By now you're no doubt aware that the U.S. Justice Department has formally indicted executives at some big poultry companies for price fixing over the last few years.  Today, we now know the anti-trust probe is moving on to beef and pork, including all the biggest companies.

             Farmers' groups have been agitating for this for some time, with numerous lawsuits filed but nothing done.  It really came to a head during the pandemic this spring as supermarket prices nearly doubled while prices paid to farmers plummeted.  Processors and packers made record profits while farmers were euthanizing animals and losing money.

             The farmer groups, of course, want additional oversight, more regulations, and spankings for these evil executives who call each other about big bids.  These allegations have been ongoing for a long, long time and I doubt that anything substantive will come out of them this time either.

             The farmers who sign contracts with these mega-outfits do so voluntarily; nobody coerces these farmers into becoming serfs.  Of their own choice and their own volition they decide to play the big boys' game.  I learned long ago that when you take a commodity to the industrial altar and the buyer gets to tell you how much you have, how good it is, and what the price is, you fall on your sword for the system.

             My heart breaks for these farmers victimized by the system, but I can assure them that they will not receive redress from the government.  The government loves big business more than small business.  All you have to do is see the response to the coronavirus to realize the prejudice at every level.  How else can you explain that Costco and Wal-Mart stayed open but farmers' markets were closed?  Or now that we have mobs in the streets police disperse funerals but allow public mobs?

             A word to farmers:  if you're trusting in the government to fix your plight, to keep you from being peasants, you're trusting in the wrong thing.  The solution is not more government oversight; it's food freedom.  If these farmers could easily access their regions with the beef, pork, or chicken so that neighbor-to-neighbor commerce were encouraged rather than penalized, these gargantuan outfits that control the markets would not wield such power.

             The answer to business centralization is not more centralized government power.  The answer is freedom at the grass roots level.  A government big enough to spank Tyson is big enough to destroy every mom and pop chicken operation.  In their negotiations during the spanking, Tyson will also wrangle concessions that entrench their hold on the market.  You cannot have freedom and big government.  You cannot have a thriving small business climate and large bureaucratic oversight.

             I can't imagine the positive movement that would be created if all these farmers' groups focused their energy on freedom rather than punishment.  If they turned their attention to liberty rather than regulation.  The tragedy in this situation is not the collusion and price fixing, as bad as that is; the tragedy is that these farmer groups don't understand that they are playing into the hands of centralization and tyranny.  The duplicity is extraordinary.  Rather than seeking help from bureaucrats, how about unleashing entrepreneurial community-scale processing and packing on our food system?  That would change everything.

             But alas, in all my years campaigning for food freedom and more consumer choice, these same groups attack me as a villain.  They say I want to kill people with crappy food.  They say people can't afford food from smaller establishments.  They say smaller outfits can't process all the food.  The biggest detractors for opening up more markets to farmers are these very farm groups.  It's insane.  So I have a hard time feeling sorry for them when some executives get together and agree on how to make money from their farmer serfs.  Cry foul, boys, but why don't you build your own ball park?--spelled freedom of choice.

             Do you think anti-trust regulations are more efficacious than freedom?