— At Our Table —

A Compelling Case for Local Ag: 20 Reasons to Decentralize the Food System

Four companies process 85% of America's beef. Here are twenty reasons to put food back in local hands.

Allen R. Williams, Ph.D.

Co-founder

In this post

Did you know

One company. $11 million ransom.

In 2021, the world's largest meat processor — JBS — paid an $11 million ransom to cyberattackers to get their plants back online.

The attack briefly halted roughly 20% of U.S. beef and pork processing capacity. That's what consolidation looks like as a national-security exposure.

When four companies process 85% of America's fed cattle, taking down any one of them disrupts everyone.

Four companies process 85% of America’s fed cattle. That same level of consolidation has happened across the rest of the food system — and the consequences range from rural-economy collapse to recurring food-safety recalls to genuine national-security vulnerability. The case for decentralizing agriculture back into local and regional hands isn’t sentimental; it’s structural. This post lays out twenty concrete reasons — economic, ecological, public-health, and security — to rebuild a food system at human scale.

How consolidated the food system has become

For the past several decades, the food industry has experienced significant consolidation. This is especially true with the meat processing sector. According to the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service, about 85% of all fed cattle are purchased and processed by the largest four beef packers in the U.S. That leaves only 15% of the fed cattle supply available for smaller processors located across the country. Similar consolidation has occurred in many other facets of the food industry.

This consolidation has led to the deterioration of many local economies and the subsequent decline of communities and towns surrounding the rural areas. Consolidation has not been good to the folks living in rural areas and simply creates greater disparity and issues related to financial health, mental health, and physical health.

Recent vulnerability events

COVID exposed many of the issues related to consolidation of the food chain and created issues with supply chain management, ability to process food, and pricing disparities between live, harvest-ready animals and retail prices at the grocery store. A cyber attack on the world’s largest meat processing company, JBS, further exposed vulnerabilities in food processing consolidation. The company reportedly paid $11 million to the hackers just to get their plants back online.

It is time to start moving back towards a more de-centralized food system and putting more responsibility, and opportunity, into the hands of local and regional agriculture. In that regard, I would like to pose 20 reasons why a move back to a more locally oriented agriculture is favorable:

Economic reasons

Local economies thrive when dollars stay in the community rather than flowing to distant corporate headquarters.
Small farms and processors create more jobs per dollar of revenue than industrial operations.
Rural communities rebuild when there are working farms and processors to anchor them.
Farmers capture more of the food dollar when they sell directly to consumers, rather than splitting it with packers, distributors, and retailers.
Price stability improves when supply chains are short and resilient.

Food quality and safety reasons

Food is fresher when it travels shorter distances.
Nutritional density is higher in food from regenerative farms than from industrial operations.
Contamination risks drop when one processor isn’t handling product from thousands of operations.
Recalls stay smaller when supply chains are local.
You can ask the farmer what was used, how it was raised, and when it was harvested.

Ecological and stewardship reasons

Carbon footprint shrinks when food travels less and is produced regeneratively.
Soil health improves on local regenerative farms vs. extractive industrial ones.
Biodiversity rebuilds on diversified pasture and small mixed-crop operations.
Water quality improves downstream of regenerative farms.
Land stewardship is generational on family farms in a way it can’t be on industrial ones.

Resilience and security reasons

Supply chains are shorter and faster to recover from disruption.
National-security exposure drops when no single processor controls a fifth of capacity.
Pandemic-style disruptions absorb more easily into a decentralized network.
Cyber-attack consequences shrink when there are thousands of operators instead of four.
Communities can feed themselves when transport, energy, or financial systems are stressed.

The larger stewardship frame

These are my “Top 20 Reasons” for moving back towards a more local and regional agriculture and food system. There are many other reasons as well, but just these are enough to provide a compelling argument for change.

If I may, I will also mention that scripture itself, if we really dig into it, advocates local agriculture that encourages sound stewardship. I examined what the scriptures tell us about our roles as Earth’s caretakers in the webinar “Biblical Stewardship.” I hope you can find the time to watch it.

FAQ

Why is the U.S. food system so consolidated?: Decades of regulatory and economic policy favored large-scale operations over small ones — preferential subsidies, USDA inspection rules that favored industrial processors, antitrust enforcement that allowed major mergers. The result, in beef alone, is that four packers now control roughly 85% of fed-cattle processing. Similar concentration exists in poultry, pork, dairy, and grain.
Did the COVID pandemic really expose food-system fragility?: Yes — visibly. Cattle finished and ready for harvest got backed up because processing plants closed; meanwhile, retail beef prices spiked. The disconnect between live-animal prices (which collapsed) and retail prices (which surged) was a direct symptom of consolidation. Smaller, local plants would have absorbed the disruption far better.
What was the 2021 JBS cyberattack?: JBS — the world’s largest meat processor — was hit by a ransomware attack that briefly shut down its U.S. plants in 2021. The company paid roughly $11 million to the attackers to restore operations. Because JBS controls so much of U.S. meatpacking capacity, the brief shutdown rippled through the supply chain. It’s the clearest single illustration of why consolidation is a national-security concern.
Is “buying local” enough to fix any of this?: It’s a necessary part — but only part. Local-and-regional consumer demand creates economic viability for small farms and processors, which is the foundation. The other pieces are regulatory reform (fairer USDA inspection rules for small processors), antitrust enforcement, and investment in regional infrastructure. Buying local is the lever consumers actually control.
Where can I find local farms near me?: Etta Hills Farm in Etta, Mississippi is one. Beyond us: directories like EatWild, Local Harvest, the American Grassfed Association, and the Real Organic Project list verified regenerative and pasture-based farms across the country. The cleanest test, as always, is whether you can visit the farm and ask questions.

85% of all fed cattle are purchased and processed by the largest four beef packers in the U.S. That leaves only 15% of the fed cattle supply available for smaller processors located across the country.
Dr. Allen R. Williams, Ph.D.

The bottom line

Four companies process 85% of America's fed cattle. Similar concentration exists in poultry, pork, dairy, and grain.
The consolidation is a structural risk — economically, ecologically, and as a national-security exposure.
The fix is decentralization. Local farms, regional processors, shorter supply chains, more operators.
The lever consumers control is where they spend. Buying local creates the demand that funds the rebuild.