According to one recent estimate (William Grieder in the Nation, November 20, 2000) this means a frightening degree of concentration sector by sector.  Four firms control 82 percent of the beef packing industry, 75 percent of delivery of hogs and sheep, and half of chickens. Major supermarket chains are now concentrated regionally within the US, though not nationally. Four firms hold 74 percent of market control in ninety-four large cities; experts anticipate a new merger wave that could swiftly increase that percentage while doubling the four firms' overall national concentration up to 60 percent.
 
It is not just that the "consumers" so beloved of mainstream economic theory are adversely affected by these levels of concentration and effective monopoly. It is also precisely this kind of market leverage that has given the large companies a pricing advantage over farmers and ranchers. And it is this which explains the rising spread between the prices received by farmers and livestock breeders, and the retail prices, that is so evident from the charts.
 
Thus, companies regularly exploit this market leverage, and the degree of control created by vertical integration of breathtaking dimensions, to depress market prices for independent, relatively small producers. In some cases the control is direct. Thus, owning feedlots, or (an increasingly common practice) signing output contracts with  individual farmers for poultry, hogs, cattle and even grain and soyabean, gives the processing companies access to their own captive supplies.
 
Even when there is no such overt control, the ability of marketing giants to hold their own private stores of livestock or grain or oilseeds means that they no longer have to rely on the traditional auction based purchases in the open market to provide most of their supply. This has affected the auction markets as well, rendering the prices for farmers lower and more volatile.
 
The recent crashes in world trading prices have speeded up these processes. Two consequences of this are now clear. One, is that it drove many American farmers into rushing to accept whatever new technology offered cost cutting or output increasing effects. Thus, farmers sought more capital-intensive cultivation, and Monsanto and other companies were also easily able to persuade farmers to adopt their genetically modified seeds for corn and soyabean in particular. The other impact of the price collapse is that it has driven many farmers many more farmers into accepting the status of contract producer growing crops of livestock under fixed-price contracts with the corporations.
 
This model is eerily reminiscent of the process of forced commercialisation in Indian agriculture over the nineteenth century, when small farmers were incorporated into a global economy through a process of debt engagement or through contracts of purchase where the ultimate buyer (say, for example, the opium or indigo planter)  also offered inputs such as seeds and other working capital and bound the formerly independent producer into a subservient relationship.
 
Of course, in the US this process is occurring in an already capitalist agriculture which is highly sophisticated in terms of techniques and production organisation. For that reason, it also bears similarity with the pattern of organisation in contemporary major industrial sectors in developed economies. Here a large corporation - say Nike or Benetton - organises a complex but disparate and shifting network of affiliated producers, subcontractors and distributors, who all adhere to its brand standards.
 
This entire process has been dramatically described as follows :  "Farmers can see themselves being reduced from their mythological status as independent producers to a subservient and vulnerable role as sharecroppers or franchisees. The control of food production, both livestock and crops, is being consolidated not by the government but by a handful of giant corporations. While farmers and ranchers suffered three years of severely depressed prices at the close of the 1990s, the corporations enjoyed soaring profits from the same line of goods. Growers are surrounded now on both sides - facing concentrated market power not only from the companies that buy their crops and animals but also from the firms that sell them essential inputs like seeds and fertiliser. In the final act of unfettered capitalism, the free market itself is destroyed." (William Grieder, "The last farm crisis", The Nation, November 20, 2000)
 
American farmers are effectively being incorporated into a peculiar collectivisation of agriculture, where those in control are large multinational companies operating all the way along the value chain. And it is this model of growing corporatisation of agricultural and agro-processed commodity production  which is being upheld as an example for other countries, and which is effectively being pushed on to a whole range of developing countries such as India. In fact, the current Indian government has already shown that it is very much in favour of such a trend, and has provided further incentives to strengthen such a process in the recent Annual Central Government Budget as well as in the latest Exim Policy.
 
The effects of such a policy on American farmers, who are already quite well off, and financially and politically strong, are now apparent. But this process is likely to be much more devastating in terms of its impact on Indian cultivators, a majority of whom are already operating at the margin of subsistence.