Austin Frerick
Wrote - Barons. Currently Yale. Formerly US Treasury/CRS. #firstgen 🌽🐷🏳️🌈
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- "Last week, the NYT ran a story saying farmers are going to let their crops rot because the prices are so bad. At the same time, we’re having a food affordability crisis. That juxtaposition captures how broken our food system is"
- New Academic Review of Barons: Journal of Law & Political Economy "a powerful exposé of the transformation of the American food system... Frerick’s extensive empirical work adds a fresh perspective" 😜
- What a year of putting on the miles - gave my final talk this year a few days ago in Great Falls, Montana. Thanks again to MOA for inviting me. 🥩🌾
- “We’re not seeing normal herd expansion because farmers don’t think [cattle] prices will be there, and that goes back to market dominance” among meatpackers, Frerick says.
- Honored to be included 😅🤗 ..."what a writer! Absolutely engaging. For the foreseeable future, this is the book I'm recommending to anyone who wants to learn about our food system more deeply."
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- "The Farm Bill is designed to [over]produce grains at the expense of everything else," Frerick said. "It’s built for Wall Street and no one else." Read AGweek's coverage of the book talk Sonja Trom Eayrs and I gave in Landesboro, MN, earlier this month.
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- “Trump shouldn’t underestimate the Yellowstone effect,” says Frerick. I spoke to the FT about how ranchers loom large in the public consciousness, and about the danger of siding with foreign corporations like JBS against independent American ranchers.
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- Whirlwind week 🍃💨 Monday: Princeton University Tuesday: Land Stewardship Project in Lanesboro, MN Wednesday: IACP Awards in Brooklyn So lucky to be presenting Barons more than a year after publication
- “You’re a winner, baby!” 🥳😜 Honored to have won the best “Food Issues” book from the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP).
- I went back on Bloomberg’s biggest podcast, Odd Lots, to discuss the Distribution Baron in my paperback: Sysco. I chatted with Tracy and Joe about how Sysco built its empire, what we’ve lost because of it, and, more importantly, what we can do about it. Enjoy!
- I spoke to the BBC about what's going on with America's beef markets. "These are consolidated markets gouging ranchers and gouging consumers at the store." Today, just 4 firms control more than 80% of the beef slaughtering and packing market.
- Upcoming Talk! More info: cpree.princeton.edu/events/2025/...
- Over 600k+ YouTube and 5m TikTok views in the first 24 hours! Honored to be a part of this new video w/ @moreperfectunion.bsky.social based on my new chapter on Sysco - my Distribution Barons - the largest global food distributor for eating out.
- "Frerick said there are many ways to get around Iowa's anti-corporate laws, adding that it’s an open secret they're being ignored."
- One of the coolest barns I've ever been in - and such an honor to be one of the keynotes at the Real Organic Project conference this weekend.
- Catch me later this week if you're in the Bay Area.
- New excerpt from my expanded paperback- "Sysco’s market dominance means that something essential is being lost. As local businesses fade away, a sense of a distinct regional and local identity disappears with them."
- Three talks coming up -- Twin Cities Vegfest: Sept 21 230pm ET (Harriet Island Park) Stanford Law: Sept 23 4pm ET Real Organic Project: Sept 27 10am ET (Hudson, NY)
- The League of Women Voters made a special drink for my last paperback book event 🥳🥹
- And we're off -- first paperback event! Special thanks to the Iowa Center for the Book, Dog·Eared Books, League of Women Voters, and the Ames Public Library
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- Exciting news -- I'll be back on the road later this week bopping around Iowa for the expanded paperback release of Barons. I'd love to see yah if you're in the area 🚗📚
- Record-high prices for beef in the grocery store, record-high profits for the world's largest beef packer.
- The McCloskeys run Fair Oaks Farms, an interactive “Dairy Disneyland” that also houses a factory farm with around 37k cows — producing enough milk for four million school milk cartons, every, single day, Frerick says in the documentary. New piece by @ninaelkadi.com
- “ My book is called Barons and that’s intentional, like I’m playing off robber barons,” he says. “I’m harkening back to a previous moment in American history and part of that is to show people we’ve been here before, we know what to do."
- Special thanks to the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance and Republican Senator Lois Kolkhorst for inviting me to present Barons at Texas State University and the Texas State Capitol (talk about timing).
- New Review: Journal of Economic Literature “Explores how a series of powerful actors in the American food industry built their empires by taking advantage of deregulation and promoting a radical laissez-faire ideology, highlighting the effects on workers, families, and communities.”
- I spoke with @vox.com about the rampant animal abuse scandals at @fairlife.com "This is just the one classic textbook example of why self-policing just fails,” Frerick said... The story here, he added, “is the failure of regulators."
- The single best thing you could do to lower grocery store prices is to end the ethanol mandate: "You're taking the best farmland in the world, and you're just wasting it," he says. "Instead of growing food, you're wasting it in your car."
- "You can have clean water or you can have ethanol, but you can't have both," Frerick says.
- I'm excited to be heading back down to Texas 🤠 More info 👉 www.southernfamilyfarmersconference.org
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- The result, said Frerick, is akin to “throwing gasoline on the inequality in America and in the food system.”
- New Review of Barons 🌾 “[A book] I just can’t stop talking and thinking about... my favorite part of the book was how masterfully Frerick writes about the interconnectedness of our food systems with so many other aspects of our lives.”
- Honored to have presented Barons and keynoted at the R_CALF National Convention earlier this month in Deadwood, South Dakota 🐂🇺🇸 I can't stress this enough -- addressing the concentration crisis in America's meat markets is one of the most bipartisan issues right now.
