Nests in the Global Big Ag Network

• In Event: Environmental Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 11: Food Systems, Agriculture, and Rural Life

Abstract

Big Agriculture powerhouses are often perceived as self-contained giants, celebrated for their technological achievements and criticized for their role in pesticide production, environmental harm, and the consolidation of the global food supply. Yet each of these giants is composed of many other firms and people, woven together in a tangled web of subsidiaries, interfirm shareholding, and crossover leadership. We use social network analysis to analyze 6,874 firms and people connected to nine major agrochemical corporations and reveal clusters of ownership and leadership — what we call nests. These nests support critical agrarian scholars' efforts to identify and counter loci of concentrated economic power by providing a new network-attenuated approach.

Authors

• Loka L. Ashwood, University of Wisconsin-Madison

• Mohammad Khalilian, University of Kentucky

• Andrew Pilny, University of Kentucky