Austin Frerick, author of Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry, joined UW Oshkosh students and community members for a conversation about the problems surrounding the U.S. food industry followed by a reception and book signing, sponsored by Thompson Center, Center for Civic and Community Engagement and SIRT.
Frerick currently serves as a fellow at Yale University. He previously worked at the Open Markets Institute, the U.S. Department of Treasury and the Congressional Research Service as well as served as an agricultural antitrust advisor to candidates Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren during the 2020 election before becoming co-chair of the Biden campaign’s Agriculture Antitrust Policy Committee.
Raised in a household by a mother who ran a bakery and a father who drove trucks for a living, Frerick described his childhood as the American dream. As a seventh generation Iowan and first generation college student, Frerick drew inspiration for his book from the decaying agricultural climate in his home state. He refers to Iowa as the canary in the coalmine of the food industry.
Frerick notes that food is a big part of our culture here in the U.S., and there are more moving parts to the industry than what meets the eye.
“1 in 10 of Americans work in the food system,” Frerick said. “I think that’s been underappreciated. It’s not only about those who grow it; it’s about who pick it, process it, transport it, cook it and serve it. Food is who we are.”
In the midst of making sense of Iowa’s agricultural crisis, Frerick recognized that the problems he was seeing in his own state plagued the food industry as a whole. Barons was written to bring awareness to the fractures in our food system and expose the powerful corporations that have monopolized it.
“The more curious I got with this stuff and the more I dug into it, I realized these are really broken markets,” Frerick said. “What shocked me the most about writing this book is that everyone can see it (the food industry) is not working. Regardless of your political party, age, race, etc. Everyone can see it’s not working for different reasons.”
One way to get our system back on track is to restore the middle class family farm, Frerick said.
“They just stabilize everything,” Frerick said. “And what’s underappreciated is how much this system makes bad tasting food. Cows on pasture are going to make better milk than cows in the desert in Mexico. Family farms do that, you know?”
Frerick also points out that local farmers have a much more personal connection to their animals than any corporate farm does, as well as take a higher amount of gratification in their job.
“You go to any dairy family farm and every dairy cow is like a dog to them,” Frerick said. “They know the personality, they know the lineage, that’s lost in this industrial market. And people enjoy their job so much more than being a low wage worker for a baron.”
Barons focuses not only on the corruption of the food industry and those who control it, but the consequences of hazardous work environments, inadequate wages, consumer price gouging and the constriction of middle-class family farms. It took Frerick five years of investigative research before sending it to the press.
His most shocking discovery whilst researching the dairy barons was an unreported incident involving a forty-seven-year-old immigrant born in Honduras who died after getting sucked into a manure digester. The man was married and a father of three. This incident happened back in January of 2021, just a few months before Frerick’s tour of the same facility.
“People read that in the book and think that I ran around with a magnifying glass or knocked on doors … no, I was just going through records one day and noticed it,” Frerick said. “I think that goes to show you the state of the media in a lot of these rural communities. No one is looking. A lot of rural news has been hollowed out.”
Throughout his writing process, Frerick said the most difficult part about it was breaking down the language of the industry and conveying it in a way that people could understand and connect with.
“To even start writing, you really have to get your head around this stuff,” Frerick said. “So much language is designed to keep people out, so you have to then learn that language to simplify it. It took me forever to learn that we’re emotional creatures, and we need a story. My barons are really narrative devices.”
Frerick emphasized the importance of using humor as a tool in his seven industry barons, intentionally mocking the rich and powerful in order to dilute the fear factor hovering over them.
“It takes the edge off of them,” Frerick said. “You’re no longer scared and it makes you feel like you can overcome it. I kind of want them to come off as cartoons.”
Barons is meant to help people understand how the food industry got to the point it is, and where we can go from here.
Frerick acknowledges this wasn’t a crisis we found ourselves in overnight, and therefore won’t be one we find ourselves out of anytime soon. His hope is to educate people and provide some transparency on our food, where it comes from and how it affects us as well as our economy.
“No one is really articulating a positive vision right now in the food system,” Frerick said. “A lot of what I’m doing now is for my grandkids one day. I think people crave hope.”
