Sean Dengler.

Resiliency is what the United States needs. Recently, a company named CrowdStrike had an outage which affected many businesses around the world including numerous airlines. This outage left fliers stranded across the globe for longer than they wanted to be. This is not resiliency.

When companies are so large they can affect the world on this scale, it shows the fragility and lack of resiliency of the system. With the right form of competition policy, it would promote multiple businesses to be competitive for consumers creating a more regional, less global framework, creating a system where not one company could impact these many individuals across the world.

During the pandemic, meatpackers stayed open even though their employees were put at a higher risk for getting sick. If the meatpacking industry were not as concentrated and fragile with more meatpackers with smaller locations, certain meatpackers in areas where COVID-19 was hot possibly could have been shut down temporarily and then reopened when the threat subsided. In turn, the other meatpackers where COVID-19 was not as hot would pick up the slack. Unfortunately, the less resilient option and the reality at the time led to more employees potentially getting more infections staying open.

In terms of Dollar General and other dollar stores entering rural areas and potentially running independent owned grocers out of business, this is setting up for a fragile food system. The concentration of the rural grocer business could lead to disaster. If Dollar General does not have a needed item in stock or a widespread internet outage makes it so no one can buy food that day, this could be harmful to rural communities. This will lead to consumers making a longer drive to find the solution if every rural community has a dollar store. With more independent grocers, there could at least be another independent grocer down the road.

When markets are concentrated, it can lead to greater harm to consumers. Economists find market abuses are likely to occur when the concentration ratio of the top four firms exceeds 40%. When these markets are concentrated, few companies affect too many people. Unfortunately, the food system is one of the most concentrated. According to a recent study by Farm Action, beef processing, corn seed, nitrogen fertilizer (North America), soybean seed, pork processing, agrichemical (global), agricultural machinery, poultry processing, and retail grocery are all above 60% concentration ratio with beef processing and corn seed chalking in as the top industries at 85% and 80%, respectively. This is not good for anyone. Consumers are potentially being taken advantage of because they have no other option. If one of these companies in this industry has a problem, it will drastically affect society.

What happened to CrowdStrike last month could happen across the entire food system. Letting these industries – whether agricultural, tech, or whatever else – be concentrated is not good public policy. Be it farmers or consumers, when markets are less concentrated, the chance of abuse is lessened, leading to a more resilient system. Competition policy is not sexy, but it is important because it affects consumers across all political spectrums equally. Setting up a strong, resilient economy across the United States is what is needed to help protect consumers and lead to the success of American society.

Sean Dengler is a writer, comedian, farmer, and host of the Pandaring Talk podcast who grew up on a farm between Traer and Dysart. You can reach him at sean.h.dengler@gmail.com.