Food & Water Watch on Tuesday released an analysis of the U.S. dairy farming industry revealing how corporate consolidation and U.S. agriculture policy helped push small family farms out of business over the past two decades.

Food & Water Watch on Tuesday released an analysis of the U.S. dairy farming industry — the climate and food justice group’s third in-depth report on the economic costs of food monopolies — revealing how corporate consolidation has helped push small family farms out of business over the past two decades while worsening the climate emergency.

In “The Economic Cost of Food Monopolies: Dirty Dairy Racket,” Food & Water Watch explains how factors including the gutting of farm supply management policies and higher production costs have helped cause rapid consolidation in the dairy sector, with 70% of family-scale dairy farms shutting down between 1997 and 2007.

“Corporate consolidation is at the heart of our food system’s dysfunction,” said Rebecca Wolf, food policy analyst for Food & Water Watch.

“Corporate-directed policymaking is throwing America’s dairy industry into crisis. Family-scale dairies are collapsing at an alarming rate, and those that manage to hang on face rising costs, negative returns, and mounting debt, while consumers are sold an illusion of pastoral, sustainable milk products.”