The food system is in a crisis because of the way that food is produced and the consolidation and organization of the industry itself. Solving it means we must move beyond the focus on consumer choice to examine the corporate, scientific, industrial, and political structures that support an unhealthy system.

Combating this is going to take more than personal choice and voting with our forks—it’s going to take old-fashioned political activism. We must do much more than create food hubs or find more opportunities for farmers to sell directly to consumers. We must address head-on the “foodopoly”—the handful of corporations that control our food system from seeds to dinner plates.

While the rhetoric in our nation is all about competition and the free market, public policy is geared toward enabling a small cabal of companies to control every aspect of our food system. Today, twenty food corporations produce most of the food eaten by Americans, even organic brands. Four large chains, including Walmart, control more than half of all grocery store sales. One company dominates the organic grocery industry, and one distribution company has a stranglehold on getting organic products into communities around the country.