Author: Jon Lauck
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 080329526X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 259
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Book Description
The breathtaking number of mergers and joint ventures among agribusiness firms has left independent American farmers facing the power of an increasingly concentrated buying sector. The origin of farmers’ concern with such economic concentration dates back to protests against meatpackers and railroads in the late nineteenth century. Jon Lauck examines the dimensions of this problem in the American Midwest in the decades following World War II. He analyzes the nature of competition within meat-packing and grain markets. In addition, he addresses concerns about corporate entry into production agriculture and the potential displacement of a production system defined by independent family farms. Lauck also considers the ability of farmers to organize in order to counter the market power of large-scale agribusiness buyers. He explores the use of farmer cooperatives and other mechanisms which may increase the bargaining power of farmers. The book offers the first serious historical examination of the National Farmers Organization, which fully embraced the bargaining power cause in the postwar period. Lauck finds that independent farmers’ attempts at organization have been more successful than previously recognized, but he also shows that their successes have been undermined by the growing concentration and power of agri-business firms, justifying a new approach to antitrust law in agricultural markets.
Author: Edward Sagendorph Mason
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 440
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Author: R. Douglas Hurt
Publisher: Ivan R. Dee Publisher
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 216
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Book Description
A compact narrative history of American agriculture over the last century, emphasizing the farmer's growing reliance on the federal government.
Author: Wenonah Hauter
Publisher: New Press, The
ISBN: 1595587942
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 341
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Book Description
“A meticulously researched tour de force” on politics, big agriculture, and the need to go beyond farmers’ markets to find fixes (Publishers Weekly). Wenonah Hauter owns an organic family farm that provides healthy vegetables to hundreds of families as part of the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) movement. Yet, as a leading healthy-food advocate, Hauter believes that the local food movement is not enough to solve America’s food crisis and the public health debacle it has created. In Foodopoly, she takes aim at the real culprit: the control of food production by a handful of large corporations—backed by political clout—that prevents farmers from raising healthy crops and limits the choices people can make in the grocery store. Blending history, reporting, and a deep understanding of farming and food production, Foodopoly is a shocking, revealing account of the business behind the meat, vegetables, grains, and milk most Americans eat every day, including some of our favorite and most respected organic and health-conscious brands. Hauter also pulls the curtain back from the little-understood but vital realm of agricultural policy, showing how it has been hijacked by lobbyists, driving out independent farmers and food processors in favor of the likes of Cargill, Tyson, Kraft, and ConAgra. Foodopoly shows how the impacts ripple far and wide, from economic stagnation in rural communities to famines overseas, and argues that solving this crisis will require a complete structural shift—a change that is about politics, not just personal choice.
Author: Jan Eeckhout
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691224293
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 352
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Book Description
A pioneering account of the surging global tide of market power—and how it stifles workers around the world In an era of technological progress and easy communication, it might seem reasonable to assume that the world’s working people have never had it so good. But wages are stagnant and prices are rising, so that everything from a bottle of beer to a prosthetic hip costs more. Economist Jan Eeckhout shows how this is due to a small number of companies exploiting an unbridled rise in market power—the ability to set prices higher than they could in a properly functioning competitive marketplace. Drawing on his own groundbreaking research and telling the stories of common workers throughout, he demonstrates how market power has suffocated the world of work, and how, without better mechanisms to ensure competition, it could lead to disastrous market corrections and political turmoil. The Profit Paradox describes how, over the past forty years, a handful of companies have reaped most of the rewards of technological advancements—acquiring rivals, securing huge profits, and creating brutally unequal outcomes for workers. Instead of passing on the benefits of better technologies to consumers through lower prices, these “superstar” companies leverage new technologies to charge even higher prices. The consequences are already immense, from unnecessarily high prices for virtually everything, to fewer startups that can compete, to rising inequality and stagnating wages for most workers, to severely limited social mobility. A provocative investigation into how market power hurts average working people, The Profit Paradox also offers concrete solutions for fixing the problem and restoring a healthy economy.
Author: Alan R. Bird
Publisher: Forgotten Books
ISBN: 9780260777324
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 128
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Book Description
Excerpt from Surplus: The Riddle of American Agriculture On any public issue, the economist's viewpoint is, of course, only one of many. On the issue of the food surplus, his viewpoint is urgently sought. Even among agricultural economists, however, views on the problem differ, and these several views are almost useless unless the layman knows them. The layman needs supporting reasons for the views he seeks to consider. Our role is to interpret. We have tried to arrange the interpretation to help the reader focus more sharply on the many facets of the food surplus problem. You may not be an economist, but you may have your own ideas on how the farm program should be handled. We seek to help you spell out these ideas and to look at other ideas held no less firmly by other people. American farmers have worked themselves out of their markets. They have taken advantage of new technologiesand buoyant food prices. The result is more wheat, corn, cotton and other farm goods than they can sell and give away. The balance of grain and. Cotton, in particular, is bought and stored by the Federal Government. Helped by tax revenue, the Government has been guaranteeing prices of cotton, wheat and other so-called basic commodities. You might say: Fine. The farmer has to contend with the weather. And he typically lacks monopoly powers over prices. Why shouldn't he be able to expect fair prices for his products? About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
Author: Dennis Nordin
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253345714
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 386
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Book Description
Their account will inform readers with a detailed account of one of the great transformations in American life."--BOOK JACKET.
Author: Alison Alkon
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520292138
Category : SOCIAL SCIENCE
Languages : en
Pages : 344
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Book Description
"New and exciting forms of food activism are emerging as supporters of sustainable agriculture increasingly recognize the need for a broader, more strategic and more politicized food politics that engages with questions of social, racial, and economic justice. This book highlights examples of campaigns to restrict industrial agriculture's use of pesticides and other harmful technologies, struggles to improve the pay and conditions of workers throughout the food system, and alternative projects that seek to de-emphasize notions of individualism and private ownership. Grounded in over a decade of scholarly critique of food activism, this volume seeks to answer the question of "what next," inspiring scholars, students, and activists toward collective, cooperative, and oppositional struggles for change."--Provided by publisher.
Author: Barry C. Lynn
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1250240638
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 234
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Book Description
Barry C. Lynn, one of America's preeminent thinkers, provides the clearest statement yet on the nature and magnitude of the political and economic dangers posed by America’s new monopolies in Liberty from All Masters. "Very few thinkers in recent years have done more to shift the debate in Washington than Barry Lynn." —Franklin Foer Americans are obsessed with liberty, mad about liberty. On any day, we can tune into arguments about how much liberty we need to buy a gun or get an abortion, to marry who we want or adopt the gender we feel. We argue endlessly about liberty from regulation and observation by the state, and proudly rebel against the tyranny of course syllabi and Pandora playlists. Redesign the penny today and the motto would read “You ain’t the boss of me.” Yet Americans are only now awakening to what is perhaps the gravest domestic threat to our liberties in a century—in the form of an extreme and fast-growing concentration of economic power. Monopolists today control almost every corner of the American economy. The result is not only lower wages and higher prices, hence a concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few. The result is also a stripping away of our liberty to work how and where we want, to launch and grow the businesses we want, to create the communities and families and lives we want. The rise of online monopolists such as Google and Amazon—designed to gather our most intimate secrets and use them to manipulate our personal and group actions—is making the problem only far worse fast. Not only have these giant corporations captured the ability to manage how we share news and ideas with one another, they increasingly enjoy the power to shape how we move and play and speak and think.
Author: Avery Cohn
Publisher: IIED
ISBN: 1843696010
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 222
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Book Description
