>You’re absolutely right. For example, we’ve seen the negative impacts from excessive agricultural consolidation.
Like what?
>Many of them already lack profitability without subsidy.
That doesn't mean anything without context. How are the non-PE farms doing?
>We’ve already made things like water and sanitation non-profit/government owned so the idea of doing more of that for food and essentials isn’t that crazy.
>Google “taylor farms cyclospora” or “tyson beef prices shortage” for an example of the problems of highly consolidated processing.
I already addressed cyclospora in another comment, but how is consolidation or tyson beef supposed to be blamed for the shortage? Media reports blamed the shortage on droughts and/or screw worms, hardly a tyson issue. Not to mention tyson hasn't exactly been raking it in during all this shortage:
>Yet despite record beef prices, the “Big Processors”, as Mr Trump calls them, are not thriving. Shares in Tyson, the largest, have tumbled by 40% since 2021—and by 7% since it cut its earnings forecast on September 3rd. It now expects its beef business, which brings in 40% of revenue, to lose as much as $775m this year. Trouble in the division has dragged the company’s overall operating margin down from 8.5% in 2021 to 2.6%. JBS, which is Brazilian, has said its North American business lost $427m in the first half of 2026.
>it can't have a national foodborne illness outbreak.
Which is bad for PR and great for clicks, but it's entirely unclear whether we're better off on average. What about all the years where we didn't have a mass outbreak? Would it be better if every state/county had separate food supply chains, and they had the same rate of illness, but it's more randomly dispersed so it doesn't make it to national TV? Think the difference between airplane crash (maybe one incident per year, hundreds of deaths per incident) vs car crashes (40k/year)
Hmm yes. Two deaths, over a thousand hospitalizations, and not a single state in the US with zero cases, but those are just things that are real and happened which means they do not take into account things that didn’t happen or things you could imagine in your mind.
If we simply envision a nation without diarrhea have we not eradicated it in our hearts, where it matters mos
It’s absolutely relevant because a diversified food supply would result in smaller farms, other things held equal.
You have fewer single points of failure, but more opportunities for failure and a tougher time addressing it via inspection, and less capital available to implement compliance.
Imagining a guy gasping out his last words as he succumbs to life-ending diarrhea in the back of an ambulance that’s long since cut its lights and sirens, “This is the best of all possible capital allocations for hygiene compliance”
Like what?
>Many of them already lack profitability without subsidy.
That doesn't mean anything without context. How are the non-PE farms doing?
>We’ve already made things like water and sanitation non-profit/government owned so the idea of doing more of that for food and essentials isn’t that crazy.
sanitation: please see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_Management,_Inc.
water, but not power, or natural gas?