NOBULL: How Big Pork Screws Small Towns, By Tom Philpott

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)