Federal Trade Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya, right, speaks with Iowa Farmers Union President Aaron Lehman, center, and Josh Manske, left, at an event with IFU members in Ankeny June 7, 2025. (Photo by Cami Koons/Iowa Capital Dispatch)
ANKENY — Iowa Farmers Union members met Saturday with U.S. Federal Trade Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya and explained how consolidation in the agriculture industry has crippled their farming operations and rural communities.
Bedoya, who visited with Iowa farmers three years prior, said it was important to come back to the places where “the scope of the problems that people are facing just hits you in the face.”
“The key question is: what is the undone work,” Bedoya said to the group gathered in a barn at Griffieon Farms outside of Ankeny.
Bedoya is visiting with groups around the country while he is involved in a lawsuit against the Trump administration, which fired him from the FTC in March.
During his time at FTC, Bedoya and his team sued over the business merger between grocery giants Kroger and Albertsons, sued pesticide companies for alleged anticompetitive practices and sued John Deere for the right to repair equipment.
After listening to farmers share their stories, Bedoya said “the scope of the problem” and the “just how many issues” are facing Iowa farmers is what stood out to him.
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Sean Dengler, a former farmer in Tama County, said the “monopolization” across the machinery and agricultural sector led him to give it up and end five generations of Dengler farming tradition.
Last harvest season, an error code on his combine led to a several-days harvest delay waiting for a licensed technician to come out to the farm, diagnose and come back to repair the rig.
“Giving farmers the ability to fix the equipment they bought is their right,” Dengler said.
Part of the problem, for repairs and for nearly every aspect related to farming, is that repair shops, dealers, grain elevators, meat lockers and other commodities are fewer and further between. Farmers gave countless examples Saturday of how this spread has hurt not just their ag operations, but their rural communities as well.
Josh Manske, an IFU board member and farmer, said farmers no longer shop around for the best fertilizer price, instead they shop “for transportation.”
“The price is the same no matter where you go,” Manske said, noting the problems with a lack of competition.
LaVon Griffieon said she sees the same issue spread to grocery stores across the state. Living where she does just outside of Ankeny, Griffieon said she has access to multiple stores within a 5-10 minute drive, but friends of hers in rural counties must drive in excess of 20 minutes to the closest grocery store, and close to an hour to find a store with organic products.
“It seems like feast or famine,” Griffieon said.
Griffieon said the consolidation in the grocery industry makes the margins for an independent grocer are “even worse than farming.”
Jerry Rosman, a farmer and truck driver, said he sees the same issue in the field, but also on the highway.
“The dynamics of what it is might be a little different, but it’s just — as things get tighter at the top, at the bottom they just start disappearing,” Rosman said. “Pull through a little town and you can just see the decline.”
Mike Carberry, a board member for Iowa Farmers Union, said agriculture needs the FTC’s work “breaking up the monopolies” of the industry that, he said, have turned Iowa into an “extractive state.”
Bedoya, who listened intently to the farmers, said while he’s committed to bringing this type of legal action forward, stopping a merger, as the FTC did with the Kroger and Albertsons case, takes a massive amount of time, people and money.
“The amount of time it takes to stop a merger that has not yet happened is massive,” Bedoya said. “To undo a merger that has already happened is gargantuan — it is something that kind of happens once in a legal generation.”
Bedoya said a similar issue of vertical integration in the pharmaceutical industry has been blocked by legislative efforts in several states. Lawmakers in Iowa passed a bill that would put restrictions on pharmacy benefit managers to prevent them from using specific pharmacies to fill prescriptions. The bill has yet to be signed by Gov. Kim Reynolds.
Bedoya, speaking on similar legislation passed in Arkansas, said it “opened up” an avenue for going after vertical integration, that could be an option to intervene in some of the consolidation issues in agriculture.
“This is going to require both parties, and it’s going to require every level of government or every branch, not just, federal prosecutors, but state prosecutors, state legislators, and also federal legislators if they get their act together and pass some bills,” Bedoya said.
Bedoya’s fight
Bedoya and the other Democratic commissioner, Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, at the FTC were fired by President Donald Trump, but Bedoya alleges the firing was illegal and is fighting in court to stay at FTC.
Bedoya said while he might be locked out of the FTC system and without access to his files, he’s still doing the work of a commissioner and speaking with rideshare workers, pharmacists, farmers and more to learn about the issues they are facing.
“But no matter what, I will continue doing this work, whether it’s at FTC or in a nonprofit,” Bedoya said.
In his view, the FTC has started to take up cases that trend more towards political battles, than protecting American consumers.
“The FTC is not for fighting your political fights,” Bedoya said. “It’s for suing the John Deeres of the world. It’s for suing the Cortevas and Syngentas of the world that are screwing over farmers and that are making people’s lives harder. It’s not for political warfare.”