The U.S. Is Becoming a Private Equity Hellscape. Can Anyone Save Us?

4 min readWe begin this week with talk of carrots. Did you know, for example, that one company controls 40 percent of the country's carrot market? And did you know that Grimmway Farms is not owned by farmers, but by a private equity company?The invaluable Private Equity Stakeholder Project has provided us with a report on the activities of Grimmway Farms—which, it turns out, is a properly Dickensian name for that operation. If you add Grimmway Farms’s share of the market to that of Bolthouse Farms, also owned by a PE firm, the percentage of the carrot market controlled by private equity rises to 80 percentage.Have you deduced by now that being a farmworker on a farming concern owned by a private equity company is a pretty lousy gig, even by American farmworker standards for lousiness, which are considerable?In September 2025, a federal judge ruled that Grimmway engaged in a pattern or practice of disability discrimination against farmworkers. According to the judge, injured workers were regularly pushed into a process that illegally denied them light duty or other accommodations, leaving many without income or forcing them to choose between returning without accommodations or losing their jobs altogether. According to the Sacramento Bee, “The company, which employs thousands in California’s Central Valley, has faced scrutiny over its labor practices in the past but has maintained that it complies with employment laws.” Just a month before this ruling, the U.S. Department of Labor announced that Grimmway was ordered to pay $427,456 in back wages and penalties after a separate investigation found that in Washington state, U.S. and H2A workers were underpaid and subjected to unsafe housing conditions and transportation, in violation of federal law.Since acquisition by Teays River, the company has been fined over $145,342 by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) over 19 violations, including seven categorized by OSHA as “serious.” About half of these violations have been contested, and those cases remain open as of August 2026. So, thousands of lives are controlled by some slicksters based in Indiana. One of those lives belonged to a woman named Rosa Sanchez, but it doesn't any more because she was killed at work.One of the most devastating deaths at Grimmway occurred In 2023, when Rosa Miriam Sanchez died in the fields after being run over by a truck twice. Sanchez was a 58 year-old immigrant from El Salvador who came to the United States hoping to provide a better life for her children. She was reported to have died in her daughters’ arms, who was also working in the same crew at Grimmway. A local news outlet reported at the time that, “Employees were permitted to perform work functions, such as harvesting operations in close proximity to a Commercial Truck being driven in an unsafe manner. ... Witnesses said they became further incensed when they were told to get back to work while Sanchez’s body lay in the field under a yellow covering while awaiting an ambulance.California Division of Occupational Safety and Health (CalOSHA) interviews with Grimmway workers inspected by PESP provide even more context than the original news coverage described. CalOSHA inspectors interviewed workers about the incident and the truck driver involved. Multiple employees and supervisors told CalOSHA inspectors that the driver of the truck had previously driven unsafely in the fields, hitting objects such as water jugs, farm equipment, and almost hitting workers. So, according to those interviews, it was only a matter of time with this driver. Grimmway later mounted a serious legal defense for their alleged supervisor. And did I mention that, back in 2024, Grimmway recalled carrots grown at one of their farms because they were believed to have contributed to an E. coli outbreak that sickened 48 people and killed one?Private equity has become a blight embedded in the American economy. It has many tentacles in many industries. Last weekend, Senator Professor Warren and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sponsored a bill aimed at preventing PE firms and other for-profit companies from owning and/or controlling medical practices.The bill comes as health-care consolidation has accelerated across the U.S. More than 82 percent of physicians were employed by hospitals or corporate entities as of January 2026, according to research from the Physicians Advocacy Institute and Avalere Health. Corporate entities include private equity firms, health insurers and other non-physician owners.The same research found that hospitals and corporate entities owned 63.9 percent of physician practices nationally as of January 2026, with corporate ownership accounting for 33.2 percent. The report also found that corporate entities acquired more than 52,000 physician practices between 2018 and 2026.The legislation targets one of the structures commonly used by corporate investors to navigate state restrictions on corporate ownership: management services organizations (MSOs). MSOs typically provide administrative services to physician practices, but lawmakers say some investor-backed arrangements have allowed MSOs to gain influence over decisions involving staffing, compensation, scheduling, billing, and other functions that can affect how doctors operate. The bill would prohibit an MSO from controlling a medical practice through so-called "friendly" or "captive" physician arrangements. It would also require physician owners to be meaningfully engaged in providing medical care in the state where their practice operates.You have to admire the ability of the American health-care industry to find new ways to blow goats. I wouldn't mind a similar bill busting up the carrot trusts. Call it the Rosa Sanchez Bill because they may have the carrots, but we have the sticks.