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Socialist Analysis of The Food Industry

Written for the Socialist Alternative by Mera Freeman-Gerlach

In just the past hundred years, the food industry has undergone more change that in
the previous ten thousand. This is a clear product of capitalism providing the opportunity
for more technological advancements, as well as corporate control of this new science.
The disconnection between consumer and supplier has increased immensely, giving way
to a wide variety of problems that are social, political and environmental.
First off, it is important to understand the history of the food industry. In the early
1900s, over half of Americans were farmers or lived in rural areas. However, then came
the industrialization of the U.S. food system, leading diversified farms, which used to
produce a variety of crops and livestock, to become specialized. The belief that the
system would be more efficient if all workers did one job was accepted, and bigger
businesses began to rise to power to control these different steps.
This idea of efficiency had numerous impacts, the most important being the
replacement of humans with machinery for the manufacturing of food. This benefited the
capitalist class who could mass-produce food, while at the same time getting rid of
farming and production jobs. There are now one-eighth of the farmers that there were in
1950. The production of food became broken up into individual jobs with lengthened
supply chains. This specialization led to more separation from the source and gave big
corporations a lot more control of the process.
In addition, production became much more dependent on products made away
from the farm, like chemicals and fossil fuels. Companies started using antibiotics and
hormones to speed up the process of growth in animals. This increased the amount of
supplies that needed to be transported to a farm, and the amount of energy it took to make
food. There was the assumption that cheap energy would always be around to fuel these
production chains, but clearly we know that this is not true. All of these changes have
come with an immense amount of externalities, or hidden costs to the people.
Corporations are now allowed to deny the environmental impacts of their products.
With many connections between the government and the massive agribusinesses, these
companies can get away with pretty much anything. One of the most astonishing ways
that we can see this corporate corruption is with genetically modified organisms.
In 1980, the Supreme Court ruled that genetic strains could be privately owned and
patented. This allowed for a corrupt patent war where companies that had never before
dealt with the production of food, were recruiting scientists to come up with the next best
invention. The problem was that many of the quote unquote scientists were driven purely
by profit and did not allow for sufficient testing of the impact of their products. Prior to
renaming itself an agribusiness, Monsanto was a chemical company that produced DDT
and Agent Orange. This might sound astonishing, but when we look at who controls these
big businesses, it is always the same thing. They are shameless capitalists who will
choose profit over the good of the people at every step, and prevent the working class
from receiving safe and healthy produce.
Now about seventy percent of processed food has a genetically modified
ingredient, although there is extraordinarily strong evidence of environmental and health
impacts. In 1996, Monsanto controlled two percent of the U.S. soybean market, while
they now control over ninety percent. These companies have forced farmers to use their

crops. GMOs act as weeds taking over all organically made produce that are not
engineered to contain pesticides and other benefits. Many organic farmers are forced into
working for one of these agribusinesses, allowing for their monopoly of the production. If
a farmer choses not to work for one of these businesses and goes into debt, their land will
be taken over anyway. This complete control allows for corporations to gain an immense
amount of money at the expense of workers and the environment.
Corn is one of the most adaptable species when it comes to fitting into new
capitalist farming methods, but is also the most demanding. It is the greatest consumer of
nitrogen, and in the past was planted two out of every five years on any plot of land. It
was rotated with other plants. Growing one crop for years depletes the soil and leaves a
plot of land unable to grow any produce in the future. Corporate scientists have created
chemical fertilizer so that the same crop can be mass-produced on a piece of land. This
creates a vicious cycle because as the soil is depleted more, the need for fertilizer
increases.
In addition, fertilizer contains high amounts of phosphorus, which contaminates
water ecosystems. To an agricultural business, it is easy enough to find new land or add
more fertilizer. But if this goes on forever, there will be devastating consequences to the
land and the ecosystems impacted by these chemicals. Also, the companies will never be
involved in the actual production, so they are far removed from the consequences. Like
usual, the people who are impacted by these decisions are the working class farmers that
grow and harvest the crops. There is no way to make powerful agribusinesses attest to
what they are doing to the environment. The only way to solve the crisis is to throw out
the idea of specialization that capitalism in the food industry was built on.
Another less well-known impact of soil depletion is that it has led to a decrease in
the nutrient content of produce since the 1950s. In one recent analysis, vitamin C
declined by 20 percent, iron by 15 percent, and calcium by 16 percent. Basically, people
now have to eat three apples to get the same amount of iron they would have gotten from
a single apple in the 1950s. This is obviously bad news for any consumer, but it is great
for the companies selling the apples.
The fundamental problem is that food is currently treated as a commodity.
Environmental destruction, and other issues like hunger and malnutrition, will be part of
our society until the market stops operating on a theory of effective demand. This is the
idea that it is not who is hungry that matters, but who can afford to pay. Sustainable
development is defined as meeting the needs of the present without compromising the
needs of future generations. Under capitalism, there is no way for this to happen, because
there is no incentive for the capitalist class to do anything but protect their profit. We are
currently capable of feeding the world, just with the land that is in use right now. But
corporations treat food as a commodity item, so the surplus of food cannot get out to the
people who need it.
If the industry were not based around profit, systems of food production would be
deeply examined in order to prevent any long-term impacts. The goal should not be to
eliminate all technological advancements, but to rationally apply the available
information to each specific ecosystem and community. Technological advancements
have created a surplus of food, but instead of using this surplus to feed underfed and
starving people, new uses for staple crops have been created. In order to get more calories
into food, and therefore more profits, corporate America turned to food processing.

Processed foods dont exist because there is a demand for them. They exist because they
are a way of transforming the cheapest raw materials into more expensive retail items,
and generating enormous profits for the overseers.
The people who make our food can no longer afford to buy most of it. They also
have almost no way of fighting for a better system. Once a heavily unionized industry,
factory farming and meatpacking are now nearly unregulated. Government subsidies
make processed goods the cheapest. Although the health impacts are astounding, they
become the only option for working class people. We have seen a doubling in the amount
of obesity seen since the 1970s and the biggest predictor of it is income level.
Sugars and fat are the densest and scarcest sources of calories in nature. We have a
built-in positive reaction that makes eating them more satisfying than other foods. The
food industry has capitalized on this. Sugars and fats have become the cheapest. When
working-class people get diabetes or other health impacts from consuming this food, the
question becomes: do they pay for their medication to fix health issues or do they try to
buy healthier food? In a society where healthcare is treated as a privilege not a right, a
large portion of the country faces this dilemma. There is no way to stop this cycle without
getting rid of the ridiculous processing of food that was only created to benefit the ruling
elite.
The topic of meat is a whole separate issue. In theory, there is enough staple food
produced worldwide to feed everyone adequately, but much of it is fed to animals.
Instead of putting animals in an environment where they can collect their own food, crops
are grown separately to feed them. Recent studies, comparing the diet of humans to that
of chimpanzees and human ancestors show that we should be eating much less meat.
About two percent of a chimpanzees diet is comprised of animals, which scientists think
is what humans should be eating. The average American eats over two hundred pounds of
meat per year.
The reason why people eat so much of it is that the government subsidizes the
industry, so that it becomes one of the cheapest things to buy. Some sort of fatty beef
product might be the only source of protein that a working class person can afford. In
addition, over half of U.S. corn crops are used to feed cattle, hogs and poultry. If corn and
other crops were directly fed to people instead of animals, a lot less land would be
destroyed and food would be much cheaper. There would be a lot less steps in the
production. This also goes back to the capitalist idea of specialization and extending the
supply chain. Animals take a lot more steps to produce, especially if food is specially
grown for them to eat.
In addition, thirty percent of the earths water consumption comes from raising
animals. This means that eating one hamburger has the impact of showering for two
months. This isnt to say that eating meat is a bad thing. The problem remains the
capitalists who continue to tear down more land for meat production. Ninety-one percent
of Amazonian destruction comes from the meat industry. These big business owners are
allowed to tear down entire forests and destroy peoples living spaces with little
regulation. They are allowed to deny that there are environmental impacts to their actions
because they are not directly affected.
The current meat industry may have life threatening health effects as well. In 1998,
the USDA implemented testing for salmonella and E. coli so that they could shut down a
plant that repeatedly failed the tests. They no longer have that power. One of the biggest

problems is that cows are now fed corn to maximize profit. Corn is cheap and easy to
make, especially with new technologies, so it has replaced grass as the staple diet.
Feeding corn to cows, which is completely unnatural for their bodies, leads to the
development of E. Coli in their stomachs. These animals, which live at factory farms,
then stand ankle deep in their manure all day, so if one cow has the disease, others will
get it too. For people who cannot afford to buy grass-fed meat, this poses a potentially
life threatening crisis.
Again, it is obvious that the corporations couldnt care less about people having
various health impacts from their products, unless it becomes a scandal and impacts their
profits. To amplify this whole situation, ground beef from the grocery store has thousands
of different cows mixed up in it. This is due to the factory-like production system that has
been implemented in the meat industry. Because there are so many different cows in each
meat source, the chances of getting a disease are amplified. The government has done
close to nothing about these dangers and has continued to pass legislation that allows the
food industry to be run by corrupt and greedy corporations.
This type of politics when the government fails to care about the health of working
class people can be seen in the Flint, Michigan water crisis. Flint residents began
complaining about the color, taste, and smell of their tap water almost immediately, and
articles exposing the waters problems began appearing around October 2014. The
contamination began in April of that year, when Flint decided to source its water from the
polluted Flint River because it would be cheaper. They were so profit-driven that
Governor Snyder and his team did not take the steps to account for the corrosiveness of
river water. Lead from Flints aging pipes leaked into the water supply as a result of this.
Snyder may be apologizing now, but emails were released showing that his
administration first tried to deny the situation. The problems that working class people
face simply dont matter to corporate politicians like Snyder who are so far removed from
the affects of their actions. In addition, the governor used the recession to justify creating
emergency fiscal managers so that wealthy people would not see their investments
wasted. They were given the power to override elected officials and union contracts. This
effectively weakened the working class. The effects can be seen with the fact that there
are very few actions going on to protest against the water crisis.
Flint is a predominantly black community and about forty percent of the city is
living in poverty. This basically puts them at the bottom of the totem pole when it comes
to policy making. It is sadly not all that surprising that this crisis went unnoticed for a
year. The ridiculous thing is that it could have been prevented with the simple addition of
an anti-corrosive agent to the treatment process. This would have been incredibly cheap
and is used by basically every municipal water system.
This crisis is definitely not unique to Flint. In 2012, Congress slashed the funding
for lead programs from the C.D.C. by ninety-three percent. In the small town of St.
Joseph, Louisiana there has been a water crisis for years. Their pipes, which are over
ninety years old, are wearing down but not being replaced. The State Health Officer
claims that this is too costly, especially for a town so small. The residents have brown or
yellow water appear in their sinks at about every week. Access to clean water generally
not considered a problem in developed countries like the U.S., but with the way the
situation is going, crises like these will continue to occur.

In Flint, almost five percent of children tested for lead turned out to have elevated
levels. That is ridiculous, but on the west side of Detroit, one-fifth of the children tested
had lead poisoning. These other situations may go unnoticed because there is no
corporate cover-up, but they happen all over the place. They are a clear example of the
corruption of the one percent and the dismissal of basic human rights. Now, even after
this has been on national news for over a week, Flint residents are still being charged for
the poisoned water.
In the future, we could be looking at constant and prominent water crises in the
U.S. as the system becomes more privatized. It may become like the food industry where
health and environmental impacts are always overlooked for the benefit of the big
businesses. The food industry is just as connected to government corruption as the
various water crises around the country.
In 1972, the FDA conducted fifty thousand food safety inspections. But in 2006,
they only conducted about nine thousand. This happens because the government is
dominated by the industries it is supposed to be regulating. During the Bush
administration, the head of the FDA, was the former executive vice president of the
National Food Processors Association and the chief of staff at the USDA was the former
chief lobbyist for the beef industry. Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas is a former
Monsanto attorney. He wrote the majority opinion in a case that helped Monsanto enforce
its seed patents.
The food industry is one of the clearest examples of corporate politics. This iron
triangle is practically unbreakable because the people who make the laws benefit from
the profits of big businesses. They allow these companies to have complete monopolies.
For example, just four corporations own over eighty percent of the beef industry.
Subsidies are one of the most corrupt ways that the government helps out these
corporations. The subsidy policy is notoriously biased and the majority of farms that
receive them have a net worth of more than two million dollars and an average yearly
income of two hundred thousand dollars. The government encourages overproduction by
basing subsides on the quantity of excess produced, so lower-income farms get close to
nothing. In addition, the foods that are heavily subsidized are mass-produced meat and
unhealthy, processed goods.
This is another leading factor to health issues like diabetes, because fruits,
vegetables and healthy food simply cost more. The average chicken farmer invests over
five hundred thousand dollars and makes only eighteen thousand a year. The average
person is working a month more per year than in the 1950s, and reaches the supermarket
exhausted, and with little extra money to spend on local or organic goods.
A recent study shows that fifty percent of all U.S. children will be on food stamps
at some point in their childhood and ninety percent of Black children will be. The
industry is known for paying minimum wage more than other industry in the U.S. Taking
this into account, there is really no way for a fast food worker to buy any food but maybe
the unhealthy stuff that they are selling.
Corporations use the excuse that the people could have found a higher paying job
if they tried, and that the food industry is fundamentally low-paying. We know that this is
completely ridiculous. On average, labor composes about twenty percent of the value of a
pizza, and the rest goes straight up to the CEOs and what not.

Also, companies like Wal-Mart are notorious for coming into small towns and
taking away profit from small businesses, claiming that they are helping the community
by providing jobs and cheaper products. When people view them this way, they become
almost undefeatable. This is why there needs to be an organized movement of working
class people who understand the truth and who are willing to fight against corporate
control.
In the end, the only way to solve this food crisis is to have a massive revolution to
overthrow these profit-hungry businesses and put control of the food industry back into
the hands of the people producing the food. Everyone on earth should have equal access
to quality food and the environment should become a top priority.

Works Cited
Gaspaire, Brent, and Tony Wilsdon. "The Economics of the Fast Food Industry."
Socialist Alternative. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Feb. 2016.
http://www.socialistalternative.org/manifesto-of-the-fastfood-worker/economicsfast-food-industry/
Muldoon, Amy. "Animal, Vegetable, Movement?" International Socialist Review. N.p.,
n.d. Web. 14 Feb. 2016.
http://isreview.org/issue/70/animal-vegetable-movement
Pretty, Jules. "Can Ecological Agriculture Feed Nine Billion People?" Monthly Review.
N.p., 01 Nov. 2009. Web. 14 Feb. 2016.
http://monthlyreview.org/2009/11/01/can-ecological-agriculture-feed-ninebillion-people/
Snyder, Philip. "The Poisoning of Flint." Socialist Alternative. N.p., 27 Jan. 2016. Web.
14 Feb. 2016.
http://www.socialistalternative.org/2016/01/27/poisoning-flint/

Documentaries: Cowspiracy, Food Inc.