There is no mystery to the dramatic struggles taking place in most of rural American, including Vermont. The plan was to consolidate farms, forcing expansion or extinction, all while green-lighting corporate monopolies in each and every sector. Mission accomplished.
In Vermont, just two milk buyers control the market, colluding with a commodity system that currently pays dairy farmers less than their cost of production — all while dairy giants like Cabot Creamery and Ben & Jerry’s each rack up sales in the billion-dollar-a-year range. That’s Vermont’s agricultural problem: Corporate control of our dairy supply at a monopolistic scale that is bankrupting farmers, befouling an overburdened ecosystems, and turning our rural and farming culture into an economic wasteland. We all know it, because we all see it.
Bravo to Austin Frerick for adding his voice to the chorus with this great essay, “To Revive Rural America, We Must Fix Our Broken Food System.” And we love that it’s published in The American Conservative, proving that the agricultural revolution shouldn’t have to be another partisan stalemate. The left and the right agree: Free the food supply from corporate monopolies!
