OnEarth • Feb. 29, 2012
Every year, Americans drop a cool $1.2 trillion on feeding their appetites. That’s a lot of Big Macs and stuffed-to-groaning shopping carts — and billions of dollars in profits for the handful of companies that dominate our food system.
Planting, harvesting, processing, displaying, and cooking that vast hoard of grub, of course, requires veritable armies of workers. Keeping it cheap and plentiful for consumers, while also profitable for the food industry, means those workers generally get paid very little.
