From reading the cover blurb, you’d be forgiven for thinking Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry (Island Press, out now) is a gangster book. A “faceless” family with Nazi associations dominates the coffee trade, supermarket moguls have ripped apart the fabric of small communities, and there is even a farm selling itself as the “Disneyland of agriculture” while whitewashing the brutality of the dairy industry.
Author Austin Frerick peppers the book with action and lurid anecdotes, but he prioritises deep analysis. What ties its seven stories together is not a sensationalising of the outlandish crimes committed by the ‘barons’ – rather a thread of money-grabbing and ruthless expansion, unhindered by regulation and facilitated by politicians.
It’s a highly researched yet digestible book that recalls Anabel Hernández’s exposé of Mexican drug lords Los Señores del Narco (2010) – except adapted to the food industry. The ripple effect of a money-driven system eventually starving its home population is eerily similar to the effects of the illegal narcotics trade.
Frerick is not afraid to tackle the big, systematic issues affecting the industry. He criticises consolidation and offers real-life examples of profiteering and corruption.
Reading from a UK perspective, it’s disconcerting to see how far the malaise stretches. Many US-owned enterprises have a hold on the British food industry, making the dystopian prospect of a country putting profits before nutrition feel all too close.
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