This is a French and Canadian film that looks at the re-engineered component of the food supply and specifically at the monopolistic seed conglomerate Monsanto the world leader in production of GMs or genetically modified crops (amusing how Goggle becomes part of the narrative and the investigation).http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6262083407501596844
Further reading:The Daily Plate According to Monsanto
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The R&D expenses for this industry are significant. Concentration is partly a consequence of the patenting of R&D, as it is in the pharmaceutical industry.
Monsanto is currently the target of antitrust complaints, and the focus of FTC/DOJ antitrust workshops recently completed in Iowa. For an alternative view on the effect of this concentration, see here:
http://www.truthonthemarket.com/2010/03/12/on-seed-industry-concentration-and-its-claimed-effects-dojusda-agworkshop/
My $0.02: Any R&D intensive industry is a long-game. If you take away the prize right after a hard fought battle to win it, then nobody is going to want to play. In that case, thousands of jobs and an immeasurable opportunity cost to innovation are lost for the sake of at most a few years of supra-competitive prices.