Austin Frerick | BARONS | An evening of conversation with Benji Nichols

Who: Austin Frerick & Benji Nichols
What: An event celebrating Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry
Where: Pulpit Rock Brewery
When: Tuesday 9/24, 7:00pm

Join 7th generation Iowan and author Austin Frerick, author of Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry, for an event on Tuesday, September 24th at 7:00 pm in the Pulpit Rock Brewing events room. Frerick will be in conversation with Benji Nichols, co-founder of Inspire(d) magazine and host of the Rhymes with Decorah podcast, followed by a book signing.

Austin is an expert on agricultural and antitrust policy. During the 2020 presidential campaign, he advised candidates Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Pete Buttigieg on agricultural policy before ultimately serving as Co-Chair of the Biden campaign’s Agriculture Antitrust Policy Committee. He is a Fellow of the Thurman Arnold Project at Yale University, an initiative that brings together faculty, students, and scholars to collaborate on research related to competition policy and antitrust enforcement. He also serves on the Board of Directors for Common Good Iowa and the Socially Responsible Agriculture Project. In 2022, The Advocate named him a “Champion of Pride.”

Barons is the story of seven titans of the food industry, their rise to power, and the consequences for workers, eaters, and democracy itself. Readers will meet a secretive German family that took over the global coffee industry in less than a decade, relying on wealth traced back to the Nazis to gobble up countless independent roasters. They will visit the Disneyland of agriculture, where school children ride trams through mechanized warehouses filled with tens of thousands of cows that never see the light of day. And they will learn that in the food business, crime really does pay—especially when you can bribe and then double-cross the president of Brazil. Barons paints a stark portrait of corporate consolidation, but it also shows that a fair, healthy, and prosperous food industry is possible—if we take back power from the barons who have robbed us of it.

This event is part of Dragonfly Books and the Oneota Valley Literary Foundation’s robust author event series, which brings top-notch writers of all genres to Northeast Iowa to lead in conversations about literature and writing.

If you find that you can’t make it to the event but would still like to purchase any books from this author talk, give Dragonfly Books a call at 563-382-4275. Our staff will be glad to reserve a book, have it autographed for you, and shipped out as needed.