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Tyson to halt some meatpacking; economic assault on family farmers; other news (Sunday, Jan. 9, 2005 -- CropChoice news) -- Below are five items dealing with agricultural issues 1. Tyson to halt some meatpacking 1. Tyson to halt some meatpacking Billings Gazette, 01/08/05 OMAHA, Neb. - Tyson Foods Inc. will close three of its Midlands meatpacking
plants for three to five weeks, starting Monday, the company announced
Thursday. The plants in Norfolk and West Point, Neb., and Denison, Iowa, employ a
total of 1,450 workers. Tyson said "unfavorable beef operating margins'' prompted the decision.
Other meatpackers also have reduced production in recent months, including
National Beef Packing Co., which announced production cuts of up to 23
percent Thursday. "This isn't unique to Tyson, it isn't unique to National,'' said Bill
Helming, a cattle industry consultant in Olathe, Kan. "They just happen to
be the ones who've made the moves so far.'' He said similar production cuts at other beef packers are possible in coming
months. In addition to the Midlands plants, Tyson also will suspend production in
Boise, Idaho, and reduce production in Pasco, Wash. Workers affected by the shutdowns will be paid for the equivalent of 32
hours a week for the second and subsequent weeks of their furlough, Tyson
said. The company encouraged workers to use paid vacation time for the first
week, when they will not be paid. Managers and maintenance workers will
continue to work through the shutdown. The president of the local United Food and Commerical Workers Union said she
plans to meet with Norfolk plant managers to assess the situation. The other
two plants are not unionized. The plant shutdowns will reduce Tyson's weekly slaughter by 25,000 to 30,000
cattle, compared with December levels, the company said. National Beef Packing Co. will reduce its slaughter by 10,000 to 15,000 head
of cattle per week at its two plants in Kansas, the company said Thursday. Graeme Goodsir, a meat industry consultant in Mechanicsburg, Pa., estimated
that beef packers have been losing as much as $50 on every animal they kill
because of the high cattle prices. Some packers have tried to raise beef
prices to return to profitability, Goodsir said, but found that supermarkets
and other buyers could easily substitute other meats, especially chicken. "They cannot get higher prices from consumers,'' he said. Jim Schaben Jr., one of the owners of the Dunlap (Iowa) Livestock Auction,
said the closings would affect cattle prices in both the region and
nationally. Schaben said he believes Tyson's goal in temporarily closing the plants is
to bring down cattle prices. The company still will pay a significant amount
for wages and to sustain utilities, he said. "It's bound to have a negative impact on the prices,'' Schaben said. "The
ultimate result of this is to drive the prices down.'' The absence of Canadian cattle on the U.S. market has raised cattle prices
over the past year and a half. Canadian cattle imports were cut off in May
2003, after mad cow disease was found in that country. The U.S. Department
of Agriculture announced last week that it intends to resume Canadian cattle
imports in March. Meatpackers have been squeezed by the high cattle prices, a loss of export
markets after the U.S. found its own case of mad cow disease in December
2004, and a recent weakening of demand for beef attributed to the flagging
popularity of high-protein diets. Japan, the largest importer of U.S. beef before the mad cow discovery, said
in October that it would resume imports, but its import ban has not yet been
lifted. Tyson said in a statement that its plants recently have been running at 75
percent of capacity, compared with the historical norm of 85 percent to 90
percent. Other beef packers also have felt the pinch. Excel Corp. and Swift & Co.,
the second- and third-largest beef companies, have both periodically closed
their plants for a day at a time over the past year to reduce production. Swift announced in October that it would furlough 800 of its Colorado
workers and change some of its production there from cattle slaughter to
meat processing. Source: http://www.billingsgazette.com/index.php?id=1&display=rednews/2005/01/08/build/business/52-tyson.inc Note: In a discussion with John Tyson, CEO, Tyson Foods, I explained the class
action lawsuit against IBP. I explained to him that the lawsuit, if
successful, could cost his company more than IBP's total market
capitalization. He very indignantly responded, "You should be suing Wal-Mart
[instead of IBP], they are the problem. They tell us what they will pay and
we have no choice but to pay you less." -- Mike Callicrate 2. Arrogant USDA: 'Let 'em eat Canadian' Editorial Once again, the U.S. Department of Agriculture causes one to wonder for whom
it is working. It can't be for U.S. cattlemen and U.S. consumers. Undeterred by a new case of Canadian mad cow, the USDA is sticking with its
decision to reopen our border to Canadian beef March 7. The only
justification is that the Switzerland-based World Health Organization says
that Canada is allowed 11 cases of mad cow a year before it would be
considered more than a "minimum risk." Somebody should tell that to the 50 countries who still lock out U.S. beef
on the basis of our single case of mad cow -- and that of Canadian origin --
in December 2003. That's one objection to readmitting Canadian beef. Why should Canadian
beef -- the source of our own export problem -- be let back in to dilute
U.S. prices when we are still out of luck in Japan and other important
markets? To do a favor to U.S. meatpackers, who think a decent price for producers
looks better in their own pocket? (Don't expect any savings to be passed on
to the consumer.) As a quid pro quo for favorable Canadian treatment of some
other Republican campaign contributor? (President Bush and Prime Minister
Paul Martin had a lot of private conversations during the president's recent
visit to Canada.) And will renewed commingling of our national herds work for us or against us
in recovering our export markets? This is just the economic angle. The other is consumer safety -- and
consumer confidence. By its timing, the USDA acts contemptuous of both. Sure, everybody knows the
health risk to consumers is minimal to the vanishing point. But that doesn't
salvage a drug like Aleve for the Food and Drug Administration or even
peanut butter for the school-lunch program (and the USDA itself). America is the country in which the government has undertaken to maintain
100 percent safety for 100 percent of its citizens 100 percent of the time
as practically a constitutional right -- except, it seems, when it comes to
mad cow. The USDA -- the administration -- could at least pay us the respect of a
plausible-sounding fabrication. Instead, it's just, "Let 'em eat Canadian
beef." And it won't even give us country-of-origin labeling so we know it
when we see it. Again, whomever the USDA is working for, it's not U.S. cattlemen and U.S.
consumers. 3. Survival of the Biggest: Supermarket Giants Crush Central American Farmers By CELIA W. DUGGER, NY Times, December 28, 2004 PALENCIA, Guatemala - Mario Chinchilla, his face shaded by
a battered straw hat, worriedly surveyed his field of
sickly tomatoes. His hands and jeans were caked with dirt,
but no amount of labor would ever turn his puny crop into
the plump, unblemished produce the country's main
supermarket chain displays in its big stores. For a time, the farmer's cooperative he heads managed to
sell vegetables to the chain, part owned by the giant Dutch
multinational, Ahold, which counts Stop & Shop among its
assets. But the co-op's members lacked the expertise, as
well as the money to invest in the modern greenhouses, drip
irrigation and pest control that would have helped them
meet supermarket specifications. Squatting next to his field, Mr. Chinchilla's rugged face
was a portrait of defeat. "They wanted consistent supply
without ups and downs," he said, scratching the soil with a
stick. "We didn't have the capacity to do it." Across Latin America, supermarket chains partly or wholly
owned by global corporate goliaths like Ahold, Wal-Mart and
Carrefour have revolutionized food distribution in the
short span of a decade and have now begun to transform food
growing, too. The megastores are popular with customers for their lower
prices, choice and convenience. But their sudden appearance
has brought unanticipated and daunting challenges to
millions of struggling, small farmers. The stark danger is that increasing numbers of them will go
bust and join streams of desperate migrants to America and
the urban slums of their own countries. Their declining
fortunes, economists and agronomists fear, could worsen
inequality in a region where the gap between rich and poor
already yawns cavernously and the concentration of land in
the hands of an elite has historically fueled cycles of
rebellion and violent repression. "It's like being on a train with a glass on a table and
it's about to fall off and break," said Prof. Thomas
Reardon, an agricultural economist at Michigan State
University. "Everyone sees the glass on the table - but do
they see it shaking? Do they see the edge? The edge is the
structural changes in the market." In the 1990's supermarkets went from controlling 10 to 20
percent of the market in the region to dominating it, a
transition that took 50 years in the United States,
according to researchers at Michigan State and the Latin
American Center for Rural Development in Santiago, Chile. Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica and Mexico are
furthest along. While the changes have happened more slowly
in poorer, more rural Central American countries, they have
begun to quicken here, too. In Guatemala, the number of
supermarkets has more than doubled in the past decade, as
the share of food they retail has reached 35 percent. The hope that small farmers would benefit by banding
together in business-minded associations has not been borne
out. Some like Aj Ticonel, in the city of Chimaltenango,
have succeeded. But the evidence suggests that the failure
of Mr. Chinchilla's co-op is the more common fate. Its feeble attempts to sell to major supermarkets
illustrate how the odds are stacked against small farmers,
as well as the uneven effects of globalization itself. Many
small farmers in the region are getting left behind, while
medium-sized and larger growers, with more money and
marketing savvy, are far more likely to benefit. Most fruits and vegetables in the region are still sold in
small shops and open-air markets, but the value of
supermarket purchases from farmers has soared and now
surpasses that of produce exports by two and half times,
researchers say. The bottom line: supermarkets and their privately set
standards already loom larger for many farmers than the
rules of the World Trade Organization. Still, stiff competition from foreign growers is also quite
real. To enter the supermarkets of Guatemala's dominant
supermarket chain, La Fragua - part of a holding company
one-third owned by Ahold - is to understand why Professor
Reardon likens them to a Trojan horse for foreign goods. At La Fragua's immense distribution center in Guatemala
City, trucks back into loading docks, where electric
forklifts unload apples from Washington State, pineapples
from Chile, potatoes from Idaho and avocados from Mexico. The produce is trucked from here to the chain's
supermarkets, which now span the country. Scenes at a mall
in Guatemala City anchored by Maxi Bodega, one of the
company's stores, suggest the evolving nature of grocery
shopping for Latin America's 512 million people. On the ground floor was a sprawling, old-fashioned produce
market. At the entry, there was a shrine to its patron
saint, the Virgin of Rosario, who had plastic flowers
sprinkled at her queenly feet. The sound of women patting out tortillas and the sweet
smells of ripe tropical fruits drifted through the market
as people stopped to squeeze the avocados, sniff the
pineapples and haggle for cheaper oranges. To go upstairs was to leave Guatemala behind and enter a
mall that could be in Bangkok or New York, with its
synthetic Christmas wreaths, cheap clothing stores and
oversized discount packages of napkins and symmetrical
tomatoes in plastic trays at the Maxi Bodega. The Baldetti family exemplified the generational change
unfolding here. Delia Baldetti, an 81-year-old housewife, will only shop
for produce amid the heaps of tomatoes, chilies and papayas
where she can bargain to her heart's content. Her daughter
Elsa, a 56-year-old painter, shops both here and at Maxi
Bodega, while Elsa's daughter, a 36-year-old business
administrator, only has time for the supermarket. Elsa wistfully predicted that while the country's fragrant,
raucous markets will never disappear, they will diminish.
"We'll lose some of our identity," she said. "We're copying
the foreigners." Farmers who do not or cannot afford to change fast enough
to meet the standards set by supermarkets are threatened. The tiny farming community of Lo de Silva clings to a
steep, verdant hillside. Slanting cornstalks look as if
they would slide into the valley if they were not rooted to
the earth. Some of the more than 300 farmers who originally belonged
to Mr. Chinchilla's co-op, the Association of Small
Irrigation Users of Palencia - known by its Spanish
acronym, Asumpal - were from this village. Only eight
remain. The only product they still sell is salad tomatoes
- and they sell to middlemen, not supermarkets. JosÈ Luis PÈrez Escobar, 44, a member of the co-op,
scratched out a living for 20 years from his small field,
perched in the clouds here. But after his potato crop failed last year, he migrated to
the United States to save his land from foreclosure by the
bank, leaving his wife, MarÌa Graciela Lorenzana, and their
five children behind. He now works the graveyard shift at a
golf course in Texas for $6 an hour so he can pay his
debts. He had dreamed his cooperative would help him escape
poverty by selling directly to the supermarkets. "It would
be magnificent," Mrs. Lorenzana recalled of that more
hopeful time. "The small farmer would not need a middleman.
But he was never able to achieve it." A Transformation Begins The transformation of Latin America's food retailing system began in the 1980's and
accelerated in the 1990's as countries opened their
economies, often to satisfy conditions for loans from the
International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. As foreign
investment flooded in, multinational retailers bought up
domestic chains or entered joint ventures with them. Most concern about the perils of globalization for local
farmers has focused on unfair trade competition from
heavily subsidized American and European producers. But increasingly, supermarkets also leave small farmers
exposed as the stores spread from big cities to small
towns, from well-to-do enclaves to working-class
neighborhoods, from richer countries to poorer ones. The chains now dominate sales of processed foods and their
share of produce sales is growing. In Guatemala,
supermarkets still control only 10 to 15 percent of fruit
and vegetable sales. But in Argentina, their slice has
grown to as much as 30 percent, while in Brazil they
control half the market, according to Professor Reardon. As the chains' market share expands, farmers who are shut
out find themselves forced to retreat to shrinking rural
markets. The changes would not be so troubling if the region's
economies were growing robustly and generating decent jobs
for globalization's losers. After all, supermarkets are
providing consumers with cheaper, cleaner places to buy
food, economists say. "It would be an appealing transformation of the sector if
alternative jobs could be made available," said Samuel
Morley, an economist at the International Food Policy
Research Institute in Washington. But economic growth has not kept pace with rising
populations. The number of people living below poverty
lines in Latin America has risen from 200 million in 1990
to 224 million this year. More than 6 in 10 people living
in rural areas are still poor. Given the difficulties small farmers face in doing business
with multinational corporations, traditional strategies,
like providing peasants with fertilizer and improved seeds,
now seem quaint here. Professor Reardon and Julio A. BerdeguÈ, an agronomist who
heads the Latin American Center for Rural Development, are
collaborating with supermarket researchers across Asia and
Africa, as well as Latin America, to document the trends. In addition, a team at Michigan State has financing from
the United States Agency for International Development to
help small farmers in Central America, India and Kenya sell
to supermarkets. They and other development experts are
brainstorming about what to do. Among the ideas: Regulations requiring that farmers be paid
promptly. Enforcement of laws meant to curtail monopolies
and oligopolies, including mergers of supermarket chains.
Improved security and cleanliness at open-air markets.
Infusions of credit and technical expertise for co-ops. But while such cooperatives are almost certainly necessary
if small growers are to amass the clout and scale to sell
to multinational chains, they have been a disappointment so
far. Even in economically vibrant Chile, which has invested $1.5
billion in small-scale farming since 1990, a study of 750
farmer organizations found that 8 of 10 had failed or
survived only with continuous infusions of government aid. Mr. BerdeguÈ, author of the Chile study, had sought to
make the associations work in the 1990's when he was a
senior government official there. The pressure from the
I.M.F. and the World Bank to allow greater foreign
investment was intended to make Latin American economies
more competitive. "But the model did not have a social dimension at the real
center," he said. "It was trickle-down economics." An Experiment Disappoints Mr. Chinchilla, 46, drove his
battered, 20-year-old pickup, laden with crates of
tomatoes, into his cooperative's spacious packing shed. The
building and the business are in decay. The water had been cut off. Toilets no longer flushed. The
roof was missing over the bathroom, its floor covered with
bird droppings. The live-in caretakers who sort the co-op's
tomatoes had only an open pail of rainwater to wash their
hands. They wore no gloves while handling the fruit. Typically, each farmer is growing less than an acre of
salad tomatoes in rustic greenhouses that are fast
deteriorating. Their production has plummeted because of
the blight that dries out the plants, which then yield very
small tomatoes. "We haven't found a solution," MarÌa Antonietta Muralles, a
co-op member, said with a shrug. "Maybe it's the water." Mr. Chinchilla treated his plants with pesticides to no
effect. "You can't fight it with chemicals," he said. Maybe
the soil itself is infected, they speculated. "Everything costs money," he explained - money he does not
have and cannot afford to borrow at the going rate of 21
percent. "When you don't have access to credit, you can't
expand," he said. "We don't want anything given to us, but
we need a hand." As the farmers talked, two workers separated tomatoes by
size, with the shrunken ones far too numerous. But their
co-op's hopes of selling to big supermarket chains withered
well before the plants. The co-op got started in the late
1990's, with a small grant from the government to upgrade
the packing shed. An agronomist, Candelario LÛpez, was
given a two-year contract, also at government expense, to
advise them. Over the next couple of years, Mr. LÛpez helped the co-op
get its foot in the door with La Fragua and C.S.U., another
major supermarket chain. The chains have since united to
become the Central American Retail Holding Company, with
332 stores and almost $2 billion in sales in 2003. It is
one-third owned by Ahold, which had more than $68 billion
in sales last year. But the co-op did not manage to supply the big chains for
long. The farmers themselves were uncomfortable with the
rules of the supermarket game. They found it difficult to
wait weeks to get paid. They did not want to sell their
vegetables on the books and pay taxes that sharply cut
profits. And some of what they supplied was rejected as too
bruised or too limp or too ripe. The co-op's leaders said they quit selling to C.S.U.
through its dedicated wholesaler in 2000 after two
container loads of vegetables got held up for days at the
Nicaraguan border, severely damaging the produce. "We
weren't prepared to absorb that kind of loss," said Marco
Tulio Alvizures, who then headed the co-op. Perhaps more fundamental, co-op members had trouble
consistently delivering the quantity and quality of produce
the supermarkets demanded, a problem Mr. Chinchilla readily
acknowledged. In the case of La Fragua, Mr. Alvizures contended that the
chain never gave the co-op a chance to sell the amount it
was capable of. But Jorge Gonz·lez, the chain's manager for
vegetables, said the small orders likely reflected La
Fragua's judgment, based on weekly evaluations, that the
co-op was not up to the task. The co-op was such a small
supplier that Mr. Gonz·lez could not recall all the details
of their dealings. The corporate imperative is to reward suppliers who
consistently provide what the chain requires. If the
vegetables do not arrive, shelves stand empty. "We punish
farmers very hard if they don't deliver what we order,"
said Bernardo Roehrs, a spokesman for the chain. As the co-op members sought to navigate the difficult new
world of supermarkets, they lost the critical guidance of
Mr. LÛpez, the agronomist, when his contract expired in
2001. He is now a salesman for a company that makes
high-tech greenhouses the co-op's farmers could never
afford. A Rare Success Story Not too far from Palencia, in the city of Chimaltenango, is
Aj Ticonel, an association of small farmers that has
thrived because it has something Mr. Chinchilla's co-op
lacked: a shrewd and enterprising businessman to run it. But even for a savvy company like Aj Ticonel, success came
not from supplying choosy supermarket chains but rather
from its ability to exploit a global market. Aj Ticonel sells three million pounds of mini-vegetables
and snow peas for export to the United States, but only
80,000 pounds to supermarkets. Alberto Monterroso said he
gave up on growing broccoli for La Fragua. He found the
chain bought inconsistent amounts. "There are a lot of
competitors here," he said, "a lot of small farmers trying
to sell to them, so the prices are low." The company's success has been built instead on sales of
pricey vegetables for export. It now sells the same to La
Fragua, and its membership has risen from 40 families in
1999 to 2,000 today. Its plant sparkles. Its 53 packers wear gloves, face masks
and hairnets as they sort slender French beans on stainless
steel tables. Each box produce is marked with a bar code
traceable to the family that grew it. Aj Ticonel sold $2.5 million worth of vegetables last year,
but Mr. Monterroso, a sociologist and deal maker with a
passion for justice, paid himself only $18,000. Most of the
company's profits are plowed back into the plant, marketing
campaigns and agricultural education for the farmers. "I want a different country for my sons," Mr. Monterroso
said. "I'm trying to redistribute the wealth so people will
live in harmony." One recent afternoon, a big Aj Ticonel truck took a
meandering path into the hilly countryside, stopping for
peasants waiting roadside with crates of vegetables to
load. Many of them grumbled that Aj Ticonel does not pay enough
and rejects too many of their vegetables, but most had been
selling to the company for years. The evidence of their
profit could be seen in new roofs, freshly painted homes
and well-clothed children. Still, Mr. Monterroso acknowledged how hard it will be to
replicate Aj Ticonel. Three times, the company loaned money
to farmers to clone itself. Three times the farmers went
out of business. For Latin America's millions of small farmers, he offered
this sobering fact of life: "The client buys from us not
because poor people produce it, but because it's a good
product." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/28/international/americas/28guatemala.html?ex=1105278541&ei=1&en=94f68f97f7417a07
4. CAFTA No Benefit for North American and Central American Family Farmers by George Naylor, president of the National Family Farm Coaltion As the new U.S. Congress faces ratifying the Central American Free
Trade Agreement (CAFTA), it's not too late for citizens to voice their
objection that CAFTA, like earlier free trade agreements, will further
destroy our nation's sovereignty, in this case, food sovereignty. CAFTA
will be one more nail in the coffin of family farm agriculture, reliable
domestic production, and healthy rural economies. What might surprise
most folks is that, from what I've discovered on a recent tour of farms
in El Salvador, CAFTA spells DOOM for their farmers and hopes of rural
economic development, too. Our tour, sponsored by the National Family Farm Coalition, brought seven
farmers from Iowa, Michigan, Indiana, Montana, and Wisconsin, along with
two from the Mexican farmer movement La Gente No Aguanta Mas to share
experiences with Salvadoran farmers and government officials.
Ten years of farming under the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA) and eight years of U.S. free trade farm bills (Freedom to Farm
and the 2002 Farm Bill) provided examples of free trade outcomes that
don't recommend passage of CAFTA, the farmers of North America agreed. The U.S. farm bills allowed farm prices for basic commodities like corn,
soybeans, cotton, and wheat to fall without limit and only prevented a
farm economic train wreck by sending government payments to farmers in
the range of $15 to $20 billion a year. NAFTA delivered the incredibly
low prices for corn and cotton to Mexican farmers, but not the
government payments, creating unprecedented hardship in the Mexican
countryside. Cheap corn has encouraged corporate livestock factories
that displace family farm production on both sides of the border. Over
a million Mexican producers have been forced out of agriculture and it
is estimated that up to 600 poverty stricken peasants leave their
communities every day often headed to the United States to look for
work. Increased fruit and vegetable exports to the U.S. under NAFTA have
benefited only large producers: those under contract with big
corporations, who employ displaced peasants for only four dollars per
day, the Mexican farmers report. According to the Border Agricultural
Workers Center in El Paso, Texas, the impact in the U.S. is lower farm
prices and unemployed farm workers. Surprisingly, Salvadoran farmers, both large and small, told us that
they have "been there, done that." Trade concessions made by their
government through the years have already brought the curse of low farm
prices to their communities, and most were concerned that CAFTA would
only intensify their poverty and emigration to large cities and the
United States. Many farmer coops that were set up during land reforms
following their civil war have collapsed because of low farm prices and
their inability to satisfy the new international market demands of
corporate food processors and retailers. Headlines in the Salvadoran
newspapers cried of widespread crime and family tragedy fed by poverty
and emigration. Two million Salvadorans now live in the United States
and send dollars back to family members among the six million back home. The manager of a coffee cooperative, who had been educated at an Iowa
college, told how coffee, a big Salvadoran export, has been priced by
the "free market" at the New York Coffee Exchange since 1989 when the
United States withdrew from the International Coffee Agreement. Prices
dropped 50% at the time, but an even worse calamity lay ahead. Viet Nam
was encouraged to raise coffee and became the second largest exporter in
the world in recent years (Sound like Brazil and soybeans?). Coffee
prices dropped to 50 cents a pound in New York in 2000, which meant that
the coffee coop could only get one cent per pound! The U.S. Congress finally reacted in 2004 to the economic hardship in El
Salvador and other coffee-producing countries by rejoining the
International Coffee Organization. If a minimum coffee price and supply
management are re-established, coffee producers will have a chance to
survive. After visiting with the well informed and friendly farmers of El
Salvador, we North American farmers concluded that we want Congress to
support fair trade agreements that include minimum prices, international
supply management, and food sovereignty. We want Congress to reject free
trade agreements like CAFTA. George Naylor raises corn and soybeans near Churdan, Iowa. He is a
member of Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement and president of the
National Family Farm Coalition 515-370-3710 5. Family farm agriculture now reaping an agbiz engineered public perception and political backlash via The Agribusiness Examiner JOHN HANSEN, PRESIDENT, NEBRASKA FARMERS UNION: As this New York Times article (see above) clearly shows, family farm agriculture is now reaping the public perception and political backlash that the American Farm Bureau Federation, the National Corn Growers Association, National Soybean Growers, National Association of Wheat Growers, and the U.S. based grain traders set us up for and created in 1996. They transformed traditional farm programs from price supporting programs that forced the grain traders to pay up for grain commodities, which caused the cost of farm programs to be relatively low, and the majority of farm income to be realized through the cash market into income transfer programs that look, feel, and taste like welfare programs to most observers. The fact that the actual structure is a "make up allowance" of sorts for lost market place value lost is seldom if ever recognized. The common perception becomes the reality, which is the current structure of farm programs is politically indefensible and fiscally vulnerable, just as Farmers Union said it was in the 1996 Farm Bill battle. When we compare the 1996 value of the national production of six crops: Corn, Wheat, Soybeans, Grain Sorghum, Rice, and Cotton for the years 1997 through 2003, farmers were paid an average of $14.6 billion less for their crops. That amounts to $102.45 billion less money the raw material processors paid farmers for
their crops during the 1997-2003 period. So, who are the primary beneficiaries of the "farm subsidies"? Not the family farmers who lost more market place value than they got in income transfers--and produced most of their crops most years at below the USDA's Economic Research Service estimated cost of production. Not the consumers who did not pay proportionally less for the processed food products they bought. The food processors and food retailers are. They continue to steal raw material food production from farmers and ranchers for below full cost of production, with the help of our national farm and trade policy, which continues to be driven and supported by the food industry conglomerates with the political support of the very organizations that are supposed to be representing America's family farmers and ranchers. What is worse, the very same set of big agribusiness players and their political supporters are now positioned to use the growing federal deficit and the direction of WTO negotiations to further carry out their self serving economic agenda to reduce and eliminate domestic income supports which are now called "subsidies". The new Congress leadership and the White House both support this agenda. American farmers and ranchers are being fed to the U.S. based international corporate sharks by their own public officials, commodity organizations, and the American Farm Bureau Federation. Our traditional system of independent, farmer and rancher owned food and fiber production is being destroyed and dismantled in favor of the industrialized, top down corporate owned and controlled version of the failed former Soviet model. In the last election, rural voters, just as the low self esteem victims of prolonged domestic abuse often do, once again helped their own abusers further beat and humiliate them.[ December 28, 2004 ] | |
