Discriminitory Practices In The Chicken Industry.....

[Laxman]

are both distubing and going unchecked now. The Trump administraton apparently isn't very interested in investigating illegal practices conducted by the 5 major chicken producers. This is a rather long article, but worth your attention. The practices of the "big chicken" industry towards their farmers have long been predatory. It seems that one company, Koch Foods (not related to the Koch Brothers) has used its predatory muscle in targeting the handful of black chicken farmers unlucky enough to have entered into agreements to be providers for this loathsome company. Read on....

How a Top Chicken Company Cut Off Black Farmers, One by One

After years of working as a sheriff’s deputy and a car dealership manager, John Ingrum used his savings to buy a farm some 50 miles east of Jackson, Mississippi. He planned to raise horses on the land and leave the property to his son.

The farm, named Lovin’ Acres, came with a few chicken houses, which didn’t really interest Ingrum. But then a man showed up from Koch Foods, the country’s fifth-largest poultry processor and one of the main chicken companies in Mississippi. Koch Foods would deliver flocks and feed — all Ingrum would have to do is house the chicks for a few weeks while they grew big enough to slaughter. The company representative wowed Ingrum with projections for the stream of income he could earn, Ingrum recalled in an interview.

What Ingrum didn’t know was that those financial projections overlooked many realities of modern farming in the U.S., where much of the country’s agricultural output is controlled by a handful of giant companies. The numbers didn’t reflect the debt he might have to incur to configure his chicken houses to the company’s specifications. Nor did they reflect the risk that the chicks could show up sick or dead, or that the company could simply stop delivering flocks.

And that growing concentration of corporate power in agriculture would only add to the long odds Ingrum, as a black farmer, faced in the United States, where just 1.3% of the country’s farmers are black.

https://www.propublica.org/article/how-a-top-chicken-company-cut-off-black-farmers-one-by-one

[Wellstone ruled]

1. Oh man does that bring back ugly memories.

The major turkey Processor pulled a similiar scam in the Mid Fifties and up to the middle sixties in Northern Wisconsin. They would supply the Poults and the feed,you had to provide the Barn and the Labor. Short on cash,no problem,we got that covered,just take out a 8% loan on your land and we will have you up in running in two months. Barns were built by Menard's with special in house Financing. Jerome Foods supplied the Poult's ,and the Feed and the automated equipment necessary,well that had a special financing deal also.

Well,you guessed it,the Turkey market crashed for a couple years due to massive operations begun in North Carolina and Texas as well as Minnesota. Bottom line,Menard's and Jerome ended up foreclosing on ton's of these operations and the Farmer usually lost everything. Oh and the real stick in the eye came later,when Jerome Foods hired those same Farmers to tend their Corporate owned flocks on those foreclosed farms. Oh,and they could rent the farm house real cheap if they wanted to.

[Blue_true]

2. Vietnamese immigrants were big in the chicken raiding business several years back.

The arrangement can work very well for the farmer if the poultry meat market is riding, as it was then as people swore off beef and some pork and went for white meat poultry. But in minimal growth, flat of falling meat markets like the last few years, farmers get stuck in burdensome contracts that cause most to lose big.

[Wellstone ruled]

3. Going to be one interesting year.

Gut says,the Bankers are going to be big winners once again.

[Blue_true]

4. When have bankers NOT been big winners? Therein lies the problem, or a very big part of it. nt

[Wellstone ruled]

5. Sad to say,you are so right.

And it appears to be one hell of a loose loose year for many.