by Abe Voelker

For a taste of what the near future looks like, Wal-Mart already began bottling their own milk, shutting down over 100 dairy producers in the process. As for the distant future, I imagine it will look similar to the consolidation in other livestock industries, where a handful of mega corporations dictate production and the “farmers” are more like serfs, deeply in debt and entirely beholden to the corporation. I already mentioned poultry farming, but also look at hog farming: the largest hog producer in the country, Smithfield Foods, is now owned by a Chinese corporation, and which is responsible for staggering amounts of damageto rural American communities due to the concentrated waste it produces.

In the name of efficiency, profits will be concentrated in fewer and fewer hands while waste gets concentrated into more and more toxic forms to be dumped on rural communities.

Read The Full Article Here