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Factually! with Adam Conover

The "Food Barons" Jacking Up Your Grocery Bill with Austin Frerick

Factually! with Adam Conover

Headgum

Comedy

4.42.2K Ratings

🗓️ 17 July 2024

⏱️ 71 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Whether you're at the grocery store or a restaurant, food is becoming obscenely expensive. It's easy to point to inflation as the sole culprit, but that's only a narrow view of a much bigger picture. For years, the food industry has been falling to monopolists who have been edging out independent farmers. Food quality has gone down, prices have gone up, and it has been a shocking disaster for the environment. This week, Adam speaks with Austin Frerick, an expert on agriculture and antitrust policy, a fellow at Yale, and author of Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry. Find Austin's book at factuallypod.com/books

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Transcript

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0:00.0

This is a headgum podcast. I don't know what to think I don't know what to say

0:16.0

and that's all right that's okay

0:21.0

I don't know anything.

0:25.0

Hello and welcome to Factually. I'm Adam Conover. Thank you so much for joining me again.

0:30.0

You know, if you're like me, you like to eat. In fact, you have to eat or you'll die.

0:35.3

And you might have noticed that food has been getting a lot more expensive.

0:39.2

Although inflation for food has slowed relative to 2022, You have to remember that the effects of

0:44.1

inflation are cumulative and recent numbers showed increased prices for

0:48.4

everything from frozen juice to ground beef. Eating out is more expensive than

0:52.4

last year and even vending machine prices are up. It sucks.

0:56.7

Again, we all have to eat and for most of us living off the grid and growing our own meat and potatoes is not an option. So ideally, we have a world where and unfortunately. Just as with industries like newspapers, internet advertising, airlines, and athletic shoes, that competition doesn't exist anymore at all.

1:19.0

Instead, our food system is run by monopolies, and those monopolies have the power to screw us

1:25.0

whether we're their customers, their workers, or citizens living in places

1:28.4

where they exert unfair and undemocratic influence over our lives. I can't believe I have to say this but food is simply one of the

1:36.4

necessities of life which means it's a bad thing that only a few people in this

1:41.2

country have control over that necessity.

1:44.0

You simply cannot explain how we get our beef, pork, grain, how grocery stores work, why prices

1:49.7

are higher than ever, without understanding the influence of these massive and manipulative companies.

1:56.0

And luckily on the show today we have a guest who knows everything about it and not only

2:00.4

that is from one of the very regions that produces our essential foodstuffs.

2:05.5

He not only knows about this, he has lived it himself, and I cannot wait for you to hear this interview.

2:11.0

But before we get to it, I just want to remind you that if you

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