Obama to fight consolidation of farms: good news for small farms and consumers

Text and all photos by Sally Kneidel, PhD

I like Obama. Just like me, he's tired of Smithfield and Tyson and ConAgra and all those mega food corporations running the show and fouling our food.

I heard on NPR yesterday that, starting in 2010, the Justice and Agriculture departments will hold town meetings in farming communities throughout the country, to learn how corporations like Smithfield are buying up small farms and wreaking havoc in agricultural markets. Obama's Justice Department has said that scrutinizing monopolies in agriculture is a top priority. That is very good news!

Bush's attitude was very much the opposite - he favored consolidation. His "let's make a deal" mentality encouraged big corporations to absorb small livestock farms. A monopoly allows corporations to set whatever price they want for animal products in the grocery store. During the Bush administration, mergers were approved between Dean Co. and Suiza Corp. to create the nation's largest milk processor; between Smithfield Foods and Premium Standard Farms to create the largest hog processor; and between JBS and Smithfield Beef to make one of the nation's largest cattle feeders.

A sow in a farrowing crate at a farm with 40,000 hogs, under contract to Smithfield.
Photo by Sally Kneidel

A hog farm under contract to Smithfield. Veggie Revolution co-author Sadie on the left; owner on the right. Photo by Sally Kneidel

Since the 1980s, American agriculture has become increasingly concentrated. Today, less than 2 percent of farms account for half of all agricultural sales. That means a few ag companies are getting bigger and bigger, while smaller ones are disappearing. While Sadie and I were researching our book Veggie Revolution, we learned that North Carolina is losing 1000 farms a year to consolidation. Farmers told us that small farms go out of business because the corporations own most of the slaughterhouses, and the small farmer can't find anyone reliable to process his livestock. Or...he can't price his product as cheaply as the corporations can with their penny-shaving techniques that exploit laborers, livestock, and land.

We talked to hog farmers under contract to Smithfield who said they had tried to go independent, would prefer to be independent, but they couldn't find a facility to slaughter their hogs. Plus, they got threatening letters from the company telling them that they wouldn't be allowed to go independent. They weren't really sure what that threat meant.

We talked to Tyson farmers too who said they much preferred the old days when they weren't under contract to Tyson.

24,000 Tyson broilers crammed into each shed. Photo by Sally Kneidel

A. typical Tyson broiler shed, owned and paid for by the farmer, used by the profit-taking Tyson Corporation. Photo by Sally Kneidel

They told us that being under contract means taking a huge risk, because the farmer has to pay for the land and for each $200,000 animal shed, often mortgaging his family's property to do so. He needs at least five sheds to make enough money to support his family in even a meager manner. The corporation likes it that way. As long as the farmer owns the land and shed, any lawsuit filed because of a leak in the farm's animal-waste lagoon, or airborne ammonia sickening the neighbors, is filed against the farmer not the corporation. How convenient: the farmer takes the risk - the corporation reaps the profits. And if the corporation backs out of the contract, the farmer is wrecked financially, left to pay a million-dollar mortgage on 4 or 5 useless sheds.

We interviewed owners of small farms that sell eggs, and toured a Food Lion egg factory with 1.1 million hens, crammed into cages so small they had to have their beaks cut to keep them from pecking and eating each other. I don't generally eat eggs, but I hear that the eggs from small farms, where laying hens wander around outside all day eating bugs, have lots more nutrients and flavor. I could see that even the color of the yolk was richer.

One lone hen has escaped her tiny cage at a Food Lion egg factory with 1.1 million hens. Photo by Sally Kneidel

The Food Lion hens spend their lives in cages so small they can't stand up fully, much less preen their feathers or stretch. Photo by Sally Kneidel

Thank you Obama, for your willingness to look into this! We deserve wholesome food. Farmers deserve to make a living wage. As it is now, the corporate stockholders are making all the money.

Obama's plan to apparently support small farms and limit consolidation is giving hope to independent farmers, who have complained for years about having fewer and fewer options, and being forced to raise livestock as if they were milk, egg, sausage, and burger machines, rather than living beings that need space and fresh air.

During the upcoming farm-town hearings, the ag dept is likely to hear from people like Don Quamby, a hog farmer from Wellsville, Mo. Quamby was interviewed on the NPR piece I heard.

"With the hogs, it's gotten to be where you can't make any money anymore raising them, because the packers [like Smithfield] own everything," Quamby said.

He said he's deeply concerned about the death of independent hog farms.

"It used to be you had several different markets that you'd go to in our area, several different buyers," Quamby said. "Now we don't have that."

Asked why consumers should care about the change, Quamby said, "Well, because once the packer owns all the market, they can charge whatever price they want then at the consumer level, once the meat gets to the store."

"I've got grandsons — 10, 8 and 6," said Jim Foster, who farms in Montgomery City, Mo., "and their ability to raise hogs like I did, as an independent, depends on whether these guys do their job or not." Foster also was interviewed for NPR.

The Justice Department said that the antitrust division plans to take a hard look at three areas of agriculture.

The first is seed companies. In some markets, Monsanto controls 90 percent of the technology behind genetically-modified seeds for cotton, corn and soybeans. Sadie and I wrote a long chapter about Monsanto in our 2008 book Going Green, about how the company sues farmers whose crops are accidently pollinated by windblown pollen from Monsanto's genetically-modified patented plants. See the document "Monsanto vs, U.S. Farmers" by the Center for Food Safety for lots more info about Monsanto's dirty dealings.

The second segment is beef packing. And the third is dairy, where consolidation has been especially dramatic. In the last decade, more than 4,500 dairy farms disappeared every year.

I can't wait to see what comes of it, especially since I live in N.C., a state saturated with poultry farms, hog farms, and hog waste. We have more hogs than people - second only to Iowa in the number of swine.

God, thank you for that night in November where hopeful people pulled together and elected a man who's courageous enough to look at everything with fresh eyes, with compassionate principles, and with his solid belief that we can do a heck of a lot better with the massive resources this country has at its disposal.

Sources:

John Burnett. "Small Farmers See Promise in Obama's Plan." Morning Edition. August 20, 2009. National Public Radio.

Sally Kneidel and Sadie Kneidel. 2005. Veggie Revolution: Smart Choices for a Healthy Body and a Healthy Planet. Fulcrum Publishing.

Sally Kneidel and Sadie Kneidel. 2008. Going Green: A Wise Consumer's Guide to a Shrinking Planet. Fulcrum Publishing.

Monsanto vs. U.S. Farmers Report. 2007. Center for Food Safety.

See my previous posts about Smithfield, who is suspected of starting the swine flu pandemic:

Smithfield blamed for swine flu by Mexican Press.

This virus is a swine flu and has roots in N.C., the land of Smithfield.

Why is swine flu likely to return in winter? It's not because people are cooped up together in winter.

Keywords:: Obama small farms consolidation Smithfield Tyson healthy food Monsanto

Obama invites me and you to email him our opinions

I heard on NPR a couple of days ago that the White House website (www.whitehouse.gov) now has an e-mail link where anyone can write a note to President Obama. I didn't really believe it, but I went online to check, and there it was. You just scroll down the opening page to the word "contact" on the right. Click on that word, and you'll go to the page with the little box waiting for your comment.

Above the space for you to write, it says:
"President Obama is committed to creating the most open and accessible administration in American history. To send questions, comments, concerns, or well-wishes to the President or his staff, please use the form below."

You can write 5000 characters. Or less. Thank you Mr. Obama. Your predecessor never asked.

I knew right away what I want to say to Mr. Obama. I think I'll start with "Dear Barack" because most people probably don't.

I'm not gonna talk about the stuff on the front page of the newspaper: Obama's economic recovery plan, or reducing taxes for 95% of Americans, or ending the war in Iraq, or solutions for the drug trade over the Mexican border. That's all important, today. But it's all stuff that will be forgotten in 1000 years. Most of it won't make any difference in 1000 years. People will always have wars, use drugs, fight over borders, gripe about taxes ---- those struggles have been around as long as civilization has existed, and before. It's our human nature to have those particular struggles.

Here's what really matters, to me. We're entering a period of mass extinctions, where the majority of biologists agree that 25 - 75% of existing species are likely to go extinct within the next hundred years. This mass extinction is not like previous mass extinctions that occurred due to meteor impacts or glacial movements. In earlier extinctions, the surviving creatures had a variety of rich habitats remaining on Earth. They could adapt and evolve to fill these nurturing habitats. That's not the case now. We're fouling and destroying almost all habitats, most of them beyond recovery. Oceans, temperate forests, tropical forests, grasslands - all of them. Some by means of overharvesting, some by means of pollution, some by way of climate change. To me this is what really matters, because in 1000 years, in a million years, these habitats will still be trashed beyond recovery. And the animals will still be extinct. Forever. And not to be replaced by something new.
So that's what I'm going to say to Barack. Tomorrow I'll write it, after tonight's basketball games are over and I can say it in my clearest voice. "Please protect wildlife," I'll say, "so that the trillions of people to follow us on this planet won't have to live in a world without birds, without bears, without lions or wolves or whales. Think on down the line. You're probably good at that."

Keywords:: Obama wildlife extinctions white house

Robert Kennedy Jr. to lead the EPA for Obama?

Obama may be considering Robert Kennedy as head of the EPA, according to internet buzz. What fantastic news! I wrote an article earlier this year describing RFK Jr as the most influential environmentalist of our time. And that's a heavy statement, given what Al Gore has accomplished. No point in comparing the two, but I do believe that RFK is ideally suited to take the reigns of the EPA.

Bobby Kennedy is an environmental attorney; he also heads up Pace Law School's litigation clinic. As such, he teaches environmental law and oversees numerous lawsuits filed against corporations that are violating environment laws in order to save money for their stockholders. Cleaning up effluent before it ruins rivers, scrubbing smokestack emissions - these are expensive processes that no corporation will take on unless forced to do so. RFK's lawsuits force them to.

Robert Kennedy really gets it. He understands that corporations will press as far as they are allowed to press in order to maximize their profits, because, as he said, "their only obligation is to their shareholders." They will take the low road, the polluting road, whenever possible. If you doubt this underlying principle of the corporate world, watch the documentary The Corporation. It will make a believer of you.

Kennedy is also the president of the Waterkeeper Alliance and has been for some time. He's passionate about clean rivers, clean estuaries, clean streams and lakes. When I asked him to endorse our 2005 book about factory farms in North Carolina, he agreed to do so because factory farms are among his "pet peeves" - according to one of his staffers. Kennedy knows that factory farms and the giant meatpacking corporations behind them have trashed the NC coastal plain, have been allowed to by lax enforcement of environmental laws. He feels so strongly about the environmental damage done by factory farms that he traveled to Poland with Animal Welfare Institute's Diane Halverson in an attempt to stop the takeover of Polish hog farms by the polluting American meatpacker, Smithfield. You can read about that venture on AWI's website.

Kennedy knows how corporations get around regulations. From years of litigation, he knows all their tactics and strategies. He will nail them. If he doesn't have his hands tied by lobbyists, he will nail the perpetrators - the corporations that foul our water, exploit our land, and cloud our skies - he will nail them to the wall. I feel giddy thinking about it.

But that's not the only reason Obama likes him. Obama himself has a quality that can move people, can make grown men cry. Tuesday night, when Obama made his acceptance speech, my husband cried and cried and cried. I don't mean his eyes got moist. He really wept. It may have been the second time in a couple of decades that I've seen him cry. Tonight at dinner, he tried to explain it to me. He said it was like he'd forgotten how to feel patriotic, it had been so long. He had forgotten what it feels like to have hope for his country, and for the planet. He said that during his acceptance speech Obama went through history pointing out all the things our country has overcome, saying "Yes we can." And Ken felt it somehow. Felt maybe we can. Felt patriotism stirring. Ken the cynic. He felt it and it made him cry.

I felt a lot of the same feelings when I heard RFK speak a few months ago in Charlotte. He began with material I sort of knew - he talked about what he does in his job, the lawsuits, and the companies that will get away with whatever the government allows them to do. Kennedy said polluters create wealth by making others poor, by depleting and destroying resources for others. The "revolving door of plunder," he called it.

He surprised me by saying that he is not an environmentalist but a "free marketeer." He calls himself that because he believes that corporations should be made to internalize all the costs of their production methods, including the costs to public health and to the environment. If their effluent causes liver cancer, or their emissions cause asthma, or their production methods blow mountaintops off, then they should pay the costs to the local communities, in lost wages, or medical costs or whatever. Can you imagine if Kennedy were able to pull that off, as head of the EPA?

But this is what brought me to tears. He talked about camping with his sons, how he loves the mountains, the trees, and the rivers near his home. He said "wilderness is the undiluted work of the creator. Wildlife is the way God communicates with us most forcefully, with force, with clarity, with texture."

Americans love and value nature, now and since our inception as a nation, he said. Consider Thoreau, Emerson, Merwin. In fact, he said, "nature is the unifying theme of American culture."

Robert Kennedy made me love my country. He made me want to fight to keep it clean, and he made me angry in a new way at the values of corporate profit in Bush's administration, the values that have cheapened the natural resources we have been blessed with.

See how he fits with Obama? They are, quite simply, two of the most inspirational living men I know. They both have the gift of describing the big picture, the global picture, the historical picture in a way that makes us want to get to work to save it.

Please, please, please pick RFK to head up the EPA.

by Sally Kneidel, PhD

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Keywords:: RFK Robert Kennedy Jr. EPA Obama Bobby Kennedy Jr.