Chains: Direct from Maker to Buyer

Every chapter so far traded waste sideways. This last proof chapter makes the other move: straight through. And it starts with the most quietly outrageous number in the book.

Of every dollar you spend on food in America, 11.8 cents reaches a farm.¹ Not profit. Revenue. The other 88 cents pay for everything between the field and your fork: processing, packaging, transport, wholesale, retail, marketing. Europe keeps the same shape; the Dutch competition authority finds, year after year, that margins are thinnest at the farmer. Coffee is crueller: about ten percent of the shelf price reaches the growing country at all. And clothing is crueller still: the wages of the person who sewed your shirt are roughly three percent of its price.² The maker (the one who grew it, brewed it, stitched it) has become the cheapest ingredient in their own product.