Portside

For most people in the United States, all food comes from Big Food. While some 12% of Americans do shop at their local farmers markets part of the time, the remaining 88% do their food shopping solely at supermarkets or grocery stores where they find only those options that big food corporations allow them. If you want proof of this, just consider the fact that one in four grocery dollars in this country is spent at Walmart. Today the top five food retail companies — Walmart, Kroger, Costco, Ahold Delhaize, and Amazon — account for about half of the market. Meanwhile, there was a 30% decrease in the number of independent US grocers from 1993 to 2019.

Is this as dire a situation as it might seem? There are organic brands at most supermarkets, after all. But Big Food is moving to take over that part of the market, as well. For example, a week after the 2024 U.S. presidential election, Modern Retail reports that Walmart is betting big on the “better for you” food category with a major push on items like Poppi probiotic sodas and Soom tahini. The massive chain wants to maintain their recent success with higher-income shoppers who might be looking for these products. With this move to bring even more people into their grocery fold by offering organic options, Walmart is modeling the same strategies that Big Food has been using for years by acquiring organic brands in order to consolidate their power. 

All of this consolidation hasn’t led to less hunger, better nutrition, or safer food for a majority of people. In 2023, 13.5 percent of households in the United States experienced food insecurity. Nearly half of the adult population is deficient in certain micronutrients, too, because of an over-reliance on processed foods that lack necessary nutrition. Food contamination has also become routine. Buyers of frozen waffles, for example, haven’t been spared recalls whether they’re at Dollar Tree, Walmart, or Whole Foods buying 365 brand, and shoppers picking up prepackaged salads that featured some readymade grilled chicken for a healthy lunch at Aldi’s or Wegmans were all at risk. Recalls like these reveal the illusion that a high income level will protect one’s food from contamination, as well as that a higher cost or more friendly label provides “better for you” food.

With corporate consolidation like this, a false sense of security, nutrition, and perhaps even sourcing equity is baked into the price. And yet consolidation continues. How does that change?

A more systemic look at this problem reveals that there have been massive political and economic machinations throughout recent history that have determined how, where, and what food is grown, with little consideration for ecology or nutrition. The sociological theory of “food regimes” was established first in 1989 by Harriet Friedmann and Philip McMichael, and it has greatly expanded over the decades since. These “regimes” have effectively only been in service to power and profit.

This theory characterizes a first food regime taking place from 1870 to the 1930s, during which time monocultures were imposed in colonies to produce what the imperialist forces wanted to consume, like sugar and coffee; a second food regime came into place after the second World War, from the 1950s to the ’70s, when surplus food “aid” and the Green Revolution acted as soft power abroad, creating dependence upon larger nations; and there’s the idea that more recently, we have been in what’s called a “corporate food regime.” This era is all about deregulation of finance, devaluing of labor, and the corporate consolidation that has been so easily maintained and expanded in the U.S. 

Neoliberal economics that prioritize the private over the public sector and allow for lax regulation have created conditions in which the only way people feel they have agency in their food consumption is through “market choices.” As Dr. Julie Guthman wrote in her 2011 book Weighing In: Obesity, Food Justice, and the Limits of Capitalism, “Neoliberal economic policies have contributed to the heightened inequalities that have made cheap food a necessity and exacerbated the class and racial resentments that manifest in arguments about ‘good food.’” People with limited financial means and time try to make the best choices they can, despite the deck being stacked against their health and for corporate profit. Cheap food essentially subsidizes low wages, while harming workers in meat processing, farmwork, and fast food. This is why “personal choice” being a true possibility for changemaking when it comes to the food system becomes such an empty notion. 

These major corporations also know how to absorb any challenge—and they have the capital to do so. Guthman tells me the pattern is for the corporations to spot competition and then find a way to profit from both it and their conventional, low-cost options: Thus, the organic-labeled option is right next to the conventional, but they both generate profit for the same company in the end. Similar tactics are being taken with alternative meats, where large meat-processing companies are putting money into plant-based products in order to profit from every angle. “Here we see these big, big food companies getting involved in alternative protein,” Guthman explains. “So are they going to try to squash it? Are they just going to do what they do with organic, have it side by side? Sure, we’re going to give the consumers their choice. They can have meat, or they can have plant-based meat, or they can have some mix, because that’s what some of them are doing. That’s the bet-hedging.”

Now corporations are also learning they should absorb culturally coded snack foods. PepsiCo recently acquired Siete Foods—which makes almond flour tortillas, grain-free tortilla chips, and salsas—for $1.2 billion. “The addition of Siete not only builds out PepsiCo’s better-for-you portfolio, but it also allows it to tap into growing demand for culturally authentic products,” according to FoodDive. 

Errol Schweizer of the Checkout Grocery Update, who helped in the national launch of Siete Foods while working at Whole Foods, believes this is a good thing, because it will allow for easier access to these foods for more people. “If you want people to eat healthier, until you have the means of production and distribution,” he says, “it’s best for every gas station and Dollar General to provide this choice. Obviously, it’s not ideal: we wish we could have freshly prepared, easy to prepare meals. But we’re so far away from that. I think you know, what I want to talk about here is just like, ‘What would a just transition look like?’”

Some would find this position naive. Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System and a research professor in the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas-Austin, calls this approach “harm reduction,” because at the scale of production and power that these corporations have, there is always a level of exploitation. 

“Big food is only possible through labor exploitation, and that’s the thing that never sort of features in this story,” Patel tells me. “I’m not seeing [the Garza family, owners of Siete Foods] necessarily making sure that everyone, the loaders on the docks, are now able to afford their housing here in Austin, and even if they were, that sort of charity approach is not how you want a good system to look: You want dignity by right, rather than by sort of noblesse. This idea of big food being able to transform while still remaining big food is a contradiction in terms. You can’t do it. I think it can do less harm, and I think that is the only way of phrasing it.” 

So what is a better option for creating change in the food industry? As Guthman writes in her latest book, The Problem with Solutions: Why Silicon Valley Can’t Hack the Future of Food, “The problems of agriculture and food may be better addressed by those social movements and practitioners who have been in it for the long haul, who have studied the problem, developed treatments, and whose attention to the biophysical realities of food and farming is something to learn from. It may be, in other words, that the problem is not a lack of technology but a lack of funding and research support for those already engaged in developing alternatives to ‘big ag’ or ‘big food.’”

There are public efforts on the table that Schweizer points to as indicators of what that “just transition” toward a less exploitative and monopolized food system might look like. One such option might be municipal and state-level “Good Food” bills that allow institutions to take into account animal welfare, labor rights, and support of local economics when purchasing foods rather than being required to go with the lowest cost option. New York State, which has codified its pandemic-era Nourish New York grant program so that food pantries can prioritize local foods, is on the verge of passing such a bill. This is something being lobbied for on a federal level, as well.

Creating a major public movement and awareness around the corporate consolidation of the food system requires a constant effort. Industrial, corporatized agriculture hasn’t been successful in “feeding the world,” as many proponents of big food claim—indeed, it hasn’t been able to feed the richest country on earth. And yet its stranglehold not just on supermarkets and pantries but on public imagination—the very understanding of what “food” is, as well as how one procures and prepares it—feels inescapable. On social media, there is talk of people who are “ingredient” households, where food is bought by ingredient and then prepared from scratch. This is often presented as a rare, even cumbersome notion as opposed to those homes where corporate, processed foods are the norm. As Patel wrote years ago in Stuffed and Starved, “Unless you’re a corporate food executive, the food system isn’t working for you.” And yet people believe that it is, even when the food is increasingly arriving to supermarkets and restaurants tainted.

As big food continues to swallow up any alternative that emerges, from organic to plant-based foods to grain-free tortilla chips, and present the same food in different packaging to create the illusion of options at the store, it’s imperative to question the motives, the practices, and the politicians who allow this power and consolidation to go unchecked. But it’s also important to ask and imagine what the real alternative is, what the next move is after this corporate food regime is knocked off its throne: a system not driven by profit, but by ecology, workers, and real human nutritional needs.

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