Imagine the outrage if people learned the markup that distributors make on vegetables and dairy as well as the monopsony power they wield against small farmers!
I don’t know how it is in the Land of the Free, but in Europe most margins on food are in the single digits all the way down. It’s true that small producers are squeezed at both ends, but at least there are market dynamics in place - if one supermarket chain takes too much, you go and sell to the other one, and the consumer can get it anyway.
Double-digit and triple-digit margins are the reason the software world is now dominating the economy. Most other sectors can only dream of that.
There are few intermediaries and they get to dictate prices, mandatory discounts, and run double-discounted auctions (which the legislature is trying to make illegal.) If you get to outsmart them selling to another distributor (as if they’re not conniving already) good luck selling your next load of perishable goods before it rots.
Also brick & mortar shops make hideous markups to cover for their poor selection, inventory and commercial space rent (so sure, it doesn’t line only their pockets but for the final consumer it doesn’t make much difference.)
Distributors make a pittance for a relatively risky bet on delivering fruit and veggies. Margins are usually below 10%, often close to 5%, and definitely nowhere near 30%. On top of that, there's the added risk of damage happening to the goods in transit and storage, voiding the entire profit. Google and Apple make money by sitting on their asses and taking a slice off a developer's cheque, which is more akin to a usurious mafia slumlord rather than a tech company. Small farmers are on the short end of a stick, but only because by nature small landholdings are not profitable, and farming is a scale operation for production of a commoditized good by nature. App development is not a scale operation - a developer can be easily profitable with a small group of high-paying customers.
Apologies for the Italian links but that’s all I could find for now:
https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2020/05/14/frutta-e-verdura...
Folks, Apple has many faults and they’re certainly leaning on their position but don’t undermine your arguments with outrage comments
Access to consumer markets is either via a looooong chain of small, inefficient and parasitic intermediaries or via the GDO, the logistics organizations of these few supermarket chains.
So the farmers are squeezed, they fall in debt and go bankrupt, or sell out to big landlords; and both tend to employ illegal immigrants under inhuman working conditions to meet the prices set by the aforementioned.