Mike Callicrate | No-Bull Food News

Essay on “Original Wealth” and “Natural Economic Law”

By Thayne Cozart
May, 2026

With the U.S. economy buried in both public and personal debt — all because of poor and misdirected national economic policy — it’s appropriate to discuss the concept of “Original Wealth,” as compared to just plain ol’ “Monetary” wealth or “Add-On” wealth. Additionally, there’s a vital need for better understanding of why agriculture and from-the-Earth raw materials play an indispensable role in the discussion.

Let’s begin with a definition of “original wealth.” It’s any physical “something” that is created naturally or provided by human labor but hasn’t yet entered the realm of economics because it hasn’t been priced and sold. By its very definition, “original wealth” has an origin. That origin is firmly rooted in Our Mother Earth.

Humans had no role in the creation of the most basic free-of-cost forms of original wealth. We didn’t create the air we breathe. We didn’t create the water we drink. We didn’t create the living, fertile soil. We didn’t create cellular photosynthesis. We didn’t create the untold trillions of microbes in the soil, or in digestive systems, or the plankton in oceans that work for free for themselves and for mankind every moment in time. And, yet, all forms of human wealth are entirely dependent upon these “free” forms of “original wealth.”

Yet, mankind does bring forth “original wealth” from the Good Earth, predominantly through farming, ranching, mining, drilling, logging and fishing. Everything in the economy — from sewing needles to space needles, from toothpicks to nuclear reactors, from a slice of bacon to every single computer chip, from the myriad of plastics, to fuels, to a can of green beans — is original wealth that originates from Our Good Earth.

Everything that happens to “original wealth,” after it is produced, priced, and sold as it moves through the economy becomes some level of “add-on” or “monetary” wealth.

“There seem to be but three ways for a nation to acquire wealth. The first is by war. This is robbery. The second by commerce, which is generally cheating. The third by agriculture, the only honest way, wherein man receives a real increase of the seed thrown into the ground, in a kind of continual miracle …”

Benjamin Franklin, one of our nation’s most astute founding fathers understood the role of agriculture in original wealth creation. Here’s his famous quote on the subject: “There seem to be but three ways for a nation to acquire wealth. The first is by war. This is robbery. The second by commerce, which is generally cheating. The third by agriculture, the only honest way, wherein man receives a real increase of the seed thrown into the ground, in a kind of continual miracle …”

Extrapolating Franklin’s quote to real life, a simple, clear example is a plain ol’ ear of corn. An internet search reports that the number of kernels on an ear of corn ranges from 400-800 — so call the average 600. Original wealth is created when a farmer plants a single kernel of corn and five months later at harvest that single kernel yields 600 kernels. Eureka! Bonanza! A 600-fold increase — and every kernel represents original wealth.

But its monetary value hasn’t been determined yet. That value is determined by the price that mankind places on it before it’s sold. Failure to price original wealth adequately, fairly, and wisely is mankind’s biggest and most costly economic failure.

Now’s the time to introduce two other important terms when it comes to a discussion about “original wealth.” Both, sadly, have fallen out of favor in current day economics and in education.

First is the “trade turn.” It is the number of times the money from a unit of priced and sold “original wealth” moves through the economy — or trades hands — until its effect or influence runs out. The end value to the U.S. from the national trade turn of “original wealth” is a function of both production and price per unit [bushel, pound, ton, hundredweight}.

Increase in raw materials production is a slow and costly process, largely dependent on applied research, production innovations, labor supply, geography and favorable weather.
In contrast, increases in unit-price can be made quickly and inexpensively through wise and proven policy — or by fluky happenings in the nation’s and world’s Boards of Trade.

The trade turn for agricultural commodities has long been considered as five or higher.  Since the trade turn is influenced higher by increases in production efficiency, the current trade turn certainly is much higher than five. But for this discussion, let’s stick to five.
Also, 70 percent of “original wealth” that enters and leaves the economy annually is food and fiber. Once eaten or worn, it disappears forever. Any “add-on” wealth it represented, but wasn’t achieved, is also gone forever.

Powerful middlemen have stolen the farm share of the food dollar, while input suppliers price gouge, leaving rural America broken and consumers dependent on imported food.

The second term — the “distribution cycle” — no longer is discussed in classrooms, nor printed in texts or references. The “distribution cycle” is pictured. However, it still exists and the accompanying drawing clearly illustrates how the “trade turn” works — influenced by both production units and price per unit.  It is the economic mechanism that provides and distributes all the earned “add-on” wealth or “monetary” wealth to our capitalist economy.

The end-game of the annual nation-wide distribution cycle is our National Income statistic.

Thankfully, most years the U.S. achieves a bumper harvest of food and fiber “original wealth.”

“Sadly, those bumper harvests don’t prevent economic crisis on America’s farms and ranches.”

But, sadly, those bumper harvests don’t prevent economic crisis on America’s farms and ranches. Too often, the rural sector of our economy remains on the cusp of a re-run of the farm crisis of the 1980s, complete with bankruptcies, auctions, bank crises, and a long list of other costly economic and social maladies.

A bountiful harvest should be considered a boon. Yet, predictably, the media deems it a “surplus” with predictions of gloom and doom about the “burden on prices” of a bountiful harvest. Here’s what is not factored into the commodity news. There is always a temporary surplus after harvest because there is only short-term demand, but a 365-day supply. And, remember, so called surplus is always used somewhere, somehow. It is never discarded. It always has some monetary value.

Here’s an important question: How can you have too much “food and fiber original wealth” in a hungry and debt-ridden world? You can’t. Bountiful harvests are not a burden. They represents a potential bonanza of “add-on” and “monetary” wealth, providing they’re properly monetized as they enter the economic chain.

So, now this discussion on monetizing “original wealth” comes down to policy. The U.S. errs in even having an official “farm policy,” because farm policy is more correctly, and nothing more than, monetary policy. And, monetary policy is constitutionally placed as a congressional responsibility.

In the Constitution, Article I, Section 8, Clause 5 is known as the coinage clause. It gives Congress the exclusive power to coin and regulate money. It says: “The Congress shall have the power to coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures.”

Our nation’s Founding Fathers granted monetary policy exclusively to the Congress, the people’s branch of government, not to the Federal Reserve or any other entity.
For that reason alone, the Congress should concentrate on “original wealth policy.” In short, U.S. economic policy should laser focus on how best to “monetize” its bounty of annually produced “original wealth” brought forth from farming, ranching, mining, drilling, logging, and fishing.

“It’s a fallacy to believe supply and demand solely determine price.”

Just watch that “original wealth” from our annual harvests move through the distribution cycle and the trade turn. As mentioned before, its final “monetary” or “add-on” wealth creation is dependent on both total production and price per commodity unit. As both go up, astounding sums of tens of billions of dollars of “add-on” or “monetary” wealth is created. All that wealth can be more equitably distributed through the entire economy, but at present it isn’t.

Determining the size and value of our national economy boils down to simple arithmetic. It doesn’t require computers or artificial intelligence to determine its annual end value. It’s units of commodity production multiplied times price per unit sold equals “primary original wealth income.” That primary income multiplied times the trade turn equals the final gross monetized value of all the nation’s “original wealth” after it has completed the distribution cycle.

It’s a fallacy to believe supply and demand solely determine price. Supply and demand does not exclusively determine price — policy does. Why? Because it’s impossible to know where the topside of demand is until consumers have the ability to buy what they want — not what they can afford — without going into debt (credit cards).

Does anyone think that ramen noodle eaters — if they had sufficient earned income to spend — wouldn’t prefer hamburger or chicken wings or even a nice TV dinner? Of course they would. So, their limited ability to spend is a downward damper on demand.
So, why doesn’t the U.S. have a mechanism to properly price “edible and fiber” commodities so that disposable income from every productive acre of Mother Earth is optimized?

Both political parties are equally guilty of prioritizing “corporate” capitalism over “people’s” capitalism and free trade over wise and well-managed equity of trade.
Corporate capitalism, without stringent oversight through antitrust enforcement, is an all-out, no-holds-barred quest to capture market share by offering to the mass market a product or service that is “most affordable.” That’s a convenient, arbitrary, even sneaky, way to say “CHEAPEST!”

Corporate capitalism, as currently imbedded in the economy, ends up accumulating extraordinary monetary wealth and economic power to a relatively few people or corporations. The top-heavy accumulation of monetary wealth is well recognized and discussed as a societal disrupter. It does not produce general, across-the-board prosperity. It buys original wealth at too little price, then short-circuits the distribution cycle and its across-the-board benefits — to the detriment of all, but highly beneficial to a select few.
For comparison, people’s capitalism more equitably rewards the actual producers of “original wealth” and distributes the “monetary” wealth from top to bottom of society — not equally, but more fairly, by rewarding effective hard work, effort and innovation.

It cannot be denied that there are “hidden costs of cheap food.” But those societal costs — the burden of which every American pays without knowing it — are never recognized nor mentioned by the mass media, by social media, by economists, by academics, by the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, or the Federal Reserve. And yet, they are an observable fact.
Those hidden costs of cheap food start with the obvious — the billions of dollars in farm and ranch subsidies paid out annually through Congressional policy law [The Farm Bill], or special Congressional compensations for emergencies, to keep farmers and ranchers financially afloat and producing without marketplace profit.

“Those billions of subsidies would be unnecessary if farmers and ranchers were able to garner profitable prices from the marketplace that keep them financially apace with the other economic sectors.”

Those billions of subsidies would be unnecessary if farmers and ranchers were able to garner profitable prices from the marketplace that keep them financially apace with the other economic sectors.

There are myriad other hidden costs of cheap food. Some obvious ones are farm, ranch, and agribusiness bankruptcies and/or foreclosures, dispersal auctions, and legal fees.

Debt-ridden farmers do not buy new equipment, but make-do and extend the useful life of used equipment, which hurts agribusinesses and agri-employment.

“… the hidden cost of cheap food has directly accelerated the depopulation of rural America and the withering of formerly robust small rural towns and communities …”

Long-term, the hidden cost of cheap food has directly accelerated the depopulation of rural America and the withering of formerly robust small rural towns and communities into forlorn enclaves with deteriorating infrastructure and an aging population. The ever-increasing size of farms and consolidation of land into fewer and fewer hands is another obvious long-term hidden cost.

Such a demoralizing list could go on and on, but the biggest burden to include as a hidden cost of cheap food is the ever-growing national debt and the equally burdensome personal debts — made clear by the trillions of dollars of unpaid credit card debt. All that debt is avoidable with proper policies in place.

The secret to monetizing “original wealth” is no secret. It’s an intentionally buried historical fact — buried by powerful financial, educational and political interests.
The solution? Simply return to the successful national economic policy enacted in the U.S. during the 1940s in the aftermath of WWII. It was called the Steagall Amendment. It worked through a congressionally-created mechanism called a non-recourse loan.

Here’s roughly how a non-recourse loan worked. After the harvest of storable commodities — mainly corn, wheat, other grains and cotton — an “original wealth” creator (farmer) was offered a non-recourse loan on his production. The loan allowed the farmer be paid up-front for his production at a per-unit rate of legislatively mandated, USDA-reported 90% parity. The value of the loan assured equitable exchange of that “original wealth” with the other sectors of the economy — which in turn enabled the trade turn to work effectively each year.

It’s all important to note that this advanced payment was a loan, not a subsidy. While under the loan, the wealth did not enter commercial channels.

That advance payment effectively optimized the disposable income (profit) of every bushel, bale, hundredweight and ton of commodities immediately following harvest. That simple policy action monetized the “original wealth.”

The farmer then either repaid the loan when he sold his commodity back into the economy, or kept the loan and released the wealth to the government for sale into commerce. Federal records prove the 1940’s program had minimal cost to the government.

As an additional benefit, any real surplus beyond regular use is stored by farmers at their expense, which serves as a national food reserve to use when annual production lags, or as a source for charitable global food donations or domestic food aid for the victims of natural disasters.

The Steagall Amendment, in effect, served as a “cost of living adjustment” for producers of original wealth. It made Mother Earth raw materials economically beneficial for a wide-swath of society. It worked to perfection for everyone but powerful financial interests, who benefit from debt, and global free trade advocates, who see maximum efficiency (cheap priced products) as the ultimate achievement.

But the most important outcome from the Steagall Amendment is that it proved — actually, demonstrated in real life — the existence of a “natural law of economics.”
After the Steagall Amendment got the post-WWII economy back on its feet and thriving, those special interests — who don’t prosper when Average Joe is living well with earned income and doesn’t need to acquire debt — exercised their political influence and the Steagall Amendment went the way of the Wooly Mammoth and the free traders resumed their exploitive ways.

Critics of federal government involvement in advancing payments to farmers at harvest time — claiming that it flies in the face free markets and impedes them– should compare the essential production of food to the essential production of electricity.

Electric power companies profit margins are set by regulatory commissions, usually state ones, not federal. Public reports on the range of profit margins allowed the companies by the rate commissions is 10% to 14%. The rate commissions apparently conclude that 10% to 14% profit is needed for the electricity companies to both stay in business and to serve customers reliably and affordably.

Now ask: Why are electricity rates that allow 10% to 14% profit margin deemed essential for electricity providers, and good for everyone, but never considered essential for food producers? Is electricity more essential to mankind than food and fiber? Certainly not!
The U.S. economy has been headed for a crash down a sink-hole of debt in all the ensuing decades since the Steagall Amendment was shelved. Average Joe, businesses, and the nation have been profit-squeezed and have been forced to replaced earned income with debt.

The evidence is as plain as the nearly $40 trillion of national debt (early 2026) and trillions of dollars of credit card and personal debt in the U.S. It is a massive debt, accumulating compound interest by the minute, that cannot be honestly repaid with a steady-value or shrinking-value dollar.

“The interest the U.S. is paying per month on the national debt is $88-billion …”

The interest the U.S. is paying per month on the national debt is $88-billion — more than is spent by the federal government on national defense and educational programs combined. That interest payment gets larger each month.

In concluding this “original wealth” and “natural economic law” discussion, it’s interesting that the natural laws of physics and math are universally accepted, never challenged, never questioned, but no one believes there could be a natural law of economics.

Why? Our nation’s economic record proves that there is a natural law of economics, but powerful interests ignore its existence for selfish reasons.

History shows that properly monetizing “original wealth” and letting it move through the distribution cycle and the trade turn is both natural and sustainable and creates across-the-board prosperity.

A summary in one short statement: The U.S. economy thrives debt free when the disposable income from the productive acres of Mother Earth — “Original Wealth” — is optimized annually.

Let’s close with this thought: The relentless drive for cheapness leads to debt, which leads to poverty, which spreads malnutrition, inability to think, faulty economics and social policy failure. Pursuing a ‘free lunch’ will ruin civilization. Guaranteed!

Thayne Cozart
htcsac@gmail.com

International Peace Coalition – Callicrate Speaking Notes (51:00)

April 24, 2026

For peace, we must understand the importance of agriculture and allowing people the ability to feed themselves

Decentralized, dependable, sustainable, resilient food supplies

“All new wealth comes from the soil.” – Carl Wilken, 1940s

As William Heffernan said so many times and so many years ago, “Corporations search the world for the hungriest people that will work the cheapest and sell the production into the wealthiest places.” All this extraction and corporate business interests have long been protected by our powerful U.S. military.

War, it’s destruction and extractive industrial processes divert resources for food.

Already struggling farmers are faced with increased costs, including fuel and fertilizer.

“When you stop burning the apple orchard, you do not get your apples back. The fire’s cessation is not the fruit’s return. Somewhere between those two events lies the patient, continuous, generation-long work of planting, cultivating, pruning, waiting—without which there is no orchard at all, only ashes and the memory of what once was.” – The Apple Orchard

We cannot feed ourselves. We’ve lost over half our ranchers. 9.5 million cows are gone. We are more dependent on beef imports, much from destroyed rainforest areas and ravaged places around the world.

War, and the refugees it creates, will not grow economies or our ability to feed ourselves. Manufacturing a great war machine will only drive people around the world off their lands and into deeper homelessness and poverty, concentrating more wealth at the top, consuming valuable resources, and more debt.

We should be building the local/regional food systems that COVID revealed the need for.

Bring people back to the land. Government ag and food policy should be focused on diversified family sized farms. All marginal acres should be restored to permanent cover with grazing animals providing milk and meat.

Franklin D. Roosevelt was right, “A nation that destroys its soil destroys itself.”

Restore soil health, human health, community well-being.

Government subsidies should be for food, not fuel, and not for cheap feed that fuels corporate profits, while consuming limited resources like water and soil, leaving rural areas unlivable.

All government food purchases should give priority to local/regional food producers and slaughter facilities, rather than below-cost-of-production imports and predatory priced meat from global food corporations.

Global trade policy should protect people, not predators. All people should be given the opportunity to feed themselves from their own lands.

We must break up the lawless corporate monopolies in all sectors of our economies.

Mike Callicrate

Notes:

The Two Men Who Drew The Middle East’s Borders In Secret — And Started Every War Since

A watershed moment? | John Mearsheimer and Sir Max Hastings

Rebuild, Restructure, Reform, and Regulate

More Perfect Union – Mike Callicrate has been fighting meatpacker concentration for thirty-six years.

March 15, 2026

Recently there has been increased attention focused on monopoly power. This extreme and destructive concentration of power and wealth is now finally being addressed by the Monopoly Busting Caucus in the House of Representatives, and in the Senate, with a new bill, Family Grocery and Farmer Relief Act.

We’ve waited far too long to address the concentration, consolidation, and vertical integration in our food system. As concentrated as the food industry is, especially meatpacking, deciding to “Break ‘Em Up” is a bold move. Cattle markets are broken, it’s a big problem demanding big solutions. We’ve done it before.

At the same time we must build and support the better alternative, with a plan to take us back to the pre-1970 competitive marketplace when there were many buyers and many sellers operating in fair, open, and competitive markets – a time before IBP began dominating and consolidating the beef industry.

A plea for help ignored:

Lamar, Colorado was considered for the new IBP plant.
Holcomb, Kansas became the final choice.

Small slaughter operations like Averch, Pepper, and Litvak selling carcasses to local retailers worked well. We ignored their pleas for help, leading to today’s meat monopoly.

How did cattle producers nearly become the equivalent of chicken farming serfs? In 1996, we were warned by chicken farmers to avoid the same concentration and vertical integration that had exploited and abused them. That same year, the National Cattlemen’s Association became the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA), capturing the cattlemen’s beef checkoff and the millions of dollars it generates each year. The big meatpackers were invited to join the board. A long-range plan was developed to make beef more like chicken and pork, along with a checkoff fueled lobbying effort to shape government policy around big meatpacking interests.

Cattle producers and non-preferred cattle feeders are exhausted from fighting their own beef checkoff money, while trying to survive in a discriminatory market with periodic market crushing “Black Swan” events, after which they receive far less and consumers pay more. Thankfully, Congress is now saying, “Break ‘Em Up!”

The following is a proposal to rebuild local/regional food systems; restructure the market from meatpacking through retail; reform USDA from farm and food policy to inspection to food procurement; and regulate effectively going forward.

“What we support prospers, what we feed grows.”

Support existing infrastructure:   

• Rescue existing local/regional slaughter facilities struggling to survive. Higher cattle prices have reduced custom processing demand and income, along with high barriers to wholesale and retail markets.
• Government purchasing at all levels, from city to federal, must prioritize buying from local/regional slaughter facilities.

Rebuild and Restructure:

Build and support existing and new slaughter facilities. Many small processors, unable to market the whole animal, especially trim, are buying and selling imported meat and further processing boxed beef from the big meatpackers. This does not support local/regional infrastructure and much needed resiliency. Government purchasing would keep small slaughter plants clean on trim and ground products, enabling small plants to increase purchases of local livestock.

New options for rendering and hide processing. Small plants are paying to dispose of hides and slaughter waste in landfills. In 2000, the hide value more than paid for the slaughter cost.

• Reskill the meat industry – Fully fund butchering, meat cutting, and processing training.
• Return to carcass trade is essential for cattle industry and rural prosperity “Mike Callicrate | No-Bull Food News
• Maker-Owned Marketplaces
• Prioritize Main Street over Wall Street 

Reform USDA

• Meat inspection should ensure safe meat, not stand as a barrier to the marketplace with mountains of useless paperwork.
• Why are the biggest high-volume plants allowed to self-inspect, while smaller plants more focused on health, safety, and high animal welfare suffering crippling inspection pressure?
• Fund state meat inspection and approve interstate shipment from state inspected plants.
• Restore truth in labeling – including false, deceptive, and misleading labels. Pass and enforce mandatory country of origin labeling (COOL) on all meat products.
• Grow food, instead of commodity crops for highly processed and ultra processed food and fuel.
• Graze every acre, including CRP.

“When we lose our markets, we lose our freedom.”

Regulate:

Congress must mandate strict enforcement of the Packers and Stockyards, Sherman, Clayton, and Robinson Patman Acts based on plain language and original intent.  The lie of  “big is better, economies of scale, and efficiencies” have conditioned Americans to accept the current centralized and extractive top-down command and control economy must be exposed and rejected.

• Expose sweetheart deals – Independent cattle feeders can’t compete with the biggest feedyards receiving highly preferential treatment.
• Eliminate meatpacker ownership and control of livestock supplies (Competitive bidding, 7 days to pick up).
• Investigate futures trading of meatpackers, aligned feedyards, and related entities, particularly during Black Swan events. Consider closing the Chicago Mercantile.
• Targeted tariffs (100%) on beef and lamb imports
• Enforce the Robinson Patman Act – Control market predators in the wholesale and retail marketplace. There is NO safe pathway for independent operators, or buyers of spun-off properties, to sell profitably in the wholesale or retail grocery market.
• Block and unwind foreign ownership and any further mergers or acquisitions in big meatpacking, food service, and food management companies.
• Break up big retailer power – Companies like Walmart and Kroger now rule over the big meatpackers, while exploiting consumers. New entrants, or buyers of potentially spun-off properties, have no chance to match the power of Walmart, Amazon, Kroger, Costco, Albertsons, Target, etc.

 Big retailers are robbing the bank, the big
meatpackers are driving the getaway car.

 “We would note that only one segment of the meat
supply chain has managed to snag an ever-increasing
share of the consumer dollar — the retailer.”

-ENDING WALMART’S RURAL STRANGLEHOLD

What happened to the producer share of the retail beef dollar?

When dealing with companies as powerful as Walmart, it’s easier
for the meatpacker to buy cattle cheaper than sell meat higher.

• Stop, and reverse where possible, all horizontal concentration and unwind existing vertical integration of the biggest retailers (Walmart/Sustainable Beef in North Platte, NE).
• Eliminate barriers like shelf space rental and slotting fees.
• Eliminate the use of surveillance price-setting technology, electronic shelf labeling, surge pricing, and price discrimination against smaller independent retailers. (Robinson Patman Act).

In case of retaliation, e.g. “black swan” events – price controls may be necessary, perhaps a limit on meatpacker and retailer beef margins to 1970 levels (Story of the Steer).

Government may need to nationalize the biggest meat plants to avoid complete collapse. The monopoly cartel-controlled plants could become employee-owned, scaled back to reasonable more resilient production levels, while building additional capacity in new locations. What if the bigger plants could offer rendering services and new hide markets for small plants and further processors. See MOPAK.

Evidence of a fragile, non-resilient food system: JBS workers in Greeley, Colorado go on strike

I’m betting on the cowboys.

March 5, 2026 news conference announcing the meatpacker break-up bill.

A summary and the full text of the bill follow:

“The greatest threat to any free society is the concentration of power and wealth into the hands of a few.” James Madison

Over the past five years, my team at Antimonopoly Counsel has investigated monopolization and the elimination of competition in every major industry in our food and agriculture system. Yesterday, I shared what we found with Democratic Senators at a roundtable discussion on food and household costs organized by Leader Schumer. I made three main points.

First, we no longer have free markets in the food supply chain. Either a single monopolist or a tight oligopoly controls each of the major industries involved in growing, processing, or distributing food in America. Four multinationals dominate the supply of seeds and pesticides for most major crops. Single firms monopolize each of the domestic markets for nitrogen, phosphate, and potassium fertilizers. One corporation wields monopoly power over new farm tractors. Five conglomerates share power over the nation’s meat and poultry supply. Four grain-trading giants have a similar power-sharing arrangement with respect to the processing of wheat, corn, and soybeans. Nearly all of the country’s fluid milk comes from just three companies, a super-majority of egg production is controlled by just five companies, and similar concentrations pervade the fruit-and-vegetable processing industries. Meanwhile, four national chains now capture nearly 70% of all grocery sales in America.

Second, these autocrats of trade — and the strategies they use to stay in power — are the primary drivers of today’s unaffordable food prices. For example, the seed and pesticide oligopoly led by Bayer has trapped grain farmers into dependency on a narrow set of glyphosate pesticides bundled with GMO seeds by creating “patent thickets” around key technologies and deploying predatory strategies to disable innovation by independent firms. As a result, over the past two decades, this oligopoly has charged skyrocketing prices for seed-and-pesticide bundles whose efficacy is declining and that, to add insult to injury, seem to give farmers cancer. Not to be outdone, the fertilizer monopolists have used their control over key mineral inputs and key distribution channels to muscle out rivals. As a result, they’ve been able to engineer chronic fertilizer shortages and keep fertilizer prices high for nearly two decades — giving them Apple-level profit margins of 30-40% on products they haven’t improved in over half a century. All of these additional costs to farmers ultimately increase prices for consumers.

And the abuses of power are only worse among processors and retailers. Since the 2000s, the meat and poultry oligopoly has repeatedly used coordinated plant shutdowns to push livestock prices down while keeping beef, pork, and chicken prices high. A similar story has played out in the egg industry, where a few dominant producers have used a mix of collusion and coercion to throttle industry output and maintain a near-chronic shortage of egg supplies for the past two decades. Meanwhile, the troika of fluid milk sellers have raised the price of bottled milk by roughly 150% since 1996, but kept the price of raw milk paid to dairy farmers in a near-permanent depression. And, of course, we cannot forget the grocery retail giants like Walmart, who — as a lawsuit brought by Lina Khan’s FTC and dropped by Trump showed — use their buying power to force suppliers to give their competitors higher prices, eliminating price-lowering competition from the market.

In short, the root cause of our food affordability crisis is that, across our food system, we’ve allowed central planning by robber barons to take the place of actual free enterprise. This brings me to my final point: We’ve been here before, and we know how to fix this fundamental problem. Like today, in the 1920s and early 1930s, a failure to enforce the antitrust laws had allowed corporate power to metastasize, leading to massive inflation even in the midst of economic depression. After examining the situation in a report to Congress, the FTC issued a stark warning: “Either this country is going down the road to collectivism,” the FTC said, “or it must stand and fight for competition as the protector of all that is embodied in free enterprise.”

America chose to fight. Over the next decade, Congress increased funding for the FTC and DOJ Antitrust Division six-fold, allowing the agencies to launch the greatest trustbusting campaign in the country’s history — breaking up hundreds of monopolies and cartels across the economy. Simultaneously, Congress acted directly to restructure critical industries through legislation — passing bills that broke up dominant firms, separated key segments of supply chains to prevent conflicts of interest, and provided financing for farmers’ cooperatives and small businesses to buy divested assets. The results did not take long to arrive. Within a decade, farmers could — for the first time in generations — buy their supplies from competitive markets and sell their crops into competitive markets. The mark-ups imposed on food products by processors, distributors, and retailers shrank significantly. Communities across the Heartland — large and small — flourished with dynamism as the iron grip of faraway corporations was lifted. A republic of free, independent enterprise was reborn.

This was how New Deal Democrats solved the affordability crisis of their era and, in the process, saved this country from snake-oil salesmen and would-be fascists. This is also how Democrats can solve the affordability crisis and save the country today. In short, I told the Senators, we already know what we need to do. We just need to do it.

Joe Maxwell, Farm Action, statement: 

Leader Schumer, Senators — thank you for the opportunity to share the lived experience of an American farmer.

Today in this country, 63 farmers a day are being forced off their land. Farmers are pleading with Congress for bailout payments for the fourth time in just over a year. At the same time, families are struggling with high food costs. And yet across agriculture and food sectors, dominant corporations are posting record profits.

The common thread is clear: extreme consolidation and lack of competition in our food system.

When I began farming in 1980, the top four beef packers controlled about 36% of the market. Today, they control roughly 85%.

In fertilizer, dozens of firms once competed. Today, just a few companies dominate nitrogen, phosphate, and potash — giving them the power to raise prices well beyond cost increases and beyond farmers’ ability to absorb.

We have repeatedly seen the consequences.

When egg prices surged more than 300% in 2022, corporate profits rose tenfold — even though production fell less than 7% and costs rose modestly. No competitors increased supply to discipline prices. That is not a competitive market.

When a single Kansas packing plant fire removed about 6% of capacity, dominant firms pushed cattle prices down for ranchers while raising beef prices for consumers — producing the largest farm-to-retail spread on record.

And when fertilizer prices jumped as much as 200%, margins at major firms increased five- to seven-fold. Fertilizer companies themselves acknowledge that a large share of their pricing is tied not to their costs, but to what farmers are paid. When farmers receive more, input prices rise to capture it.

We also need to confront the role of commodity checkoff programs. These programs were created to support farmers, but today a large share of mandatory farmer funds flows into marketing and policy influence that primarily benefits the processors and dominant firms. When trade and lobbying groups funded by farmer checkoff dollars walk these halls speaking for “farmers,” too often they are advancing the interests of the industry that buys from farmers — not the farmers themselves.

For more than four decades, both parties have allowed consolidation to deepen through weak antitrust enforcement and policy choices that favor scale over fairness. The result is a food system in which a handful of firms can raise prices for consumers while lowering prices for farmers — and face little constraint.

As a young economics major, I learned that markets keep prices fair only when competition exists. In much of agriculture today, that competitive discipline is gone.

The good news is this is not inevitable. It is the result of policy — and it can be changed by policy.

Leader Schumer, Senators — I see this roundtable as an opportunity to restore what farmers and families both need: real competition, fair markets, and affordable food. Thank you.

March 5, 2026 news conference announcing the meatpacker break-up bill.

A summary and the full text of the bill follow: