Wal-Mart Comes to the Farmers' Market
As the ground shifts under their feet, food giants experiment with new strategies
By Tom Philpott

For more than a generation, the major corporations that process and sell the vast bulk of our food have had it pretty easy.

They've had access to cheap energy to ship food over globe-spanning distances and run giant food-processing plants; reveled in cheap inputs like corn and soy, transforming them into everything from breakfast cereal to chicken nuggets; and relied on low-paid, abundant, and politically disenfranchised workers to do the dirty jobs. Together, these elements formed a kind of tripod propping up the industry's enormous profits even as food's retail price barely budged.

These companies fattened themselves on what economists call "monopsony" -- monopoly's shy but cunning cousin. When a few companies dominate a market and collude to jack up prices for their customers, they boldly risk incurring punishment by antitrust authorities. But when they quietly perform the opposite dirty trick on their suppliers and workers -- use their market power to force down prices and wages -- federal authorities tend to look the other way, as Barry C. Lynn showed in an important 2006 Harper's essay.

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