(C) Common Dreams This story was originally published by Common Dreams and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Long-Delayed Rules to Protect Small Farmers Might be Too Little Too Late [1] ['Siena Chrisman', 'Anthony Nicome', 'Erik Nicholson', 'Alexia Estrada', 'Ryan Peterson', 'The Civil Eats Editors', 'Gabriel Pietrorazio', 'Tom Perkins', 'Twilight Greenaway', 'Lisa Held'] Date: 2017-01-11 Update: On February 6, the USDA announced that it would delay the final rule’s effective date, pushing it to April 22. Then, on April 11, the agency announced it would delay the implementation even further — until October 19, 2017. Nearly a decade ago, when President Obama was campaigning in rural America, he put the consolidation of the meat industry at the top of his list of concerns. In fact, he promised sweeping reforms that would have broken up the meat industry monopoly and made it possible for small farmers to survive in the current farm climate. The changes he promised came as welcome news to long-struggling farmers and ranchers, while also offering consumers the possibility of more alternatives to industrially produced meat. Today, advocates are left defending the last flickers of those promises in the form of a watered-down set of proposals issued, as if as an afterthought, in the Administration’s final days. The meat industry is outraged anyway. The collapse of Obama’s support for these reforms, known as the GIPSA rules, in a process that has run from the 2007 campaign to the very last moments of his presidency, has also left many rural Americans feeling abandoned by the government when they most needed it to stand up for them—and frustrated enough to vote for a businessman promising change. By economists’ standards, the meat industry is one of the most concentrated parts of the economy. Just a handful of large companies control 82 percent of the beef packing industry, 63 percent of pork packing, and 53 percent of broiler chicken processing. Consolidation has driven many smaller operations out of business: Since 1980, the number of cattle farms has dropped from 1.6 million to 950,000; hog farms have decreased from 666,000 to 71,000—a decline of nearly 90 percent. Hogs used to be widely raised across the country; they were even called “mortgage-lifters,” because they were a quick and easy way to make extra money. Many families relied on the extra income brought in by raising a few hogs a year and selling them at the local livestock market. Today, there’s often no place for a twice-a-year hog farmer to sell his animals, and the big companies’ influence on the market has driven prices down so much he may not even recoup his investment. Hog producers take home less than 25 percent of the retail value of a hog. In the poultry industry, the power of the processing companies over farmers who raise birds for them is nearly absolute. With 97 percent of chicken grown under production contracts, the growers have essentially become serfs on their own land, in debt after building expensive chicken houses and beholden to the company for continued delivery of chicks. Half to three-quarters of chicken growers live below the poverty line, and unfair business practices are common, including the fact that growers have no information about the chicks and feed they get from the company and they’re paid based on a ranking system that pits them against one other. Companies regularly retaliate against growers who complain. Mike Weaver, President of the Contract Poultry Growers Association of the Virginias, told me it had been almost 20 years since Pilgrim’s Pride, the company he grows for, has given growers a raise in their base pay, while “in the last two years, Pilgrim’s Pride has paid stockholders nearly $1.9 billion.” Obama’s 2008 platform, “Real Leadership for Rural America,” pointed to a 1921 law, the Packers and Stockyards Act, which prevented meatpackers from taking unfair actions against independent farmers, but which had not been properly enforced. The platform pledged that as President, Obama would “issue regulations for what constitutes undue price discrimination and …enforce the law.” He further promised to strengthen antitrust laws and “make sure that farm programs are helping family farmers, as opposed to large, vertically integrated corporate agribusiness.” Writing for Grist at the time, now-Mother Jones food and agriculture correspondent Tom Philpott said the section, “reads like music to my ears.” In the early years of the presidency, independent farmers and ranchers were optimistic about progress. The 2008 Farm Bill mandated that U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) write what would become the GIPSA rules (for the Grain Inspectors, Packers and Stockyards Agency, which administers them), to clarify enforcement of the Packers and Stockyards Act, ensuring that the change would happen. Then in 2010, the Department of Justice and USDA held a year-long series of workshops investigating consolidation in agriculture, focused mostly on the livestock industry. Hundreds of farmers spoke during public comment periods about how the growing size of agribusiness companies was making it nearly impossible to make a living. Nearly a quarter of a million people submitted online comments in favor of reforms to make agricultural markets more fair. [END] --- [1] Url: https://civileats.com/2017/01/11/obama-finally-issued-rules-to-protect-small-farmers-are-they-too-little-too-late/ Published and (C) by Common Dreams Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/commondreams/