Foodalism
by tristero
From Civil Eats comes a descriptions of what modern day industrial farming looks like to the farmer. It will come as no suprise that the people who are screwing farmers the most are the huge corporations who are dictating exactly what farmers can and can’t do:
[Carole Morison, former chicken farmer, now a consultant]: Agriculture has changed so much. Contracts are really at the forefront, not just with poultry, but with most all [industrial] farming. It’s a dictated policy as to how your farm is run, what you do, how you feed your chickens. For instance going out to buy feed from a source other than the company you contract with — that’s cause for violation of the contract. You have to take what they give you. It’s the same with everything. It’s like the coal mine and the company store, totally controlled. It really has nothing to do with the farmer’s performance anymore. It’s more or less the performance of the company’s inputs (the poults, or day-old chicks, the feed, medicine, etc). There are new proposed guidelines that the United Stated Department of Agriculture (USDA) is supposed to release. The hope is that this will level the playing field for contract farming. We’re currently working off the Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921.
[Twilight Greenaway]: So why would anyone enter the poultry business at this point?
CM: There’s this idea that if you get just bigger, it’ll get better. If you ever manage to pay off that debt — but you don’t pay it off because they don’t want you to. In our case, they kept demanding we make upgrades…
TG: What are your thoughts on the recent effort to position people who are proponents of sustainable food as “anti-farmer” because they oppose the methods of conventional farming?
CM: I’ve definitely noticed that and I’d say that’s probably the number one battle plan of industrial agriculture. It has been their way for a long time. Within the poultry industry they also pit farmer against worker; it’s divide and conquer. The fact is these big companies took the farmer out of the equation a long time ago. Now the farmer is trying to take back what was rightfully theirs to begin with. But I do understand the pride folks have, when they’ve put their whole life into this work. Nobody wants to admit that they’re wrong. But I don’t see [the sustainable food movement] as disrespect for the farmer. I view it more along the lines of people finally recognizing what the farmer is stuck in.
This is nothing new, of course. This is how the cotton plantations treated black farmers in the 20’s/30’s (if not earlier and later). The farmers are their own bosses in name only. Or rather, the farmers own the risk, the large corporations own everything else, including the profits. Especially the profits.
Foodalism.