It was Monday morning and Barry Townsend headed to work with a bag lunch and his wife’s .38-caliber revolver. He slid into his red Ford F-350 pickup and began the drive from the Townsends’ farm outside Bryan toward New Waverly, where he worked as a machinist. Cindy hadn’t noticed her gun missing that morning. Before leaving, Barry simply told her, “I’m going to work.”
Barry Townsend was not just a machinist. He and Cindy also raised chickens for the Mississippi-based company Sanderson Farms. They were one of about two dozen families that the company had recruited in a 100-mile radius around Bryan to work as contract growers. The work was hard, and the hours much longer than the Townsends had anticipated. Every year, their expenses increased, and the money they earned was never enough. Their financial situation strained their marriage, and they argued often. Cindy occasionally wept at the thought of the bank foreclosing on their farm. Among the small community of chicken growers, it was no secret that the couple was struggling.
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After a month-long investigation, police closed the case and told local reporters it was unlikely that anyone would ever know what had caused Townsend to kill one man, wound another, and take his own life. Unofficially, however, a simple explanation coalesced: Townsend had been convicted of child molestation in 1998 for groping Cindy’s oldest daughter. According to conventional wisdom, Barry Townsend was a disturbed felon who, as one police detective told Cindy, “went berserk.”
But there’s also a more complicated tale being told in churches, across dining room tables, and on the poultry farms around Bryan—a story of modern-day sharecropping and indentured servants. Recently the Observer spoke with 11 current and former area growers contracted by Sanderson Farms. Many were fearful of retribution; those still under contract talked only on the condition that their names and identifying details not be published. All, however, described the same scenario: The company, working closely with five local banks, requires prospective contractors to obtain loans, often in excess of $400,000, to finance construction of chicken houses. Contractors put up their farms as collateral to secure loans. With their land at stake, they are then subject to total company control. They tell of low pay for long hours, intimidation, manipulation of wages, and health problems that some blame on exposure to additives in the chicken feed.
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http://www.texasobserver.org/showArticle.asp?ArticleID=1898
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