Big Agriculture takeover: How corporate food giants are rigging what’s on your plate
UN food chief warns corporate giants are seizing control of farms, prices and policies—driving small farmers out and pushing ultra-processed food onto Britain’s tables
It’s the food fight nobody in Westminster wants to talk about. A hard-hitting warning from the UN’s Right to Food chief, Michael Fakhri, exposes how a handful of mega-corporations now call the shots on everything from seeds and fertiliser to supermarkets and supply chains.
The tactics? Ruthless mergers. Lobbying muscle. Worker exploitation. And a stranglehold on prices that lets them hike your shopping bill far beyond actual costs—pocketing the difference while farmers go bust and families pay through the nose.
The death of the family farm
The country’s fields are emptying. Since 2005, over 30,000 English farms have vanished—a staggering one in five gone. Other numbers don’t look good. Dairy has been hit hardest: nearly 10,000 family-run dairies wiped out in less than 20 years. Cereal farms? Down by over 10,000. Potato farms? Shriveled by a third.
Behind every statistic is the same story. Farmers drowning in debt. Forced to buy bigger kit, build bigger barns, spray more chemicals—all while supermarkets squeeze them on price. Margins shrink, stress rises, and the only winners are corporate middlemen.
Green promises? More like greenwash
Ministers boast about “green farming” schemes like the Environmental Land Management Scheme and Sustainable Farming Incentive. Many farmers say it’s a joke. Payments are patchy, underfunded, and designed for those already big enough to take risks. Smallholders? Shut out again.
And when the big boys dominate policy, surprise surprise—they cash in on subsidies meant for sustainability while continuing business as usual.
The rise of factory food
This isn’t just about farms disappearing—it’s about what ends up on your plate. With small, local producers pushed out, Britain is sliding toward a farming system that churns out cheap, bulk crops destined for ultra-processed junk. Healthy, local, organic? Squeezed off the shelves.
What’s at stake
Keep this up and the countryside will look less like rolling fields and more like factory floors. Young farmers? Locked out unless they inherit land or win the lottery. Shoppers? Left with aisles of processed sludge marketed as “value”.
The fix isn’t rocket science: give new farmers real capital to start up, guarantee fair farm-gate prices, crack down on mergers that kill competition, and fund real regenerative farming, not token greenwash.
Because if the government keeps looking the other way, the only thing getting cheaper in your basket will be the food that wrecks your health, our climate, and the future of Britain’s countryside.