From KCRW, I'm Evan Klyman, and this is Good Food.

Are you ready to get worked up about our food system?

Because this one is a doozy.

We're starting today's show talking about power

and how it concentrates in and corrupts our food system.

In his book, Barron's, Money Power and the Corruption of America's Food Industry,

former Treasury Department official, Austin Frerich,

pulls back the curtain on the dynasties and corporations that shape what we eat.

Each chapter focuses on a particular fiefdom, the sugar barons of Florida,

the Barry Barons of California, Walmart, Cargill. Drawing on his Iowa roots, Frerick argues that

our food system isn't simply broken. It has been captured top bottom, in the name of profit.

And that has had devastating consequences for farmers, for communities, and for our environment.

Hi.

Thanks again for having me on, Evan.

Oh, it's a pleasure.

It's a really important book.

What spurred you to do the research that resulted in it?

Honestly, as weird as it sounds, it was a dive bar conversation in Des Moines. This was 2018.

There was a big governor's race in Iowa then, and I didn't know at the time, but Iowa doesn't have campaign contribution limits.

And this person was telling me that one one hog farmer in Iowa had given a governor over $300,000 for her race.

But it wasn't just that. It was this detail that they had their own private jet and allegedly on the private jet where the words when pigs fly,

which I thought was incredible copy, but also what a powerful symbol of what's happened to Iowa in my lifetime. So this whole thing started really of just that question of how did this happen? How did the animals disappear in my lifetime in Iowa? You used to drive and you just see them everywhere, now you don't. You smell them, but you don't see them. And so this whole thing started with kind of that hog barren. And then I realized the story of Iowa, you've actually seen this across the food system.

...