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Lib book
So the meat industry has considated to three main players. This is about that consolidation and it's consequences. This big "vertically integrated" farms are now self sufficient and completely disconnected from the towns in which they do business.
22 In a fully verically integrated company no money goes to the local economy. Evefything is paid and controlled through the corporation. Any leftover profits go to the shareholders. This is all except the most costly and risky part, the actual growing of the chicks. The farming of the chicken was considered not profitable be Tyson so that chore is outsourced. This is the one chance people have to make some kind of money from the behemoth in their backyards. Its not a great deal.
25 These new agribusiness conglomefates are thd new feudal lords of the midwest in a land were the serfs do the work and the corporation reaps the benefit.
28 For the Yarnell's of Walddon the routine was steady. Tysone delivered the chicks, the raised them and six weeks lafer Tyson came and picked up their full grown chickens. It wasn't getting anybody ri h but it paid the bills. That is until.the chicks sfarted to die out.
30 It was all luck of the draw with the baby chicks. If you did everything rigbt you still had to get "good chicks [and] good feed [to get a ] good.profit."
35 The chicken farmers hadn't seen a pay raise in twenty years anx when Tyson began picking the chicks up two weeks earlier and 2lbs lighter the farmers were no longer able to even pay their mortgages. But Tyson itself was doing just fine, very profitable.
46 Two mass die off of the chicks in a row cause the Yandells to loose their farm and tbeir vrip on middle class existence. Inside the plant "downward pressure caused many workefs to leave, replaced but a more pliant and heaped workforce with alot lower expectations. Outside the pressure brouvht immivfant chicken farmeds to replace those who lost out. Meanwhile Tyson was doing fine.
57 So this whe chicken leasing deal sprang from the old tenant farmer or sharecropper arrangement. And Tyson was ripe to try it out. This in the 40's.
In 1947 Tyson Feed and Hatchery was incorporated. Already Tyson had learned to consolidate abd integrate his business.
68 With John Tyson at the helm, his son Don would make the finincial moves tbat would propel the company to the next level. In the 1960's with the help of the Farm Credit Association he began helping small farmers get loans to build industrial sized chicken coops. "A new breex of indentured farmer was born."
73 In addition to running a smart closed loop business, Tyson exploited a loop hole in the tax laws that "basically let Tyson take an interest-free loan from taxpayers." Profitable, yet still deceitful and dishonest, Tyson was well on tbeir way to crooked coporate citizen.
80 Then, after recovering from tbe downturn of '61. Tyson Foods Inc went public.
83 Ok first order of business for the newly minted profitable public company, screw the employees. They used lawyers to change and bend rules of employment in their favor and to keep tbe damn unions out.
84 Next, they went after the chicken farmers. Anyone who said anything got cut off. And when theh had the audacity to try and organize, they all got cut off. The Feds steps in and using laws from the old "meat trust" days tried to get Tyson to play nice. Tyson answered with a countefsuit and continued to do whatever the hell it want to do.
87 Classic! Tyson bought up a business that sold smaller chickens. Tyson up the price and renamed them Cornish Game Hens and presented them as upscale. They sold. The middle class loved them.
88 And then...John and his wife are hit be a train? Are you kidding me? What? I wonder how Donnie boy managed that one. Wow.
95 And then, in 1980 the McDonalds McNugget was born and a new revenue stream had opened for Don.
104 Tyson comes to Waldron and buys up the local chicken outfit and immediately seeks to screw the contract chicken farmers.
106 The chicken tender would turn ojt to be Burger King's answef to the the chicken nugget. And lime with the nugget, Tyson devoted an entire plant in Gfeen Forrest Arkansas to supplying them.
They mention Wal-Mart here also from Akansas. What is it about Arkansas that produces such successful companies that want nothing more than to screw over everyone they come in contact with.
107 The amount of chicken consumed in America per capita continues to rise. Chicken is the new hamburger.
108 In 1994 Tyson bougbt out Cobb-Vantress. This company had a genetically engineered bird that grew faster and fatter than any otber. Only problem waz the quality of the meat suffered. The market decided that quality didn't matter as much as birds that "were produced cheaply, at high volume, and on schedule." Esoterical things like quality and taste mean nothing. Taste was bread out in the selection process and no one cared. Same reason you ant get a decent tomato today.
110 Don Tyson kept his nose to the vrindstone and built his company into a 2.5 billion dollar a year business. All the buyouts and considations would leave total.chicken production For the US market In the hands of just four companies.
This from farmaid.org
The Poultry Powerhouses
Today the average American consumes 84 pounds of chicken each year, making it the most popular meat in the U.S. Not only is that a hefty bit of poultry—it's also more than twice the amount of chicken we ate 40 years ago.
The Broiler Belt map - click to enlarge
Click to enlarge
Behind that growing appetite are some big changes in the poultry industry, where chicken products move from chick to chicken nugget. Since the 1950s, the number of chickens raised in the U.S. has skyrocketed by over 1,400 percent, while the number of poultry farmers has plummeted by 98 percent.
Today, the U.S. poultry industry is the most concentrated sector in our food system, not just in terms of the number of farms, but more importantly, with regar In fact, the top four poultry firms in the U.S.—Pilgrim's Pride, Tyson, Purdue, and Sanderson Farms—control almost 60% of the market. d to corporate powerhouses who rule the roost. That scenario is bad enough for family poultry growers, but economists believe that at the local level, markets are much more concentrated, with most growers having only one or two buyers to sell to.
113 When local growers gave up or were forced out Laotians arrived to try their hand at it. Laotians? Really?
116 The growers are pitted against each other in what they sardonically call the tournament. After each delivery they recieve their ranking complefe with "feed ratios" and when they alone stand in tbe rankings. The company holds all the stats, makes all the calculations, and holds all the cards. Reimbursement is tied to the rankings and can fluctuate wildy.
121 Here's the actual equation they use.
PAY = [AFC - c ¡ + .05].q¡ Let the games begin! Its a farmer's hunger games. Also it's a zero sum game. The first figure AFC is average weight cost of all the flocks in the tournament. Zefo sum!
122 Under the Tyson system, no matter how spectaculad a farmer does, half will always win and the othef half will always lose. It's really the percect screw job Tyson will always pay the same.for birds no matter what happens while the growefs silently try to bankrupt the others. It reall is a Hunger Games. This Bird is on fire!
160 The crop of new chicken farmers, who replaced the old chicken farmers are now also going out of business. The tournament system gaurentees that the newer, more costlier, and more up to date farms will come out on top and drive out the older farms. This replacement cycle should narmally.take 30 years. This systems see opefations fully outdated in less than ten. The money from the F S A gaurantees that there will be more funds for the next guy to finanace his was to the top of the heap but he will not sfay there. The cycle will continue again and those at the top will be knocked off their perch.
Locals call it being chickenized when you fall out of the competition.
And Now Don Tyson wants to take the whole darwinian chicken cycle and try it with hogs.
160 Don steps down and Johhny Tyson takes command. And he is going to run "his" company his way.
165 The 1996 Freedom to Farm act replacex subsidies with disaster pay. In a sense the taxpayer would cover any unforseen losses to the farmers.
166 "The law disbanded production controls." Now tbere was no limit to what couls be grown. And in the case of overabundance, the Feds would step in and cover losses. Consequently, the price of feed, "the biggest cost Tyson Foods had to pay to raise animals," became insanely cheap. This would be a boon to Tyson and meat producers in general.
171 "Big Beef" companies like IBP began to fighf back. The old nasy beef carcass was now delivered already cut up and boxed. The butcher was no longer necessary.
204 Currently the corporations like Tyson Foods, squezze the producer to famine and instead of passing that savings on to the consumer, it pockets it.
206 Co stant downward pressure of meat prices has thinned the competition and driven alot of companies out. Currently meat produ tion in the hands of four big players. Tyson Foods is one of them.
208 Tyson Foods, JBS Swift, Cargill and National Beef buy and sell 85 percent of the beef in America.
226 The use of the drug Zilmax nakes the cattle grow bigger but at the cost of quality in the beef. And it would be left for the corporations to decide which is more important. So far quantity is winning.
279 O Obama wins Iowa and the election in part by promising to help the farmers with these out of control food corporations. I'm not to sanguine.
So in the end DonTyson quietly passed away and Tyson foods will carry on. In studies it has been noted that communities who rely on Tyson Foods for their livelyhood don't do as well as others. But some in those towns still thank god for Tyson. The say if it weren't for the Tyson plant they would have anything.
Must rewatch Food Inc.
This from Food Inc: The typical contract grower goes in debt 500,000 to earn 18k a year. The companies ontrol everything.
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