The Oligarchy has its Roots in Agriculture

Like any other weed, we must pull it from its roots.

A panelist on MSNBC said something that struck me. It’s been stuck in my head all week. One of the well-known panelists said, “We are seeing the rise of a government that is only for the oligarchs.”

I guess my question to them is, where have they been this whole time?

I could have told you that our government was becoming of, by, and for the oligarchs decades ago. In fact, I could have shown you that by simply taking you to rural America, especially in agriculture—the oligarchy’s first victim.

In the not-so-distant past, agriculture was a tapestry of small, diverse farms run by families who worked the land with pride. Each region had its unique flavors, crops, and methods, creating a resilient food system that sustained communities and cultures. Today, that tapestry has been replaced by a stark, monotonous canvas painted by a handful of monopolistic corporations—who I will generally call Big Ag or the Ag Oligarchs. This is the story of how the oligarchy has its roots in agriculture, how it destroyed family farms, and why it matters to every one of us.

The Chickenization of Meat

The seeds of corporate dominance in agriculture were planted in the early 1900s with the advent of industrial farming. The oligarchic monopolies in rural America are as bad, with some being worse, than Standard Oil was back in its heyday.

Some could argue it started with chicken.

Historically, our food system was a grand tapestry of mom-and-pop shops, local vendors, and other independent businesses, all working ultimately to benefit their communities. Then came Tyson, which revolutionized (but not in a good way) the food industry starting in the 1940s/50s.

Now, that grand tapestry is a monopoly. Tyson owns the chickens (including their DNA, oddly enough), their feed, their medicine, their vers, their slaughterhouses and other processors, their butchers, and their shipping, but for the riskiest part of the business of raising the animal from chick to adult (this is traditionally where things go wrong), that’s all the farmers. Making a bad situation worse, Tyson rigs their contracts with farmers to ensure at least half of all chicken farmers don’t meet their bullshit quotas (or maybe we should say chickenshit quotas). They force the farmers to shackle themselves with tremendous debt to build football field-sized chicken houses, which no one ever pays off. When a chicken farmer gets out of line and speaks against Tyson, they are given bad chicks, guaranteeing farm failure.

For Tyson, it’s all award and no risk, while for the farmers, it’s all risk and a handful of pennies (on a good year). It’s the farming equivalent of MLK’s socialism for the rich and rugged capitalism for the poor.

Pork has been chickenized in a similar manner.

Cattle is heading in the same direction. With cattle, the number of cattle buyers is becoming fewer and fewer. The feedlots are being squeezed, and the slaughterhouses only genuinely service the monopolies, not the family ranches. The number of cattle sellers is also getting smaller, making it harder and more expensive for ranchers to buy new bulls or heifers. In some cases, the buyers and the sellers are one and the same, thereby giving them absolute power to squeeze the rancher from both sides. Dairies are suffering as well.

In the past, for every $1 a consumer spent on meat at the local grocery store, the farmer would get 40-60 cents. Now, they get 7-14 cents—the remainder goes to the Ag Oligarchs.

Four companies control our meat industry. There is no such thing as a free market when the monopoly is the market. Their domination of the industry would make the ghost of Standard Oil jealous.

Plowing Over Family Farmers

Monopolization (or maybe oligarchization?) is sadly even more far-reaching.

Companies like Monsanto, Bayer, and Syngenta began to dominate the seed market by developing genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and patenting them. Farmers, once the stewards of their seeds, were now forced to buy new seeds each year under restrictive contracts. This shift stripped them of their autonomy and tied them to the whims of corporate pricing.

Some of these seeds, like certain tasteless tomato varieties, cost more per pound than gold.

Making matters worse, the corporations who own the seeds own the fertilizers chemically designed for the seeds, and they own the pesticides designed for the seeds. Once you get the seeds, you must use the corporation’s other products. The monopoly is the market.

Price gouging from all directions becomes a guarantee when a monopoly becomes the market. Just like a casino, the house always wins.

The same is true with tractors and equipment. The same few companies make the equipment and determine which mechanics can make the repairs. The Ag Oligarchs don’t even allow most farmers to fix their tractors; most farmers do not have the right to repair their own property. They then limit the number of mechanics, thereby causing disastrous delays and extreme price gouging for the farmers.

The Rigging of the Farm Bill

A good Farm Bill can make or break a family farm. A good and fair Farm Bill would be fantastic.

Unfortunately, Big Ag’s corporate lawyers and lobbyists have rewritten the Farm Bill to protect their oligarchy. The top 10% of farms receive about 80% of public support, while everyone else is left out in the cold. These mega-farms, mostly corporate-owned, mainly produce products for export, livestock feedlots, or other industrial food uses; they’re not honestly meant to feed Americans.

What do I mean by “industrial food uses?” There’s a reason junk food is cheap while fruits and veggies are not. Our rigged policies indirectly subsidize junk food; healthier foods, not so much.

Side Note: industrial and processed food is a significant cause of the obesity and health epidemic we’re seeing—I, personally, would claim it’s the main factor. I would argue having a Farm Bill that reprioritizes the production of healthy foods and not just those with High Fructose Corn Syrup (+ other addictive & unhealthy processed “foodstuff”) would do a lot to help alleviate America’s obesity and health epidemic.

Several decades ago, each farm would produce a staple crop (wheat, corn, etc.) plus usually several other crops, such as various veggies, fruits, animals, etc. This created a system of self-reliance where our foods were healthy, cheap, and local. But “self-reliance” is a dirty word to the Ag Oligarchs. They lobbied to have the rules rigged. Nowadays, even though we’re the breadbasket of the world, America is a net food importer, especially with fruits, veggies, seafood, and more. We don’t produce enough to adequately feed ourselves all because the Ag Oligarchs rigged the system to make the most money for themselves as possible.

A Trojan Horse Named “Free Trade”

Low-barrier international trade can be fantastic when it is thoughtfully and well-designed. However, our trade policy has not been that way for the last several decades.

Free trade was never about removing tariffs—we removed most of those a long time ago. Tariffs in the U.S. have generally been lower than those in most other countries, though this looks to be changing under the new administration. “Free trade was an attempt to remove other countries' tariffs on our products and standardize regulations, practices, and other aspects that would allow corporations to do business more easily across borders. But instead of bringing everyone up to our standards, it created a global race to the bottom.

Most “free trade” deals have been corporate schemes to enrich the few and hurt the working class everywhere.

Even though the passing of the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) promised U.S. farmers the moon and stars, we got cow patties and flies. Sure, the Ag Oligarches did very well, but the family farms suffered.

From our friends at the Institute for Agriculture & Trade Policy: “From 1992 through 2012, the U.S. lost 245,288, or 22 percent, of small-scale farmers (under $350,000 annual gross farm income) and 6,123, or 5 percent of mid-sized farmers (under $999,999 annual gross farm income). As farmland ownership consolidated in the U.S., large-scale farms ($1 million and over annual gross farm income) increased by 35,066, or 107 percent. The number of farms responsible for 50 percent of U.S. agricultural production was cut in half from 1987 through 2012.”

It didn’t just hurt American farmers. It destroyed many family farms in Mexico, too. Some estimates suggest that over two million Mexican farmers were displaced after NAFTA was implemented.

While it’s a stereotype that all rural folks work in agriculture, this Trojan Horse Named “Free Trade” did the same to many other industries in rural areas. The oligarchs moved jobs abroad and forced people to work at big-box monopolies like Walmart, not to mention that big-box stores caused many mom-and-pop shops to close.

Side note 1: If the West Texas Oligarchs-supported TX GOP gets its way, our rural schools, the backbone of many rural communities, will be defunded soon, too. This would be a disaster for rural and agricultural communities.

Side note 2: With the current Administration throwing tariffs up on Mexico, Canada, and China, let’s talk tariffs. Blanket tariffs (ones that apply to an entire country) usually backfire. Targeted tariffs (ones that apply to specific companies that violate international standards) are very much needed. For instance, if Company Y doesn’t pay its workers a living wage, heavily pollutes its local environment, and/or displaces Indigenous communities, then yes, they should have a tariff placed on them until they correct their bad behavior. Targetted tariffs help raise all boats; blanket tariffs (which the current administration is doing) may backfire.

Pollution of Propaganda

Lastly, this is more of a long side note as it’s not directly related to agriculture but still an essential piece of the puzzle. Propaganda is real, and one of its names is Faux News. With Reagan removing the Fairness Doctrine and Clinton one-upping him by removing the guardrails that prevented direct monopolization of the media (Telecommunications Act of 1996), not only did our media become polarized, but it also became monopolized.

Before these two men wrecked our media ecosystem, we had 50+ companies controlling most of our media. Now we have 5. All mainstream media in the U.S. cannot be fully trusted as they’re a monopoly, though, to be clear, some are worse than others.

This media monopolization and polarization destroyed or diminished many local and national media outlets. It allowed the oligarchs to use propaganda to pollute the minds of many Americans, including many farmers. This pollution silences dissent about corporate abuses and divides and distracts many people. The oligarchs have invested tremendous funds to ensure it’s “left v. right” and not “top v. bottom.”

The Fall of Family Farms

Today, a few companies control 60-90% of our food system, depending on which part of the food system we’re examining. Again, in many cases, this is a higher level of monopolization than even Standard Oil reached.

In the 1950s, the number of farms in the U.S. was approximately 4.78 million, but now about 1.9 million—a reduction of approximately 2.88 million farms.

Many family farmers are making less today than they did in the past. Most family farms no longer pencil out. According to the USDA: “In 2019, 96 percent of farm households derived some income from off-farm sources. On average, off-farm income contributed 82 percent of total income for all family farms in 2019.”

Not only have we lost millions of family farms, but the vast majority of the remaining ones can only do so because their owners have other day jobs. Admittedly, this is even true for my family ranch.

Side Note: While many pundits and other talking heads will scream about “efficiency” being a good thing, all great lies have an element of truth. Sure, efficiency is good up to a point, but there is such a thing as too much. Too much efficiency in economics becomes a monopoly; too much efficiency in government becomes a dictatorship. Things should be a little messy. Nature is messy. That messiness creates resilience. Monocropping is brittle. In government, dictators are brittle. Messiness is a feature, not a bug, of democracy. It helps create resilience.

Once thriving hubs of agricultural activity, rural communities have been hollowed out as small farms vanish. Farmers face mounting debt, mental health crises, and even suicide as they struggle to compete in an unfair system.

The environmental toll is equally severe. Industrial agriculture relies heavily on synthetic inputs and monocropping, leading to soil depletion, biodiversity loss, and greenhouse gas emissions. These practices are not only unsustainable but also both exacerbate the climate crisis and create a positive feedback loop where these farms feel compelled to continue using corporate methods.

Pull the Weed from the Roots

The oligarchy took root in rural America decades ago. Before NAFTA shipped our manufacturing overseas, the rise of Big Tech, Citizens United allowed for legal unlimited bribery, the monopolization of our media, big box stores hollowed out our communities, or the extreme concentration of wealth in the top 0.1%, the Ag Oligarchies had their way in rural America.

Farmers and other country folk have long lived under this oligarchy. Many of us have not survived financially, and some of us have not survived literally.

But that’s also the thing about farmers; we know a thing or two about how to pull a weed by its roots. But this weed’s root is too big and too deep for us to pull it by our lonesome ourselves—it’ll require all of us as a national community to pull this weed out by its roots.

Our resistance is growing. Movements advocating for regenerative agriculture, food sovereignty, and anti-monopoly enforcement are gaining momentum. Many organizations are working to restore farmers' power and promote sustainable practices, such as the Texas Farmers Union & the National Farmers Union.

Consumers, too, play a vital role. By supporting local farmers, choosing organic and sustainably produced foods, and advocating for policy changes, individuals can help challenge the dominance of agribusiness giants.

Conclusion

The oligarchic takeover of agriculture is not just a story of economic consolidation; it is a crisis of democracy, sustainability, and dignity. Reclaiming agriculture from corporate control will require systemic change, grassroots activism, and a collective commitment to valuing the people and ecosystems that sustain us. The stakes could not be higher—our food, our environment, and our future depend on it.

If you want to help take the fight to the Ag Oligarchs, you can learn more about Farm & Food Action, or you can donate directly here.

Stay strong.

Clayton Tucker

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P.S. — I plan to continue my Roadmap to Victory series after this post, so stay tuned! If you want me to talk more about tariffs, or anything else, pls leave a comment below.