CORPORATE INFLUENCE ON FARMING

CORPORATE INFLUENCE ON FARMING

Corporate farming is a term that describes the business of agriculture, specifically, what is seen by some as the practices of would-be megacorporations involved in food production on a very large scale. It is a modern food industry issue, and encompasses not only the farm itself, but also the entire chain of agriculture-related business, including seed supply, agrichemicals, food processing, machinery, storage, transport, distribution, marketing, advertising, and retail sales. The term also includes the influence of these companies on education, research and public policy, through their educational funding and government lobbying efforts. "Corporate farming" is often used synonymously with "agribusiness" (although "agribusiness" quite often is not used in the corporate farming sense), and it is seen as the destroyer of the family farm.

Critics argue that the ultimate goal of corporate farming is to vertically integrate the entire process of food production, up to the point of the distribution and sale of food to consumers. Some corporations are considered to be well on the way to achieving this objective, and have become very large in the process, such as Archer Daniels Midland, Monsanto Company, and the privately held Cargill, with 2004 revenues of $62.9 billion.

"Corporate farming" is a fairly broad term that deals with the general practices and effects of a small number of large, global corporations that dominate the food industry. It does not refer simply to any incorporated agribusiness enterprise, although most agricultural businesses today are in some way economically connected to the dominant food industry players. As such, it may be thought of as a movement, which is at times also referred to as "anti-corporate farming"

Corporate farming has a profound effect on not only the way we eat as human beings, but on the very concept as to how we look at the food. When we used the word farm we would like to think of the classic painting of mom an pop with a pitchfork and happy little cows in the background. Nothing of course could be further from the truth, today’s agribusiness is designed for getting maximum profit for minimal effort. A great deal of the food chain, could be threatened if we continue to mass produce in unsanitary conditions created by these large companies along with all of the bi-products added to our food to save a buck, or the very attitude of the public’s health not being the most important but the financial gains being most important (by-products I mean man made ingredients like hydrogenated oils, high fructose corn syrup, MSG, aspartame, and anything else that you can not pronounce in order to keep the shelf life of the foods).

Environmentally of course when things are streamlined for profit, there is often a great cost. Large machines are needed to harvest and process food the effects of these machines billow the diesel by-products in the air. The destruction to the land and the poor health conditions of animals is leading to our contaminated foods that line our grocery aisles and have aided in the highest medical needs ever known in this country. When we take away important care that once existed on family owned farms we get disease such as: Salmonella, E-coli, Gardia, Campylobacter. Our corporate system has failed. We waste more food than any country yet feel the need to mass-produce without the care or interest for quality. When are we going to care about how we treat our food and bodies?

-Chicken Farms (Tyson in particular owns and operates many other companies:

Tyson Foods, Inc. (NYSE: TSN) is an American multinational corporation based in Springdale, Arkansas, that operates in the food industry. The company is the world's second largest processor and marketer of chicken, beef, and pork only behind Brazilian JBS S.A., and annually exports the largest percentage of beef out of the United States. With 2005 sales of US$26 billion, Tyson Foods is the second-largest food production company in the Fortune 500, the largest meat producer in the world, and according to Forbes one of the 100 largest companies in the United States.

The company makes a wide variety of animal-based and prepared products at its 123 food processing plants. Tyson Foods has approximately 107,000 employees, who work at more than 300 facilities in the United States and throughout the world. Tyson works with 6,729 contract chicken growers.

Tyson Foods is one of largest U.S. marketers of value-added chicken, beef and pork to retail grocers, broad line food service distributors and national fast food and full service restaurant chains; fresh beef and pork; frozen and fully-cooked chicken, beef and pork products; case-ready beef and pork; supermarket deli chicken products; meat toppings for the pizza industry and retail frozen pizza; club store chicken, beef and pork; ground beef and flour tortillas. It supplies all Yum! Brands chains that use chicken (including KFC and Taco Bell), as well as McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, Wal-Mart, Kroger, Costco, IGA, Beef O'Brady's, small restaurant businesses, and prisons.

*Tyson foods website does not mention the following about their company in fact they mention quite the opposite. Below is the information often left out by Tyson representatives:

-Inside the broiler farms where the chicken are raised Tyson uses 42 by 400 feet (120 m) and holds around 24,000 chickens, giving each chicken 0.7 square feet (0.065 m²) of floor space. Bred to grow quickly occasional broilers become too heavy to walk and thus starve farmer must walk the length of each of his sheds 5 times per day to check for dead birds, which may be cannibalized if left in place. Crowding also keeps the chickens from moving around which also can cause inflamed patches of skin from sitting on the fecal waste on the floor, which is cleaned out only every 18 months. Tyson provides feed as well as feed additives such as antibiotics to promote growth. When more is applied than plants can absorb, it may run off into nearby streams and then rivers, causing nutrient pollution and sometimes putrefaction. Airborne ammonia from spread waste can also be a health issue for neighbors of broiler farms. Tyson attempts to shift liability for environmental damages to the farmers. Tyson has been involved in several lawsuits related to air and water pollution, Tyson continued to illegally dump waste water after the search warrants were executed, prompting an EPA senior trial attorney to remark that: "Having done this work for nearly 20 years, I don't recall any case where violations continued after the execution of two search warrants. That's stunning." In 2001, Tyson was charged with conspiracy to smuggle undocumented workers to work on its production lines. In September 2005, thirteen African American workers at a Tyson Foods poultry plant in Ashland, Alabama, filed a discrimination lawsuit against the company. The lawsuit brought allegations of discrimination over several years, including a "Whites only" sign on a bathroom door and the use of racial slurs and other racist comments. The investigator claims plant employees were also seen throwing around dead birds just for fun. These are just a few of the “fun” facts that come with corporate farming.

-Cattle farms (Beaty Farms to name one major company):

For their milk, the cow is forced into yearly pregnancies. After giving birth she is milked for 10 months but will be artificially inseminated during her third month so that she is milked even when she is pregnant. The demanded of production of milk is more than her body can give. So she starts breaking down body tissue to produce milk. The result is an illness called ketosis.

Most of the day the cow is tied up in a narrow stall usually wallowing in her own excrement. She gets mastitis because the hands that milk her are rough and usually unclean. She gets rumen acidosis from bad food and lameness. To keep the animals at high levels of productivity, dairy farmers keep them constantly pregnant through the use of artificial insemination. Farmers also use an array of drugs, including bovine growth hormone (BGH); prostaglandin, which is used to bring a cow into heat whenever the farmer wants to have her inseminated; antibiotics; and even tranquilizers, in order to influence the productivity and behavior of the cows.

Perhaps the greatest pain suffered by cows in the dairy industry is the repeated loss of their young. Female calves may join the ranks of the milk producers, but the males are generally taken from their mothers within 24 hours of birth and sold at auction either for the notorious veal industry or to beef producers

-Agriculture Farming/Seed/GMO (Genetically Modified Foods):

There are many companies involved in the research and production of genetically modified foods. GMO food is food that is produced with the concept of being able to mass-produce and grow anything anytime without environment affecting outcome. The problem with this is that it does not have proven safety for consumers in the long run in terms of health and nutritional needs. A company in particular named “Monsanto” a seed company that makes billions by regulating what farmers and can and can not grow. They have sued and ended many farmers careers due to farmers deciding they did not care to use their GMO seeds to grow corn and so Monsanto shut them down permently. They make hybrid seeds that are questionable in the long run of our food chain. Many stories have come into fruition about Monsanto and farmers here in America as well as Africa/India (where they have started cotton crops) committing suicide due to the high-pressure the company places on the farmer.

-THE REVOLVING DOOR

The success of efforts to restore public trust in government will hinge on reducing the disproportionate degree to which private corporations are able to influence the formulation of public policy. To this point, debate about breaking the grip of “special interests” on government has focused on the corrosive influence of money on politics, leading to legislation to reform electoral campaign finance. Yet important as campaign contributions have been in increasing corporate influence, there is another key mechanism by which companies promote their own interests at the expense of the common good: the “revolving door” movement of individuals back and forth between the private and public sectors. The

revolving door takes three forms:

• The Industry-to-Government “Reverse” Revolving Door, through which the appointment of corporate executives and business lobbyists to key posts in federal agencies establishes a pro-business bias in policy formulation and regulatory enforcement.

• The Government-to-Industry Revolving Door, through which public officials move to lucrative private sector roles from which they may use their experience to compromise government procurement, regulatory policy and the public interest.

• The Government-to-Lobbyist Revolving Door, through which former lawmakers and executive-branch officials use their inside connections to advance the interests of corporate clients.

All three forms of revolving door industry access have become so common that it is often hard to determine where government ends and the private sector begins.

What can we do as consumers:

Be aware of where your food comes from.

whenever possible try to buy from local farms.

Not only will you be able to speak with the actual persons who grew your food, you'll be putting your hard earned money back into the local economy.

This is not to say that local farmers aren't in it to make money, but atleast you will have some clue as to where your money is going. Remember, you are the comsumer and you vote with your dollars when you purchase products that are damaging the enviroment.

Contact your local representative and let them know that you will not stand for the revolving door policy in Washington. Stop scratching there backs and start scratching the consumers'.