Dayen at prospect: Farmers unhappy with Vilsack and Heitcamp on Biden team
"Business-friendly ag advisers emphasize trade, believing that promoting overseas markets will translate to prosperity for family farmers and ranchers. But “farmers do not export, Cargill exports,” Maxwell counters, arguing that Big Ag domination is a far greater challenge. If you don’t profit from what you produce, he reasons, more trade won’t fix the problem."
"Export strategies force farmers into monoculture crops and overproduction ... Small livestock producers are forced to sell low to concentrated meatpackers and watch as they pass on inflated prices to groceries, enjoying the middleman profits. “The big guys won’t process for the little guys and are putting the little guy out of business,”"
"over 80 percent of rural voters reject ag monopolies and factory farms. The Biden team, by toeing the corporate ag line, is “leaving votes on the table that perhaps they shouldn’t,” "
“You can talk to Vilsack and Heitkamp all you want, but more corporate control of ag is not the answer.”
"The biggest blow in the Trump years came when the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) rolled back rules that would have banned Big Ag retaliation against small farmers and given them stronger legal tools to prevent abuse. USDA chief Sonny Perdue, himself tied to chicken industry interests, then dissolved the agency that protects small farms"
"Perdue wrote the epitaph for the family farmer when he said at a dairy expo last year, “In America the big get bigger and the small go out.”"
" The top four hog firms control two-thirds of the market; the top four cattle firms, 85 percent. Ninety percent of all chickens are raised through the brutal “tournament” system, where farmers are pitted against one another. Producers specify how farmers must house, feed, and care for chicks, and the fattest ones get sold; farmers that lose the tournament get nothing ... Monopolists have grabbed a significant share of food profits. Farmers used to earn 37 cents of every retail dollar; now it’s down to 15."
“We’re being mined to make Big Money more big money.”
"After the election, Obama’s USDA (under Vilsack’s control) and the Justice Department set out on a five-city listening tour of farm country, hearing stories about Big Ag price discrimination, abuse of market power, and intimidation ... no enforcement actions were taken, more mergers were approved, and GIPSA rules were delayed and ultimately weakened. "
“He did nothing, and Vilsack did nothing and the Department of Justice did nothing ... They totally betrayed us.”
“With who Heidi Heitkamp is, with the corporate hat on, it doesn’t look good.”
"Heitkamp was the top Senate recipient of funds from the crop production industry in the 2018 cycle, with over $247,000, and she received money from meatpacking giant Smithfield Foods and its Chinese-owned parent company WH Group. In 2018, Heitkamp voted against an amendment to the farm bill that would have added transparency to “checkoff” programs intended for agricultural marketing, which have become slush funds for lobbying organizations, used in campaigns that hurt family farmers."
"“The track record of Tom Vilsack is abysmal when it comes to independent family agriculture,” says Maxwell. In addition to his role disappointing farmers while at USDA, critics point to him taking a job as president and CEO of the U.S. Dairy Export Council just days after the end of Obama’s term."
“He is owned lock, stock, and barrel by Wall Street and the packers and the food companies,”
“the person that candidate Biden is listening to, has an eight-year commitment of not living up to those issues.”
“If you could have things processed locally, you bring back those economies, supporting the local hardware store and local schools, and money stays in the community,”
“We’ve become part of a secondhand economy,”
“We’re scared shitless. We cannot survive with the policy that exists. There is not going to be anything left of rural America.”
https://prospect.org/power/farmers-reject-bidens-pro-corporate-rural-advisers/sidd