Graph Theory on Food Monopolies
Graph theory is the study of graphs and the relationships between each node in a network. When learning about the different kinds of relationships, properties, and theorems on graph theory in class, I was excited to do a blog post analyzing a graph that I have seen many times: the USA food monopoly graph.
This graph is directly from the article:
Although this graph is from 2017, I do not imagine much has changed. We can see that at the center of this network (the companies who own the most companies) is Nestle, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Unilever, Danone, General Mills, Kellogg’s, Mars, Associated British Foods, and Mondelez. The Guardian recently did a study on this topic and found “four firms or fewer controlled at least 50% of the market for 79% of the groceries. For almost a third of shopping items, the top firms controlled at least 75% of the market share.”
Analyzing this network is important for us (consumers) because as more companies get bought out by the bigger companies, prices continue to increase. Looking at this network, this network is mostly balanced. Although there is competition between the major companies, they each dominate a particular food market and therefore the network’s power structure remains relatively balanced. According to The Guardian, this tight-knit monopoly makes it impossible for new, independent food companies to compete. Usually, they end up being bought by a bigger company (following the rules of Structural Balance Theorem, stating a new node must enter a set in order for the network to remain balanced) or the company dies out. The smaller companies owned by a bigger company have positive relationship with each other within their set and negative relationships with their competition. Since this network demonstrates who owns who, local bridges are not possible (because that would mean some companies own each other) and the companies separate neatly into several large components. Usually, several large components are rare in networks, but this monopoly relationship calls for this natural separation. This phenomenon in common in capitalist America: most companies are just bought by and owned by bigger companies.
This topic relates to the Graph Theory Lecture we covered in class. Many of the properties seen above were discussed in class. A more through analysis is required for these networks, but we can already see their negative effects without further analysis. I hope that in the future, we could get more research papers analyzing the monopoly network in the United States. The structure and edges of this network’s data could reveal many interesting things in the future. A solution for a more diverse, independent network could lie within the structure of this network.
Sources:
– https://www.businessinsider.com/companies-control-everything-we-buy-2017-8
– https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2021/jul/14/food-monopoly-meals-profits-data-investigation