Two years ago this week, the USDA and U.S. Justice Department began a series of joint workshops on anti-trust issues in agriculture. More than 4,000 farmers participated, and 16,000 people submitted comments. (Civil Eats reported on these hearings here and here.) Yet at a press conference this week, marking the anniversary of the first workshop, a panel of farmers reported that little has changed. A handful of companies still control huge portions of livestock, dairy, and poultry markets, they said, and farmers continue to face abusive and unfair treatment.

“There are some winners,” said Rhonda Perry, a livestock and grain farmer and director of the Missouri Rural Crisis Center, “But those winners are clearly not farmers or consumers. Those who benefit have really been embarrassingly successful at convincing Congress and our leaders to do nothing.”

The message at the workshops, panelists said, was loud and clear: Agricultural markets are not fair. A small number of companies hold most of the power, and farmers and consumers pay the price. Government regulation is needed to restore fairness and competiveness.

One panelist, South Dakota rancher Bob Mack, used the NCAA basketball tournament to explain: “Every team plays by the same rules. The officials are there to make sure those rules are followed. That’s all farmers want. Fair, open competition.”

Wisconsin dairy farmer Paul Rozwadowski recalled, “At the dairy hearing in Madison all the people on the panel testified with the exact same message: Dairy needs a new pricing mechanism. One by one they testified how they are producing milk at a price that is less than the cost to make it. They explained how it is affecting the daily maintenance of their farms and causing a devastating burden on their families.”

Rozwadowski said that these same issues were present across the food system. He heard farmers testify that the consolidated ownership of seed markets allowed companies to effectively dictate what farmers planted and when they planted it. They said the price of seed corn had jumped more than 300 percent, and they saw no end in sight.

Kay Doby, a former poultry farmer from North Carolina, spoke at the Alabama workshop, which focused on poultry production. She said that she and her fellow farmers spoke up because they were fed up with unfair treatment and believed their voices could make a difference. In Alabama, Doby spoke to Secretary Vilsack about a fellow farmer whom she was assisting who lost his contract through no fault of his own. He was facing bankruptcy and the loss of his family farm, and committed suicide. “This is real. This is personal,” she said. “What we’re asking for today is for the USDA and DOJ to help.”

Still, Rozwadowski said, “We are left with the impression that USDA and DOJ are deliberately neglecting the big picture.”

“Companies have a lot of money and influence,” said South Dakota rancher Mack. “The money has overwhelmed some very good people’s desire to change things.”

The farmers who testified in 2010 were concerned that by speaking up, they were inviting retaliation by the companies, putting their jobs, farms, and futures at risk. The Justice Department assured farmers that they would be protected.

One of the most dramatic moments of the Alabama workshop occurred when farmer Garry Staples spoke about his fears of retaliation. U.S. Assistant Attorney General Christine Varney told him, “I fully expect that you will not experience retaliation.” Then she gave him a piece of paper. “But if you do, call me at that number.”

Yet today, farmers report that are experiencing retaliation, and that they have little protection when it happens. That phone number won’t do Staples much good; Varney left the Justice Department last year.

Doby, the former poultry farmer, says that poultry farmers who testified have lost their contracts or had their payments reduced. “Many others continue to struggle under very abusive situations,” she said, noting that she only felt safe speaking out today because she no longer depends on poultry for her income.

Farmers have been through this before–our lives and livelihoods falling under corporate control. It has been an ongoing process: consolidation of markets; consolidation of seed companies; an ever-widening gap between our costs of production and the prices we receive. Some of us are catching on, getting the picture of the real enemy.

The “99 percent” are awakening to the realization that their lives have fallen under corporate control as well. Add up the jobs lost, the health benefits whittled away, and the unions busted, and the bill for Wall Street’s self-centered greed is taking a toll.

It’s not the immigrants, the homeless, the unions, or the farmers that have looted the economy and driven us to the brink of another Great Depression. The public is catching on.

When Occupy Wall Street (OWS) welcomed the Farmers March to Zuccotti Park in New York on December 4, a natural rural-urban alliance–the Food Justice Movement, gardeners, farmers, seed growers, health care workers, and union members–was formed at Wall Street’s back door.

Change can come only when you confront your oppressors directly on their turf. That makes them uncomfortable, it gets attention, and it wakes up the distracted public.

The Occupy movement is doing exactly what the prominent student activist Mario Savio spoke of in 1964, when he declared: “There comes a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part, you can’t even passively take part and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the apparatus and you’ve got to make it stop–and you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from running at all.”

The people who are now forming a movement to occupy the food system agree with this sentiment too.

The food system isn’t working. People eat too many calories, or too few. There’s too much processed food on our plates. Too many Americans lack access to food that is fresh, nutritious, and locally grown. This is the food system that corporate America has given us. It’s the food system it’s selling to the rest of the world.

Clearly, this system doesn’t have the best interests of the public at heart. Nor does it consider the interests of farmers or farm workers or animals or the environment. It has one interest: profit.

We all have to wake up.

Farmers need access to farm credit, a fair mortgage on their land, fair prices for the food they produce, and seeds that aren’t patented by Monsanto or other big corporations. Consumers need to be able to purchase healthy and local food, and to earn a living wage.

The parallels are pointedly exact. It may be the Wall Street banks that are controlling our lives, or it may be Monsanto, Cargill, DuPont, Kraft, or Tyson’s. The system isn’t working.

Why do agribusiness profits continue to grow while farmers struggle to pay their costs of production and more Americans go hungry? We can’t feed our people if we are forced to feed the bank accounts of the one percent.

Agribusinesses insist that we have the responsibility of feeding the world. Growing more genetically engineered corn and soy isn’t going to feed the world, nor will it correct the flaws in our food system; clearly it has created many of them.

The world can feed itself, without corporate America’s science-experiment crops and expensive chemicals. The world’s people can feed themselves if we let them–if we stop the corporate land grabs and let them develop their own economies for their own benefit.

The message from the Occupy movement needn’t and shouldn’t be a specific set of demands. It should be about asking the right questions.

Wall Street, the government, and corporate America need to answer one basic question: Why did you sell us down the river?

Originally published on OtherWords

*Editor’s Note: Please join us at Kitchen Table Talks in San Francisco this Thursday to discuss the Occupy movement.

Last month, the University of Minnesota caused a stir when it decided to postpone the release of a film that focuses on the effect agriculture is having on U.S. waterways from Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico. Troubled Waters–a film directed by Larkin McPhee for the University’s Bell Museum of Natural History, part of the College of Food, Agricultural, and Natural Resource Sciences–was held up, according to University Relations (the university’s PR office) to “allow time for a review of the film’s scientific content.” Yet ace reporting by Molly Preismeyer at the Twin Cities Daily Planet revealed that the film’s team had already thoroughly fact-checked the film, and followed the review process utilized by the PBS science program NOVA. Attempts to get the university to outline a standard procedure for research-based films were not fruitful. Then the story shifted once again when Dean Allen Levine told Minnesota Public Radio that the film “vilifies agriculture.”

Even though the University caved under pressure and allowed the scheduled premiere of the film to take place on October 3 and on October 5 on a local television station, the story of Troubled Waters has developed into a debate on academic freedom and the role a university’s donors should play in its research priorities.

Farmers at the center of the solution

Upon watching the film, I was surprised by what I saw. This is because a large portion focuses on farmers introducing new techniques to their fields that are reducing run-off and increasing soil fertility on their land. Instead of “vilifying agriculture,” it seems the filmmakers worked hard to focus on farmer-based solutions–like those of brothers Dick and Jack Gerhardt, who createdutilize a tool that assesses how much nitrogen is needed in a given field by reading chlorophyll levels. The “GreenSeeker” allows them to apply one-third the amount of nitrogen as in previous years. Because farmers often apply excess nitrogen to insure yields, much of which ends up as run-off in local waterways, inventions like these have the potential to empower farmers to save money while reducing the environmental consequences of agriculture.

The film also gives a platform to farmers like Jack Hedin, who discusses using cover crops in winter on his vegetable farm to reduce soil erosion and run-off; Tony Thompson, who employs perennial grasses and wetlands that soak up run-off on his 4000-acre soybean and corn farm; and Dan Coughlin, who raises grass-fed cows instead of keeping them in confinement–which produces excess nitrogen-rich manure that often ends up in waterways.

Looking closely at the federal agriculture policies, the film specifically cites those promoting ethanol production as a large contributing factor to the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. In particular, the 2007 Renewable Fuels Standard, which mandated that 15 billion gallons of corn ethanol be produced by 2022–therefore spurring farmers to grow more corn and use more nitrogen fertilizer. (Just yesterday, the EPA raised the amount of ethanol allowed in gasoline from 10 percent to 15, showing there is still strong support for these policies.) The film notes that ethanol remains controversial partly because it is seen as a means to lower dependence on foreign oil, but requires oil to produce the fertilizer that goes into growing the corn needed to make this alternative fuel. One researcher notes that it takes eight gallons of fossil fuel to produce 10 gallons of ethanol. Indeed, the film raises tough questions–many of which are not new to the discussion. So what motivated the university to call out the dogs?

Funding versus research

Not long after the news broke that Troubled Waters was being held up, it came to light that Vice President of University Relations Karen Himle was behind the film’s purgatory. This information was notable because her husband John Himle is president of Himle Horner, a public relations firm that represents the Minnesota Agri-Growth Council, a group that promotes both ethanol production and industrial agriculture practices. More troubling, as El Dragón at Fair Food Fight points out, is the fact that Cargill–which is a key player in ethanol production–has its VP on the University of Minnesota’s board. And that the U of M also has a building on its St. Paul campus named for Cargill. In addition, the university has had funding put at risk by its research before, and so could be trigger-happy. Minnesota Public Radio reports:

In 2008, two Minnesota Soybean groups threatened to pull $1.5 million in funding after the U of M released a study that said using soybeans and other crops for bio-fuels could worsen global warming.

Where research funding originates has become a major issue for deciding what will be researched. Currently, as I’ve written before, matching funds from outside the government are required to get USDA research grants–which allows corporate interests to affect the research taken on. And when USDA has performed ground-breaking research that has the potential to change policy, it has often been played down by those in high places. This influence bought by agribusiness has particularly been a problem at land-grant universities, where a lot of the agricultural research is taking place.

Controversies around agriculture at universities are not new, but it has become more frequent in recent years, as the public becomes more aware of food production methods and industrial agriculture groups feel threatened by the pressure to change. Just last fall Michael Pollan was scheduled to give a solo lecture at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo when Harris Ranch Beef Company Chairman David E. Wood threatened to cut off $500,000 in funding to the university if he was allowed to do so. In response, the university changed its program to a panel discussion, which included industrial agriculture-friendly professor Gary Smith of Colorado State University and large-scale organic farmer Myra Goodman of Earthbound Farm. Pollan’s book The Omnivore’s Dilemma was also the source of ire for industrial agriculture proponents when it was selected as “common reading” last summer for incoming freshmen at Washington State University.

All of this added controversy is doing one thing that cannot be denied: bringing more attention to the issues at hand by driving interest in reading the books and seeing the films at the eye of the storm. As for Troubled Waters, I highly recommend you take the opportunity to see it for yourself. It is unique in that it puts a face on the farmers at the heart of the discussion, gives a broader picture of the issues at hand, and outlines options–including one community’s thriving alternative to ethanol–for building a more sustainable food system.

The film can be purchased from The Bell Museum. Watch the intro here:

I recently had the honor of presenting for our nation’s top producing farmers in Chicago at the Top Producer Seminar, sponsored by Cargill and Pioneer. I was scheduled to present with Monsanto’s VP of Sustainable Yield, but a few days before the presentation was told that he had moved to China and that there was no one to take his place. I then had the privilege of spending the afternoon in an incredibly insightful discussion with the farmers, many of whom are Monsanto’s customers, who are remarkable fathers, grandfathers, and businessmen.

As I walked into the room for that presentation, I was greeted with “Welcome to the Lions’ Den.” As I found the courage to take the stage, I shared that according to the USDA, farm income was down 35% in 2009. I then shared that Monsanto is reporting, in forward looking statements to Wall Street analysts based on projected sales that they have asked for from the farmers, that Monsanto is expecting gross margins in Q2 2010 of 62% and that they are expecting to drive up the price mix of their products, corn and soy, by 8-10%. I also shared that according to these forward looking statements, Monsanto expects to expand their glyphosate revenue to an estimated $1 billion in gross profit by 2012, further enabling Monsanto to drive R&D into seeds and to price those seeds at a premium – further driving price increases on the farm.

And then I listened.

What I learned from these remarkable men and women is simply jaw dropping.

Due to Monsanto’s contracts with seed companies, farmers are now bound by the threat of a lawsuit if they speak out regarding farm practices. As third and fourth generation farmers, inheriting their grandfathers’ lands, their corn crops are no longer regulated by the FDA but by the EPA due to the insecticidal proteins they now contain, and they are subject to rising, unregulated costs never before seen in farming – contractual fees, trait fees, licensing fees and royalty fees and germ plasm fees associated with a technology that has been engineered into seeds designed to enhance Monsanto’s bottom line.

As I listened to the farmers and learned about their trade practices, I could not help but think of AT&T and the Bell System which for years functioned as a regulated monopoly until an antitrust investigation resulted in its break-up, as the practices employed by Monsanto on the farm, rival the fee structure that the phone company once had in place.

As our dialogue grew, we learned that together, we could affect remarkable change.

So in collaboration with our nation’s leading farmers to address the patents, licenses and royalties fees now being engineered into our food supply designed to enhance the profitability of the world’s largest agrichemical corporation , here are 8 steps that the USDA and the Department of Justice could take to address the financial impact that these practices are having on the farm:

1. As was done with AT&T, re-establish Monsanto and its subsidiaries into separate companies; separating the germ plasm and technology divisions into independent entities
2. Establish precedence that these newly established entities do not collect trait fees, royalty fees, licensing fees or other forms of income from each other, then they should not be allowed to collect these tech fees from the independent companies
3. Have Monsanto refund the money collected from the independent seed companies as retribution for the fact that the same fees were not charged to their partners and subsidiaries.
4. Require that all companies (Monsanto, DuPont, Syngenta etc.) supply genetically treated and untreated seeds and technology to the public in order to give the farmers a free market from which to choose how much the farmer wants to spend on a bag of corn or beans given that the current practice involves the blending of the best genetics into melting stock corns, so the companies can harvest more profit.
5. Establish an oversight committee with one term limits made up of independent seed companies and with multi nationals in an effort to prevent monopolistic price increases in the cost of corn and soy production that will impact food price inflation at the retail level.
6. Structure federal subsidies so that taxpayer dollars are used to subsidize and provide marketing and insurance programs for the growth of commodities (corn and soybean crops) that are grown without the use of synthetically engineered chemical ingredients
7. Reduce the fees charged to farmers growing crops without synthetic, chemical and genetically engineered ingredients that they must pay in order to certify that their crops are free of these ingredients (fees are paid to certifiers, not to the USDA National Organic Program).
8. Provide the same level of marketing assistance and crop insurance programs to farmers growing crops free of synthetic and chemical ingredients.

In a world in which food security is as much of an issue as nutrition, the establishment of a level playing field on the farm is vital to the health of our food system. And while the lack of federal oversight and regulation of trade practices on the farm has enhanced Monsanto’s profitability drivng shareholder value, its costs are being externalized not only onto our nation’s farmers but also onto the 300 million American eaters.

We are all stakeholders in our food supply and together, we can affect remarkable change for farmers, families and food.

The message was one of hope, the words of a newly elected President echoing the Populism of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the promise of John F. Kennedy.  It stopped there, the delivery of the promise fell short.

We have gotten a New Deal, albeit one that is more protective of those who caused the economic and agricultural crises than of those who suffer from them.  We have also gotten a new version of  “The Best and the Brightest” in the Obama Administration and their faulty counsel extends beyond war into food and trade policy.

The campaign promises were not worth the notepads they are written on. The promises were broken and business at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will carry on much as it did during the Bush Administration.

Instead of going outside the agribusiness and agrochemical industries, Obama has kept the revolving door spinning and appointed the very lobbyists and special interests he said would find no home in his administration.

Monsanto stalwarts Michael Taylor, special assistant to the FDA Commissioner for food safety and Roger Beachy, head of National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA).

Rajiv Shah, head of U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) where his pro-biotech leanings will continue to be pushed on the developing world. Perhaps it is a good fit, as  President Obama noted “The mission of USAID is to advance America’s interests by strengthening our relationships abroad.”  However, advancing America’s interests and giving real aid to those in need are not the same thing. Advancing interests implies control and empire building.

Islam Siddiqui, Chief Agriculture Negotiator, office of U.S. Trade Representative, is a particularly troubling nomination. He is no friend of consumers, considering his most recent employment at CropLife America (CLA), the pesticide industries main trade association. As a registered lobbyist and vice president of regulatory affairs, Siddiqui was responsible for setting and selling  CLA’s international and domestic agenda which, simply put, was to weaken regulations on pesticides and agricultural chemicals worldwide.

He is no friend of farmers either, and not just organic farmers, even though he has a  long history of distaste for organic agriculture. He promotes agribusiness, chemical companies, processors and grain marketers who make their profits by buying low, processing and selling high. In his world, a farmers job is to maintain corporate profits.

As an unabashed ‘free trader” he is a strong supporter of the World Trade Organization and its ability to strong-arm countries into accepting unwanted U.S. imports. He openly derided the European Union’s rejection of hormone-treated beef, Japan’s desire to mandate labeling of Genetically Modified (GM) food and he pushed to permit pesticide testing on children. In his world consumers should be forced to accept whatever food products are thrown at them.

Forced trade, telling countries they must accept our products whether they want them or not is not trade, it is nothing short of blackmail.

His “public service”  career has been dedicated to selling more pesticides and GM seed to farmers world-wide and easing restrictions on their use. The beneficiaries of these policies were not farmers or consumers but the agribusiness corporations that Siddiqui worked for. That is not public service, that is promoting private interest.

Siddiqui has not worked in the best interests of farmers or consumers, rather he has consistently promoted the interests of multi-national corporations, grain companies, meat processors and chemical companies over those of the farmer or consumer. If appointed, why should we believe that that the leopard will suddenly be changing its spots ?

President Obama noted as a candidate “We’ll tell ConAgra that it’s [USDA] not the Department of Agribusiness. We’re going to put the peoples interests ahead of the special interests.” Just another empty promise.

Advocates of large scale agriculture see Pollan as the enemy, they believe he stands against everything they see as the future of agriculture. Pollan however is not an absolutist, his basic premise is that people need to think more about their food; where it was grown, how it was grown, was the farmer paid fairly, is it good for you?

Pollan wants people to think about cooking, about food freshness and flavor, about the dinner table as more than a “filling station.”

Knowing your food is not a radical concept, and it should not be a frightening concept. Knowledge is power, the more we know, the better choices we can make.

Farmers should have nothing to hide, and those most upset with Pollan’s theories on eating, tout their large scale farming methods as being models of efficiency, environmental protection, animal welfare and safe food.

Still, they fear his thoughts being mainstream. Granted, Pollan is not a farmer, and does not know all the intricacies of farming; he does not claim to. However, those who denounce him do not know the intricacies of the local, regional and organic farming he advocates.

So, why are they afraid of what he has to say? Pollan admits there is no one right way to farm, there is no one system that will work for all farmers. He maintains that all farmers need to make a living yet be mindful of how they farm, how they raise their animals and how they maintain the environment. If Pollan has an argument with agriculture, it is not with farmers, it is with agribusiness.

Author Wendell Berry notes that “Agribusiness is immensely more profitable than agriculture.” Any farmer knows that the corporate owners of seed, chemicals, fertilizer and the buyers of grain, livestock and milk always seem to make a profit; farmers do not.

Over the past 60 years farmers have seen competition in the market place steadily disappear as  corporate mergers concentrated all aspects of agriculture into the hands of a few multinational corporations.

Their profit comes at the expense of the farmer, the farm worker, consumer safety and the environment.

While farmers defend themselves against what they see as an attack by Pollan, they are really defending agribusiness. When they say they love their Roundup Ready corn, the hormones and the chemicals they are promoting the corporations that always make a profit whether the farmers win or lose.

When farmers disparage small-scale ecological agriculture because it “will never feed the world” they conveniently forget that conventional agriculture has not fed the world either, despite 60 years of promises to do so. They also ignore the findings of IAASTD that indicate the old paradigm of industrial agriculture is a thing of the past.

The industrial model sources food from the world, pits farmer against farmer in a race to the bottom. Globalized commodities converted into processed nutritionally empty foods, make corporations rich, Americans obese, and developing countries destitute.

Pollan just wants farmers and consumers to think. Agribusiness is rich and persuasive, they own both ends of the market place and they want to keep it that way. When people think about what they eat and what they grow, chances are, eventually, they will make the right choice.

Hunger looks on the surface to be the most bipartisan policy issue on our collective plates. We can all agree that the fact that hunger persists today is a global tragedy and that something needs to be done about it. But from there the discussion diverges into two distinct schools of thought.

The thinking that has been dominant since Norman Borlaug was sent to Mexico with his hybrid wheat in the 1940s has been that hunger is related to a lack of food supply. Those who espouse this thinking believe that through research and technology taking place behind the closed doors of corporations, this crisis can be solved. But despite a lax regulatory environment, bucket loads of marketing that confuses the public on the issues, a revolving door bringing former private sector employees into positions of policy making, and control over the research of their techniques and products — corporations still have yet to find any long term solutions to our global hunger woes. In fact, more people are food insecure today than they were when Borlaug (who died just over a week ago) took up the hunger gauntlet, and the argument could be made that it was his work was a short term solution that directly contributed to growing the population, increasing and pushing off the inevitable suffering to the future.

The Global Harvest Initiative falls squarely into this first category. DuPont, Monsanto, ADM and John Deere realize the days of jaw-dropping profits are numbered if they don’t change tactics. So under the guise of humanitarianism, these giants have come together and invited receptive politicians like Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN) with the distinct strategy of furthering their aims worldwide: to these corporations, the US has been conquered by industrial agriculture (it may be worth noting that 40 million US citizens are currently food insecure) — so now they must spread what isn’t working here abroad to continue to make ever larger profits.

The opposing ideology on creating food security in the world is to place the focus on equity — when food is first a right, not just a commodity, we stop thinking about it solely in economic terms. Therefore the focus shifts to creating the pathways for access to food — because right now there is enough food grown in the world to feed the world, it is just not getting into mouths.

By their own admission, these four companies are spending “$9 million a day in research and development.” After all the money that has been spent on shiny new technologies, we are still far from feeding the hungry. In addition, the USDA’s grants for research almost always require matching funds of 50% or more, meaning a grantee often goes knocking on the doors of the private sector, which is willing to invest in research that suits its interests. We must ask ourselves: has leaving research up to the big corporations historically resulted in an equal share of wealth?

A reliance on technology alone means that local, not-so-profitable means of addressing hunger are ignored. Most often, farmers in developing nations cite infrastructure, like new roads, and access to markets as the biggest barriers to food access. The Green Revolution assumed that genetically modified seed would save the day, but in fact it has only created the conditions that increased soil and environmental degradation, contributed to health issues in local populations, and produced more dependence on petroleum and corporate products. Is it fair for one country to come into another with the products of its economy and thereby create future dependence when there are more self-sufficient, locally adapted answers on the ground?

Lugar has been in the Senate for over 30 years, and serves as the ranking Republican member of the Senate Agriculture Subcommittee on Hunger, Nutrition and Family Farms, and is also a ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee. In that time, he has become the go-to person on hunger issues. Everyone in the Senate defers to Lugar on hunger, and most have been unwilling to stand up to him, even when he is making a bad decision — like prioritizing GMO technology in the Lugar-Casey Global Food Security bill. (Check out Elanor Starmer’s take on the bill here.) Lugar is also a big recepient of agribusiness campaign donations — he received $376,000 from agribusiness (dwarfed only by the catagory ‘other’ $594K, finance $587K and lawyers & lobbyists $482K) between 2003-2008 according to OpenSecrets.org. And today, he will be the keynote speaker at the Global Harvest Initiative symposium, further displaying his support for the industrial agriculture complex.

Another speaker is Dan Glickman, former Secretary of Agriculture under Bill Clinton who originally signed off on GM seeds as “substantially equivalent” to other seeds, and who continues to be a GMO apologist a decade later. To that end, he will be giving a speech entitled, “The Politics of Agriculture: Breaking the Commercial Vs. Small-holder Myth.”

Also look out for former Gates Foundation ‘New Green Revolution’ pusher Rajiv Shah, who now serves as Under Secretary of Research, Education and Economics and as Chief Scientist at the USDA speaking about the role of technology in food security, and then stay tuned for what promises to be a boilerplate CEO panel discussion.

You can watch the meeting yourself on the live webcast, beginning at 9am today and going through 5pm. Then, contact your senators and tell them to take on Lugar’s status quo, agribusiness-as-saviour-for-starving-masses ideology.

Last week, The New York Times reported that this administration has said it will take a harder line on anti-trust legislation, in diverse sectors of the economy including agriculture.  Perhaps its premature to tell what this will look like, but enforcing the laws that we already have on the books would be a great start to building a better food system.

This is because the largest sectors of the agribusiness world (grain, meatpacking, biotechnology, etc) are monopolizing food from seed to supermarket shelf and thereby deciding what we can (and can’t) buy and eat across this country, and by extension, the world.

These are the companies that are trying to efficiently process tens of thousands of cows per day — cows that have been lined up in Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) and fed grain (more efficient than using land to feed them their natural diet of grass), pumped with hormones and other antibiotics to keep them from dying, which means a glut on the market of cheap (anti-biotic-filled) beef. And these are the companies that are creating the seeds — those seeds that the farmer can’t even save for fear of litigation — to grow the crops that require the use of their pesticides, and which produce a proliferation of fast food.

Yes, efficiency is the bottom line in our current agricultural system. Not safety, not health, or least of all taste; no, for a corporation that is beholden first to it’s shareholders, its all about the quickest way to get to the bottom line. Besides exacerbating obesity, heart disease and diabetes cases, this kind of thinking can only be limited in its long term ability to maintain itself, because it refuses to take a holistic approach to creating goods for the common good. In other words, we know it can’t be sustained, and therefore it is not sustainable.

But these mega-companies aren’t fully to blame, because this is what our economic system has been set up to do for thirty years or more: build a conflagration of trusts.

Will Obama pull a Teddy Roosevelt and begin a new era of trust-busting? Here’s hoping he will, and that he begins with Big Ag.

Last week on The Leonard Lopate Show, when he was asked how taking a harder line on anti-trust law could effect the food industry, Michael Pollan responded:

“It’s very significant, actually, because you have more concentration in the food industry than in just about any other industry. Most anti-trust experts say that if 4 [or fewer] companies control 40% or more of a marketplace, it’s not competitive. And in food we have that in meatpacking, [where] there are 4 companies that control 85% of the beef, [and in] seed production, fertilizer production… there is this tight little hourglass in the food industry, [which means] lots of farmers, very few buyers, which forces farmers to take prices, they have no control over prices at all. So if indeed we were to push an anti-trust agenda in the food industry, it would be the best thing for farmers and the best thing for consumers.”

In other words, there are only a handful of people pulling the strings of our food system. And something as fundamental as food should not be so minimally represented, for food safety and health reasons, but because it also violates our human rights.

To this I ask, is this food system not an oligopoly, a market form most at risk for collusion? all the more reason to investigate the mega-firms that form through the process of mergers.

That “hourglass” concept Pollan mentioned comes from William Heffernan and Mary Hendrickson’s report Consolidation in the Food and Agriculture System (1999) [PDF], which revealed the “food chain clusters” forming through constant mergers within the food system, and also gave the first comprehensive data on concentration ratios of each firm in the food sector. (An updated version from 2007 is here [PDF].)

One of the biggest fall-outs of this phenomenon has been the price paid in rural America. From Heffernan and Hendrickson’s report:

“In the past when family businesses were the predominant system in rural communities, researchers talked of multiplier effects of three or four. Newly generated dollars in the agricultural sector would circulate in the community, changing hands from one entrepreneurial family to another three or four times before leaving the rural community.  This greatly enhanced the economic viability of the community.

Large non-local corporations… see labor as just another input cost to be purchased as cheaply as possible.  The “profits” then are allocated to return on management and capital and are usually taken from the rural community.  They go to the company’s headquarters and are then sent to all corners of the globe to be reinvested in the food system.  One can ask the question, why were agriculturally based rural communities, with an ample natural resource base, more economically viable than mining based rural communities which also had an ample natural resource base?  The answer lies primarily with the economic structure of the major economic base.  Increasingly, our agriculturally based communities, like regions with major poultry operations, are looking like mining communities.”

Having an hourglass of production power also means the creation of giant facilities to produce our food as fast as possible. E coli bacteria present in a giant shared sink with thousands of servings of spinach has the potential to do more harm than a similar, isolated incident on a small farm would. In creating factory-like facilities to process and package our food, we are exponentially increasing the risks of food contamination. This is the single best argument for decentralizing the food system.

But yes, there is yet still another reason to bust up these trusts: agribusiness has had excessive influence on our government. Represented by a billion dollar lobby in Washington, agribusinesses have maintained a revolving door bringing lobbyists, lawyers and board members into powerful public positions. One of the other problems that arises when mega-companies begin to influence government in this way is that they then become “too big to fail,” when we should be asking ourselves (to quote Mike Lux) if they were “too big to exist” in the first place.

However it happened, the facts are clear: Cargill, ADM, Monsanto, Tyson and Smithfield are probably breaking the law, and that law needs to be enforced. It may be that the government for too long has been complicit in creating predatory pricing via billions of dollars in subsidies handed out to the factory farmers of mostly genetically modified corn and soy, but I would like our new administration to take a good look at possible price fixing; aggressive marketing, especially to children; intimidation practices, including Monsanto’s intimidation of farmers who have been found to have GMO contamination in their fields, also their intimidation of seed cleaners, and of previous governments; barriers to entry, for example, the assumption of massive amounts of debt on the part of the farmer to build CAFO facilities and thus getting trapped in a contractual agreement with Smithfield, Tyson, etc; and tying, for instance, Round-Up Ready seeds require the use of Round-Up herbicides, meaning that both markets are cornered by Monsanto.

It’s time to admit that hyper-efficiency is not working. It may seem counter-intuitive, but being a little less efficient creates room for checks and balances. We need redundancy, and some fostered competition. It is the only way to assure the health of our nation and the safety of our food supply.

The first sign of change is from the world’s largest snack-food company, Frito-Lay. They have initiated “Lay’s Local”, which focuses on 80 “local” farmers from 27 states. Frito-Lay’s Web site has a Chip Tracker that allows interested consumers to enter their zip code and product code in order to find out where the potatoes came from. Although Frito-Lay can’t claim the potatoes are locally grown, the advertising campaign hides the corporation behind the aura of U.S. farmers.

The second is the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation’s announcement of a newly formed Center for Food and Animal Issues. The Center’s strategy appears to be to categorize feedlot operators as just another group of people that supports animals, just like pet owners, hunters, supporters of zoos and local animal welfare organizations. “Ultimately, our goal is to assure that people who rely on animals, either physically, emotionally or economically, have the right to do so,” said Ohio Farm Bureau Federation executive vice president Jack Fisher. The impetus for the Center came after pork, poultry and veal housing legislation was introduced into state legislatures around the country, and in particular the passing of California’s Proposition 2, the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act.

And finally, CropLife.com has announced a call to action to protest the planting of an organic garden on the White House lawn. This crop protection industry organization congratulates First Lady Michelle Obama for her effort to raise food and celebrate agriculture, but takes issue with the garden being organic. Their Web site asks “What message does that send to the non-farming public about an important and integral part of growing safe and abundant crops to feed and clothe the world — crop protection products?”

So why do I get giddy about these typical, calculated attempts to manipulate public opinion? Because I think about what we were debating just ten years ago, and how dramatically the conversation has changed in a positive direction.

Ten years ago the hot issue in the agriculture world was genetically modified crops. And despite the many legitimate concerns that were raised about health and environmental unknowns, as well as the alarming consolidation of the seed industry, roundup ready soybeans and other genetically modified crops swept across the Midwest largely unimpeded. Opponents were portrayed as petty reactionaries that were oblivious to the challenge of “feeding the world”.

The last part of the 1990s was also a time of incredible devastation in rural America. Crop prices were reaching depression-era levels, and the promises of the 1996 “Freedom to Farm” bill were nowhere to be seen. I sat through countless forums where agribusiness professionals told the farming community to relax, soon the incredible buying power of China will make low crop prices a thing of the past. Unfortunately, we spent years with most commodity prices well below the cost of production, and neither China nor any other part of the world corrected the situation for us.

Perhaps it was my lack of imagination, but I never dreamed that we could have possibly made as much progress toward community-based food systems as we have in the past decade. “Locally grown” is the hottest food trend for 2009, so hot that a leader in the corporate snack food industry wants to get in on the act. Ten years ago, someone concerned about the humane treatment of animals had to work hard to find acceptable meat and poultry; now the confined livestock industry is back on its heels because of California’s proposition 2, the excessive use of antibiotics, and continued problems with manure pollution.

Most remarkable has been the explosion in interest in gardening and backyard livestock.  The crop protection industry’s rather lame objection to an organic garden on the White House lawn reveals the difficult position that the industry is in. Who can really be against local organic production that is efficient, nutritious and cost-effective, while at the same time provides exercise and often builds community?

By no means do I mean to diminish the challenges ahead of us. As the Frito-Lay campaign demonstrates, we need to remain vigilant to make sure that words like organic and locally grown mean what the public thinks it means. Far too many people around the world and in the U.S. continue to suffer from hunger and diet-related diseases. But people are no longer willing to let a component of their lives as critical as the food system rest in the control of agribusiness corporations.

Many more people are empowered to make decisions about their family’s food, and a lot of hands are getting dirty in the fresh spring soil. Instead of us trying to create space in the corporate food system for alternative food and farming practices, the agribusiness industry is trying to create space for itself in the thriving community-based food systems. This is a welcome transition.

It’s almost difficult to choose which one is the worst of the monster problems with the Disney/USDA partnership. First, there’s a terrible problem with Pinocchio in general. As a film, Pinocchio is a bizarre acid trip with a wildly complicated and disturbing subtext, more a prettily drawn nightmare than anything else. It’s a violent tale of man-boy love that involves a singin’ & dancin’ cricket, a murderous whale, a goldfish, a mute cat, a fairy, and a Coachman who lures little boys to Pleasure Island. The lead character, Pinocchio, is literally a spineless creature devoid of all moral fiber who is repeatedly drawn into all manner of excruciating situations in which he always makes the wrong choice. And Pleasure Island is filled with “real” boys who are gambling, smokin,’ drinkin’ and committing acts of vandalism. They’re eventually turned into donkeys who go to work in salt mines. When it debuted in 1940, Pinocchio became enormously popular primarily for its then-astonishing technical brilliance in animation, rather than because it was a bracing tale of redemption and love.

From a contemporary standpoint, Pinocchio has little to offer children in terms of life lessons–and it certainly offers no lessons about food (unless being swallowed by a whale somehow qualifies…). And as a role-model character for children to identify with, Pinocchio is just bad, bad, bad throughout the flick. So it just has to be asked: Why choose a lying, naughty puppet to attempt to get children to eat more healthfully? What kind of whack message does this send? And here’s another excellent point: Pinocchio dies in the Disney film. He doesn’t turn into a Real Boy because he eats healthy food, he dies. He’s brought back to life as a Real Boy by the Blue Fairy. There’s no food involved. Hey, where’s the Religious Right when you need ‘em?

Second, direct marketing anything to children with storybook/film/TV characters has been the subject of grave debate for at least a decade. Many studies have pointed to the deleterious effects of consumerism on children, and the long and continuing association of popular/animated characters with unhealthful foods is gradually being phased out by forward-thinking corporations that have responded to parents’ demands. The Disney company itself dropped McDonald’s from its character-food partnerships last year. Is it really wise to renew the use of characters to promote any kind of eating? And this “policy” also goes against Ag Secretary Vilsack’s own statements that food should be regarded as energy. If food is energy and thus utilitarian, what’s wrong with teaching about food as food? Why do we need naughty animated characters to get in on the act? Why do we need to romanticize food at all? Most children know so little about food in general–how it’s grown, how it’s prepared–that adding in twisted animated creatures seems like an exceptionally perverted way to get this point across. But maybe Vilsack has other goals here. Vilsack’s nom as Secretary of Agriculture was hotly protested by all those who worried about his deep connections to Big Ag and industrialized corporate food giants, in particular Monsanto. How much of Disney’s food atheir theme parks and resorts is sourced from Big Ag giants like Monsanto and Dupont, Cargill or Archer Daniels Midland? How much of Disney’s food is processed, laden with pesticides, non-sustainable, or genetically engineered? Partnering the USDA with Disney gives both sides a free pass to continue to explore and exploit least-favorable food and ag practices, doesn’t it? All under the guise of healthy eating for children, of course.

Third, the Food Pyramid as the best model for healthy eating is still the subject of great debate. The government recently flipped the pyramid on its side and added an exercise element to it after years of criticism, to account for the fact that the pyramid just ain’t that great. In comparison to the government sponsored food advisories in other countries, the US falls very short. But perhaps a lying puppet can promote exercise, too? Or maybe the Blue Fairy? She flies around a lot…. And, too, there are at least twelve different versions of the US Pyramid in existence, which are based on regional, socioeconomic and cultural differences. Is a lying white boy puppet really the right character to reach the children most at risk for obesity about healthy eating, if we put aside the very idea that the film this campaign is based on is entirely morally bankrupt?

Lastly…Bizzy V is privileged to be the Ag Secretary for the most scrutinized eater on the planet, so what’s wrong with Brand Obama? Not Obama-shaped cookies, necessarily, but the idea that what The Obamas eat can have a positive impact on the rest of the country. And while there are all kinds of reasons that much of the Obamas’ private eating should remain private, a single photo of Barack and Michelle holding fresh veggies would go much further than Pinocchio characters promoting “healthy” eating. Brand Obama has caused a huge bump in the sale of American products around the globe, and we know school kids loooove Bam and Michelle…. It’s a far better idea than using animated characters from a questionable fictional source.

Very happily for both Bizzy V and Disney, March 10 just happens to be the 70th anniversary of the animated film version of Pinocchio, so both sides of the devil’s partnership get lots of excellent publicity; the movie is being released on new tek platforms next week, so look for a flood of Pinocchio-related hysteria. As ever, Bizzy V continues to disturb and delight Ob Fo, but the partnership of Disney with USDA is more dangerous than it is hilarious. An excellent line from the film, uttered by The Coachman, could apply to Bizzy V: Give a bad boy enough rope, and he’ll soon make a jackass of himself. Policies like the Food Pyramid/USDA partnership are the worst kind of jackholedom.

*A little film that’s even more scary than Pinocchio: From Freedom Underground, a brief history of Vilsack & Agribusiness. Narrator Jack Blood gravely dislikes Barack, but everything onscreen about Vilsack is true. Click here to watch.

*H/T to Bonnie at The Ethicurean and Jill Richardson at La Vida Locavore for ongoing inspiration…