Tag: agribusiness
In This Season Of Feasting, Let's Celebrate Agriculture, Not Agribusines

In This Season Of Feasting, Let's Celebrate Agriculture, Not Agribusines

In December 1972, I was part of a nationwide campaign that came tantalizingly close to getting the U.S. Senate to reject Earl Butz, Richard Nixon's choice for secretary of agriculture.

A coalition of grassroots farmers, consumers, and scrappy public interest organizations (like the Agribusiness Accountability Project that Susan DeMarco and I then headed) teamed up with some gutsy, unabashedly progressive senators to undertake the almost impossible challenge of defeating the cabinet nominee of a president who'd just been re-elected in a landslide.

The 51 to 44 Senate vote was so close because we were able to expose Butz as ... well, as butt-ugly — a shameless flack for big food corporations that gouge farmers and consumers alike. We brought the abusive power of corporate agribusiness into the public consciousness for the first time, but we had won only a moral victory, since there he was, ensconced in the seat of power. It horrified us that Nixon had been able to squeeze Butz into that seat, yet it turned out to be a blessing.

An arrogant, brusque, narrow-minded and dogmatic ag economist, Butz had risen to prominence in the small (but politically powerful) world of agriculture by devoting himself to the corporate takeover of the global food economy. He was dean of agriculture at Purdue University, but also a paid board member of Ralston Purina and other agribusiness giants. In these roles, he openly promoted the preeminence of middleman food manufacturers over family farmers, whom he disdained.

"Agriculture is no longer a way of life," he infamously barked at them. "It's a business." He callously instructed farmers to "Get big or get out" — and he then proceeded to shove tens of thousands of them out by promoting an export-based, conglomeratized, industrialized, globalized and heavily subsidized corporate-run food economy. "Adapt," he warned farmers, "or die." The ruination of farms and rural communities, Butz added, "releases people to do something useful in our society."

The whirling horror of Butz, however, spun off a blessing, which is that innovative, free-thinking, populist-minded and rebellious small farmers and food artisans practically threw up at the resulting "Twinkieization" of America's food. They were sickened that nature's own rich contribution to human culture was being turned into just another plasticized product of corporate profiteers.

"The central problem with modern industrial agriculture... (is) not just that it produces unhealthy food, mishandles waste, and overuses antibiotics in ways that harm us all. More fundamentally, it has no soul," said Nicholas Kristof, a New York Times columnist and former farm boy from Yamhill, Oregon. Rather than accept that, they threw themselves into creating and sustaining a viable, democratic alternative. The Good Food rebellion has since sprouted, spread and blossomed from coast to coast.

This transformative grassroots movement rebuts old Earl's insistence that agriculture is nothing but a business. It most certainly is a business, but it's a good business — literally producing goodness — because it's "a way of life" for enterprising, very hardworking people who practice the art and science of cooperating with Mother Nature, rather than always trying to overwhelm her. These farmers don't want to be massive or make a killing; they want to farm and make delicious, healthy food products that help enrich the whole community.

This spirit was summed up in one simple word by a sustainable farmer in Ohio, who was asked what he'd be if he wasn't a farmer. He replied: "Disappointed." To farmers like these, food embodies our full "culture" — a word that is, after all, sculpted right into "agriculture" and is essential to its organic meaning.

Although agriculture has forestalled the total takeover of our food by crass agribusiness, the corporate powers and their political hirelings continue to press for the elimination of the food rebels and ultimately to impose the Butzian vision of complete corporatization. This is one of the most important populist struggles occurring in our society. It's literally a fight for control of our dinner, and it certainly deserves a major focus as you sit down to your holiday dinners this year.

To find small-scale farmers, artisans, farmers markets, and other resources in your area for everything from organic tomatoes to pastured turkey, visit www.LocalHarvest.org.

To find out more about Jim Hightower and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

How To Stop Monopolies From Milking Us Dry

How To Stop Monopolies From Milking Us Dry

For the past several years, monopolistic price fixing by two multibillion-dollar milk processing behemoths — DFA (an outfit deceptively named Dairy Farmers of America) and Dean Foods — has squeezed thousands of dairy farms out of business, paying farmers less for a gallon of milk than it costs them to produce it. The Big Two controlled some two-thirds of all raw milk processed nationwide, essentially forcing farmers to sell on the processors' terms.

Last year, then-President Trump's Justice Department ("justice") allowed the $14 billion DFA empire to devour the $8 billion Dean conglomerate, leaving individual farm families at the mercy of one domineering colossus. DFA now controls 70 percent of our nation's entire raw milk supply.

This is just one example of the sweeping lockdown of the "free market" resulting from about five decades of intentional actions and inactions by both Republican and Democratic regimes that have recklessly dismissed the founders' fear of what Thomas Jefferson decried as the "aristocracy of our monied corporations." Piece by piece, politicians, lobbyists and lawyers have steadily dismantled our nation's commitment to trust busting.

Antitrust is a profound component of America's democratic vision, linking us from the Boston Tea Party to the Bill of Rights, the rise of the populist movement, the Pullman Strike of 1894, the writings of Ida Tarbell and W.E.B. Du Bois, Louis Brandeis' concept of The New Freedom, Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, Harry Truman's Fair Deal, Martin Luther King Jr.'s Poor People's Campaign, Occupy Wall Street, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Rev. William Barber's Moral Mondays — and now you and me.

The political and media establishment bought into the corporate dogma that monopolies produce economic "efficiencies," so why not turn 'em loose? Thus, trusts are us! Monopolistic corporations today have chokeholds on nearly every market, setting prices, wages and terms of business. Worse, their power is systemic, dominating elections, health access, education opportunities, communications ... our society!

That's why I don't favor the term "antitrust." It's too soft — I mean, who's against trust? Anti-theft is more blunt, easily understood and true. The reason our people have fought corporate dominance so hard for centuries is because a monopoly is nothing but organized theft; it steals America's fundamental principles of fairness and opportunity for all. By controlling the marketplace, workplace and public space, the few take away everyone else's freedom of choice and their possibilities of maximizing their intellect, skills, labor and other abilities to achieve their dreams. That's the theft of the very idea of America.

Indeed, monopoly power quickly goes to the head of monopolists, turning executive-suite tycoons into little tyrants who feel entitled to impose institutionalized inequality over America's democratic ideals. To rationalize their plutocratic behavior, the privileged ones try to foster a culture that accepts one's net worth as the measure of one's worthiness. Remember just a couple of years back when an exclusive club of America's uber-rich CEOs and Wall Street speculators went on a PR blitz glorifying themselves as "The Makers"? "We are essential wealth creators," they thundered!

But — oops! — nothing like a pandemic to deflate even the most bloated of egos. Hello to all you nurses, farm workers, grocery clerks, truck drivers, utility crews, and other low-paid "nobodies" who turn out to be the actual essential ones holding the system together. While those haughty "makers" fled to isolated vacation spots to escape the coronavirus, millions of frontline workers faced deadly virus exposure to keep America functioning.

A genuinely grateful public has literally applauded those on the job, hailing them as national and personal heroes. The appreciation was so widespread that several major corporations joined last spring in a show of solidarity, running national ad campaigns touting "hero" pay hikes for those enduring such a grave hazard. But while the employees and the virus endured, the corporate generosity vanished as soon as its PR value faded.

Supermarket giant Kroger, for example, had ballyhooed a pay increase of $2 an hour last April for its heroes, loudly declaring, "We will continue to support you, and your families during this difficult time." Just six weeks later, even as the pandemic spread, pffffft: The $2 "hero pay" was unceremoniously terminated. Mingier yet, early this year, when city officials in Seattle and Long Beach, California, mandated pandemic pay for frontline grocery workers, bosses at Kroger's national headquarters abruptly shut down stores in those areas.

Kroger reaped $2.8 billion in profits in 2020! Where did that bonanza go? The top executives spent a billion dollars on a stock buyback program — a corporate manipulation scheme that artificially jacks up stock prices, thus enriching the big investors and executives who own most of the stock. How rich are they? One example: Last year, Kroger CEO Rodney McMullen was reportedly paid $21,129,648.

One man, one year. And unlike the typical Kroger worker, who draws an estimated $27,000 a year, McMullen is not on the front line putting his life at risk. That's why working families spell "boss" backward: double SOB.

To find out more about Jim Hightower and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

Doing Good — And Doing Well — In Our Food Economy

Doing Good — And Doing Well — In Our Food Economy

A cadre of business school economists, high-tech speculators, and corporate planners have been hyping and investing billions in a food-economy model that renders many millions — family farmers, local restauranteurs, independent food processors, small grocers and food workers — passe. No need for such costly and cumbersome "units," argue these schemers for a revolution enabled by artificial intelligence, robotics, genetic engineering and cell-cultured foodstuffs. A few conglomerates will consolidate and automate every step from planting to plate, producing and distributing the calories necessary to sustain the masses and "free" all the "small" people tied up in food production to do something more useful.

The fatal flaw of this soulless corporate concept can be exposed in one word: pandemic. As we've seen again and again this past year, the essential ingredient in a resilient food system is the human spirit — the very element that corporatizers are most determined to eliminate. When COVID-19 slammed into the economy last spring and shut down or shriveled food service by restaurants, delis and school cafeterias, the grit, ingenuity and community commitment of independent providers quickly kicked into gear.

Moreover, the consuming public suddenly came to appreciate anew the value of neighborhood cafes, farm stands, bakeries, food trucks, dedicated grocery workers, servers, food pantries, the Community Supported Agriculture movement and thousands of other hardworking "units" that put dinner on the table for us, even at risk to themselves. While we mourn the terrible, ongoing loss of lives, businesses and jobs among America's food providers, let's also note the countless uplifting stories of producers and consumers coming together, not merely to exchange money for goods but also to nurture community and do a bit for the Common Good.

For instance, last spring farmers Lisa and Ralph Turner of Maine's Laughing Stock Farm had tons of organic produce ready for delivery to area restaurants. When the pandemic forced all of their customers to shut down — bam! — the farm couple panicked. Then, as The New York Times reported, they set up a farm stand and sent out an email, hoping that maybe 10 people a day would come purchase a few $3 bags of veggies. But from day one, friends, family, friends of friends, and perfect strangers poured in and bought extra, sometimes paying $10 a bag, saying, "Keep the change" and then spreading the word, along with community and human spirit — things companies like Amazon and Walmart can't compute.

One farm stand is not the big solution, of course, but community just might be. Turns out, the can-do, mutual-aid spirit is more productive than all financial metrics combined. Ralph Turner expresses it in age-old farmspeak: "Head down, butt up, push forward." The people's response gives everyone hope, and that, Lisa Turner adds, is "an antidote to fear."

But it's not just small farmers who can make a difference and set an example of how to be good members of the community. Companies, big and small, in the food economy are blazing a different path through Wall Street's jungle of greed and demonstrating that money and morality can be compatible. Texas supermarket chain H-E-B, for example, has drawn an intensely loyal customer base (including me) by investing in good wages and benefits for employees, showing up in emergencies (pandemic outbreaks, hurricanes, freezes, etc.) to give essential supplies and hands-on help, and being an involved and supportive neighbor to the hundreds of unique communities it serves.

Maine Grains is "relocalizing" the business of milling grain by working with farmers around Skowhegan, Maine, who'd been abandoned by global powers like Ardent Acres and Gold Medal. Together, they're producing nutrient-rich flours from heritage grains — and boosting the local economy in the process. With a growing national profile, Bob's Red Mill also artfully mills its products from diverse, natural grains — and it's 100 percent employee-owned.

There's another rising business-model alternative to the selfish, profiteering ethic of Fortune 500 titans. These enterprises, called B Corporations, definitely exist to make a profit, but they are equally focused on having a positive social impact. B Corps prioritize fair wages, high-quality jobs, environmental protections, and healthy communities as core elements of their missions, even making those goals legal requirements of their corporate charter. Ben & Jerry's, Amy's Kitchen, King Arthur Baking, and New Belgium Brewery are all B Corps, and in fact, there are now some 3,800 businesses that, though not perfect, have agreed to the B Corp independent verification of their records and accountability to all stakeholders. And with this good news, I toast you with my New Belgium Fat Tire ale!

To find out more about Jim Hightower and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

Department of Agriculture

Does Anybody Care Who Is Appointed Agriculture Secretary? We Should

Years ago, Robert Kennedy noted that making economic, political and social progress is hard because such advances require rejecting the same old business-as-usual policies that sustain the establishment's profits and power. "'Progress' is the nice word," he said. "But change is its motivator. And change has its enemies."

His recognition that gutsy, honest leadership is necessary to confront the wealthy interests and advance the Common Good is directly applicable to one of the most important Cabinet appointments President-elect Joe Biden will make: secretary of agriculture.

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