The three largest meat processors globally have dramatically increased in size in recent years. Government subsidies have played a critical role in increasing their power. Continue reading Consolidation in Global Meat Processing
Diversity is important for the resilience of food systems, as well as for its own sake. Just how diverse are the systems that produce our food? I explore this question with a focus on wheat and bread and North America, and even more specifically in baking, milling and farming. Although the opacity of food and agricultural systems makes definitive answers difficult, these segments appear to be increasingly uniform with respect to ownership, geography, varieties and genes. There are also important countertrends, and while efforts to resist uniformity are currently small, they are making some progress in maintaining or even increasing diversity in some areas. Continue reading Decoding Diversity in the Food System: Wheat and Bread in North America
Three firms control 89% of US soft drink sales. This dominance is obscured from us by the appearance of numerous choices on retailer shelves. Steve Hannaford refers to this as “pseudovariety,” or the illusion of diversity, concealing a lack of real choice. To visualize the extent of pseudovariety in this industry we developed a cluster diagram to represent the number of soft drink brands and varieties found in the refrigerator cases of 94 Michigan retailers, along with their ownership and/or licensing connections. Continue reading The illusion of diversity: visualizing ownership in the soft drink industry
Consolidation has increased in the international seed industry in recent decades. This chart depicts changes in ownership involving major seed companies and their subsidiaries, primarily occurring from 1996 to 2013.1 The largest firms are represented as circles, with size proportional to global commercial seed market share.2 For an article providing more detail on these graphics see: Howard, Philip H. 2009. Visualizing Consolidation in the Global … Continue reading Seed Industry Structure
There is an appearance of great diversity in the number of brands and varieties of beer sold in the United States. The beer industry, however, is dominated by a relatively small number of firms. Continue reading Concentration in the U.S. Beer Industry
No other section of the supermarket offers as many choices as the wine aisle. A typical retailer is likely to have hundreds of unique wines on its shelves. Just three firms, however, account for more than half of the wine sales in the United States. What impact does this industry concentration have on consumer choices? To answer this question we conducted an inventory of wine offerings at 20 retailers in Michigan. We recorded more than 3,600 unique varieties of wine, and traced their relationships with more than 1,000 different firms. Continue reading Concentration in the U.S. Wine Industry
Howard, Philip H. Concentration and Power in the Food System: Who Controls What We Eat? London: Bloomsbury Academic (February 25, 2016). Nearly every day brings news of another merger or acquisition involving the companies that control our food supply. Just how concentrated has this system become? At almost every key stage of the food system, four firms alone control 40% or more of the market, a … Continue reading Latest Book
The development of the USDA National Organic Standard in place of differing state/regional standards was widely predicted to accelerate trends of increasing consolidation in this sector. The first draft of the standard was released in 1997; what changes in ownership and control have since occurred? Continue reading Organic Processing Industry Structure
The fair trade certification has entered a period of major change. The recent departure of Fair Trade USA from the international certification system led by Fair Trade International (formerly FLO), and its decision to develop separate US standards that permit certification of plantation-produced coffee, cocoa, and other crops, has thrown the meaning of the US fair trade label into question. Continue reading Visualizing Fair Trade Coffee
The food system involves all of the steps required to produce food and get it to our plates–from farming and processing to distribution and consumption. Continue reading The Food System
Philip H. Howard 