail grocery business. They have, the author says, capitalized on the deregulation of the food industry, bought themselves key members of state governments and "impartial" analysts, relied on cheap labor, and circumvented (or ignored) laws regarding waste disposal and other environmental concerns. The author dissects not only the food barons' business practices, but also the disastrous impacts of these practices, including widespread health issues among workers and people who live near production facilities, the wiping-out of small businesses, and the destruction of land and properties. The author, who frequently sounds as though he is fighting to control his personal rage at the people he's writing about, backs up his statements with facts and figures. This is an angry and accusatory book, but also a fair and well-documented one.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from November 15, 2024
A report on the dangerous and disgraceful state of the American food industry. In his nonfiction debut, Frerick provides in-depth profiles of seven American food companies and the families who own and run them. The author charts how the growth of these companies has exploded in the last century: Politicians have been bought, regulatory laws have been gutted or completely repealed, and "seven food industry barons" have each "built an empire by taking advantage of deregulation to amass extreme wealth at the expense of everyone else." Frerick writes about the meatpacking giant JBS, noting that in 2017 investigators from the Brazil government accused some of the company's employees of bribing meat inspectors to allow tainted meats to be served in public schools. He also discusses the Cargill-MacMillan family, owners of Cargill, Inc. (the largest private company in America), identifying their business as one of the "huge, regional-scale corporations owned by just one or a few families who use their political connections to overpower both local democracy and local businesses." His overview of the tiny handful of companies that provide the vast majority of all kinds of food for Americans naturally includes an analysis of Walmart, the mega-company that, per Frerick, "has triggered a race to the bottom in every imaginable way" by playing a central role in shifting food-shopping to a "private, for-profit space." Frerick's prose throughout is both direct and masterfully controlled, with every point supported by extensive references and notes. This is no alarmist screed but rather a careful, systematic, and utterly damning demolition job--an exquisitely informed expos�. In these pages, the author unflinchingly explores the graft involved in suborning politicians, the guile used in circumventing the few regulations that do exist, the staggering cruelty of livestock farming, and sobering societal ramifications ("one's income will increasingly be reflected in one's waistline"); the result is quietly devastating. A genuinely revelatory look at mass food production in the United States.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. (Online Review)