Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America's Food Industry

“Julie Duhn remembers her first time kayaking mostly for its aftermath. When Duhn retired from her office job, she decided to start experimenting with the sport at Pine Lake State Park, near her home in Eldorado, Iowa. The collection of campgrounds and trails rings two small lakes that trickle into the Iowa River and is surrounded by rolling farmland. It was a hot afternoon in mid-August, just a few weeks after her first outing, when Duhn’s arms began to itch, then grow red and raw. She consulted a doctor, who, after learning about her kayaking trip, blamed the rash on the lake water.”

And thus begins the incredible story of the 7 barons of the food industry who have shaped the way we buy, consume, and perceive who, how, what, and why the food industry is the way it is. I was absolutely blown away by this book - it is a must read for all of us, as food touches every aspect of our lives. Every chapter brought new and enlightening facts to the surface, including facts I thought I knew but had not considered. I was especially impressed by the tone throughout the book, as Frerick presents the stories in conversational tone that felt as though I was having a good, healthy discussion with an old friend instead of being lectured or talked at. I was especially touched by Frerick’s masterful weaving of his many personal references to Frerick’s childhood, family, and the many Iowa towns that shaped him and its connections to the subjects he discussed.

I have much to think on and process after finishing this book. I implore you all to pick up a copy and give it a read! You will learn so much, not just about our food industry but about yourself, too.

By "important book," I mean that it should be read by everyone who works in or studies agribusiness. Or has a crazy uncle who did his own research using Facebook memes and thinks the US President has a button in their office that caused a 9% inflation of food prices right before the 2022 election.

It's slim—just 183 pages, not counting massive endnotes and citations section. Each set of "barons"—hogs, grains, coffee, dairy, berries, slaughterhouses, grocery stores—gets a chapter, which are dense, well-written and succinct. They tell the stories of how successful businesspeople leveraged corrupt politicians and lawfare into monopolies that would have been illegal before Reagan and Bork butchered our anti-trust laws, regulatory bodies and republic itself.

Frerick is an excellent storyteller, so each chapter is a page-turner, which I didn't expect from a non-fiction book about farming and obscure laws/rules. Most of which you've never heard of, although you know the outcomes. Like Wal*mart's Plus One edict, which requires its producers to either improve quality or lower prices every year. Which sounds good, but has resulted in man-made horrors like the 2012 Dhaka garment factory fire in Bangladesh.

The concluding chapter provides actionable recommendations for fixing (or at least mitigating) the problems of monopolist control of our food systems—and the high prices, low quality, dangerous working conditions, low wages, and price gouging that have resulted. For example, a rule against meatpackers raising the animals they slaughter, which mitigates vertical integration, or competing in more than one protein market, to arrest horizontal integration. Effective busting those monopolies.

He also recommends criminalizing industrial animal operations and ending subsidies for corporate farming entities by using the Wisconsin Farmer's Union's definition of family farm: "those farm economic units in which the family provides the majority of labor and management for the enterprise and receives a significant amount of income." Not "multimillionaire families with private jets who haven't milked a cow in 40 years claiming tax breaks meant for family farms then plowing the savings into $100,000 donations to politicians who promise to further deregulate the dairy industry." I just hope we can implement some of those changes.

I was pleasantly surprised to discover this well researched book is a page turner as well as a must read. When the book arrived, I opened it up to just glance through it. I didn't look up for 45 minutes. Frerick is not just an expert on this extremely important topic; fortunately, he's a riveting storyteller making this book an engrossing read.

For some time now, the US has been feeling more and more like the Gilded Age of the 19th and early 20th centuries when wildly successful industrialists employed ruthless and/or unethical business practices that made them ridiculously wealthy at the expense of the rest of us. I mistakenly thought that we were secure from those practices after the major reforms put in place at the turn of the last century. Frerick's book demonstrates the easy return of the Robber Barons and the price you and I must pay for their greed, not just with our money, but in health, culture, and environment. I don't understand why companies don't care about these things as if their grandchildren will not inherit the consequences.

As Robert Kenner said, "Austin Frerick’s Barons tells a darkly fascinating story about our food system. With startling accounts of corporate behemoths and the regulatory failures that allowed them to amass unchecked power, destroying the family farm and the rural heartland along the way. Frerick makes an urgent case to structure our markets to protect our environment, our health and ultimately our democracy."

This has definitely been the best book I've read this year... and the most important.

Just finished Austin Frerick’s "Barons " a well-researched exposé of corporate consolidation and the monopolies dominating the food industry. Frerick introduces readers to seven corporate empires that dominate what we eat—and, by extension, how we live. From meatpacking to coffee, and from grain to dairy, the scale of influence these "barons" exert was nothing short of staggering and concerning to me.

Drawing on extensive documentation, personal interviews, and an ability to draw the reader into the scene, the author’s arguments are supported by volumes of evidence.

While the book’s political tone may be off-putting to many, its core message—about the dangers of consolidation and the need for reform—is important and timely. In thst regard, "Barons" succeeds as a call to action against a dangerously consolidated food economy—and a reminder that reforming it is not just possible, but necessary.

Check it out.

Really great....well written, and makes what could otherwise be a dry subject, quite interesting and quite scandalous

I really loved "Barons", because unlike so many non-fiction books it's an actually exciting and entertaining read, while still delivering tons of fascinating (and horrifying) information about agricultural monopolies and their abuses. The story crisscrosses the country and globe at a high speed but never loses your attention. One chapter starts with a literal bang, as a separatist group on the Canary Islands sets off a bomb which ends up having a butterfly effect that leads to massive consolidation of the berry industry.

Along with the many "Barons" detailed through the book, there are some familiar political villains like the Trump and Reagan administrations (and Robert Bork). But the book is also fearless in taking aim at other less obvious targets, like Obama/Biden Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, supposedly neutral academic researchers whos research is actually funded by Big Ag, and even California's cap-and-trade climate law (which has ended up funneling millions of dollars to questionable and dangerous "digesters" used by the hog industry).

It's clearly a work of passion, weaving together stories of effected individuals with tons of new stories, quick histories, and well researched statistics. I considered myself relatively well-informed on our agriculture industry and policies, but still found myself learning something new with nearly every paragraph.

I’m posting about this book because almost all of the barons listed in this book started off as small scale food growers or farmers. What Followed with each of these now mega corporations was the consolidation of and misuse of power in every aspect art of our food system and in government policy. This book has 58 pages of references and is extensively researched and sheds some real eye-opening Insights into our current food system. I’m making the assumption that most of us care about the food we eat and the people who make it even if we aren’t of the capacities to buy local and organic all the time. I cannot recommend this book enough. If you care about where you food comes from, please read this book. I’m still in awe that the system really is what it is and how corrupt and unfair it is to all those involved in the production process, and how it affects us as consumers and citizens.

Like author Austin Frerick, I grew up in Iowa, driving along country roads with my family, counting cows and cattle as we went. As I drive those same roads today, the cows and cattle, pigs and sheep are missing due to the takeover by families like the Hansens and the McCloskeys, raising animals in dangerous confinements and inhumane megafarms that pollute the small lakes and ponds we used to enjoy while making it impossible for family farms to survive. I'm fortunate to get my freezer meat from a local farmer, raise produce on our hobby farm, and never feel the need to go to a WalMart superstore.

Reading the history of the coffee barons, the anti-Semitic Reiman family, its ties to Adolph Hitler, and the fact that it "built its wealth by supporting the Nazi regime," both fascinated and disgusted me. The book makes me want to know more. This is definitely a must-read for every consumer of goods, especially if you want to know where your food you eat comes from, who benefits from your purchases, and who is being paid a pittance for its movement from "farm" to table.

The author does not do any favors on such important topic with such shallow writting - It feels like a collection of anedoctal white papers have been amassed together and 'thrown'out there as a book.

I'm an avid consumer of books about business, corruption, monopolies, etc. and can honestly say that there are other books on the subject that have been properly researched and written without such political bias.

In short, steer clear of this garbage.

What an eye opener on the monopoly of our food supply and how just a few people control the whole chain from farms where they control the price to the grocery stores where they also fix the price. The oligarchy in full display. Impoverishing American small business and controlling the regulation designed to protect our health and avoid monopoly.

Insightful, eye-opening, well researched, great book written by someone who cares

An interesting read over well trodden ground. But, does a very good job going deep on the malfeasance and pork barreling employed by the “Baron’s’. What separates this book from others is a reasoned solution. No easy fixes but reasonable and well presented. Well done.