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Livestock’s Bleak, Industrial Future

The more the American meat and milk sectors industrialize—via integrated contract production, fewer bigger players, machine-centered scale—the more these key parts of American agriculture resemble industry itself: commoditized products, razor-thin margins, and extended periods of steep losses.
This shift from what we once quaintly called animal husbandry has also shifted economic and political power to a […]

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Oink If It Smells Like Free Trade

Here’s what everybody knows about Paul Krugman: The openly partisan, twice-weekly columnist for the New York Times won the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
Here’s what hardly anyone knows about Paul Krugman: The fiercely liberal Democrat and an unrepentant Keynesian is an avowed supporter of free trade.
No way, right? Oh yeah, way.
In fact, some […]

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