NOBULL: How Big Pork Screws Small Towns, By Tom Philpott
Posted in Daily
Charts: How Big Pork Screws Small Towns
—By Tom Philpott
| Mon Nov. 12, 2012 3:08 AM PST
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Green Fire Productions/Flickr
I’ve argued often that the food system functions like an economic sieve, draining away wealth. Imagine, say, a suburb
served by a handful of fast-food chains plus a supermarket or Walmart or two. Profits from residents’ food dollars go
to distant shareholders; what’s left behind are essentially low-skill, low-wage clerical jobs and mountains of generally
low-quality, health-ruining food.
But the food system’s secret scandal is that it’s economically extractive in farming communities areas, too—and especially
in the places where industrial agriculture is most established and intensive. (MORE)