OPINION: COVID-19 Stimulus Must Help Farmers Rebuild Our Broken Food System—Not Prop Up Big Ag
The current crisis has brought the injustices of modern agribusiness to light.
There are no more lingering doubts—COVID-19 is a force to be reckoned with. In its might, it reveals enormous weaknesses in our food system. Whole supply chains are breaking down as slaughter plants slow or halt production due to outbreaks among workers. Dairy farmers are dumping thousands of gallons of milk down the drain. Animals are being emergency killed en masse on the farm. And farmers are struggling more than ever.
Our food system is failing consumers, workers, and farmers. The truth is that it has been for quite some time. I should know—for over 16 years I raised chickens for Pilgrim’s Pride, the nation’s second-largest chicken company. Now, fellow farmers and I work to expose the exploitative nature of modern agribusiness: The toll it takes on our families, our communities, our environment, and our lives. The COVID-19 crisis has only brought these injustices to light.
Panic buying caused a surge in demand for meat and dairy products, increasing revenues for agribusiness giants like Tyson Foods and Cargill. But as meat prices soar, farmers see prices for their animals falling, and the farmers I know haven’t seen a pay increase worth a dime. The industry’s recent market manipulations have even drawn suspicion from US senators, who are investigating possible illegal price fixing.
Federal agencies are determining how to spend billions of dollars in stimulus funds. Much of the nearly $24 billion slated for agribusiness is unlikely to reach small family farmers. Neither is the $16 billion in the USDA Coronavirus Food Assistance Program. Of the federal agricultural relief funds prompted by the US-China trade war, over half went to the top 10 percent of agricultural producers. JBS, a mega meat corporation based in Brazil, reported $482.5 million in profits for the fourth quarter of 2019, yet JBS is among the beneficiaries of the bailout. I have no doubt that the COVID-19 stimulus funds will be allocated similarly if we don’t speak up.
Times are extra tough for American farmers, but we’ve been struggling since way before COVID-19. Faced with few viable career paths in dying rural areas, many of us take on massive debt to set up livestock farms. Between 2012 and 2018, the Small Business Administration backed more than 1,500 loans averaging over $1 million each to poultry growers. We become bound by what some have termed “indentured servitude” by entering into unfair contracts with multibillion-dollar meat companies.
Despite promises of steady pay, many of us can’t make ends meet. Twenty percent of contract chicken farmers earn less than $19,000 per year, and nine in 10 farmers polled said that financial issues, business problems, or fear of losing their farms has impacted their mental health. Once you are in debt for the poultry rearing facility, it’s take what they give you—or lose your home and your farm. Throughout my time as a farmer for Pilgrim’s Pride, I never netted more than $7,000 in a year after paying the mortgage and other expenses related to the chicken operation.
But these numbers don’t paint the whole picture. I’ve known farmers so deep in debt they could barely pay their family’s medical bills, much less send their kids to college. Many farmers get in the business only to realize it’s a trap. Companies expect them to raise animals genetically destined for disease. One sick flock and you’re underwater. Just like the chickens themselves, farmers are regarded as completely expendable.
I got out of the chicken business. I’ve transitioned to growing industrial hemp, which requires substantially less water, eliminates pollution from animal waste, significantly reduces carbon emissions, and allows me to employ more people.
Countless other farmers want out too, but it’s hard to see the light of day, let alone consider launching a new business, when you’re buried under debt. Farmers need their own stimulus package, but not one that will further entrench the status quo. Rather than continuing to prop up Big Ag—whose practices are clearly failing us in this time of crisis—stimulus funds should help farmers transition out of industrial animal farming. We’ve got to help farmers participate in the effort to build a new food system that is resilient, sustainable, and healthy for everyone. COVID-19 is proving the unsustainability of our current system, with processing plants running slowly or not at all and animals being depopulated on farms as a result. Buying local from family farmers is much more sustainable and fairer to the farmers.
A great tragedy of our present situation is that the average American farmer is 58. This places him among the most vulnerable to COVID-19. What does it say about our society that we’ve abandoned our most vulnerable, not to mention our most essential workers, and the very people who put food on our plates?
Mike Weaver is a former poultry farmer who now runs a hemp farm, Redbud Hill Naturals. He has been president of the Contract Poultry Growers Association of the Virginias for the past 12 years.
Follow us
Republish!
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Want to republish a Modern Farmer story?
We are happy for Modern Farmer stories to be shared, and encourage you to republish our articles for your audience. When doing so, we ask that you follow these guidelines:
Please credit us and our writers
For the author byline, please use “Author Name, Modern Farmer.” At the top of our stories, if on the web, please include this text and link: “This story was originally published by Modern Farmer.”
Please make sure to include a link back to either our home page or the article URL.
At the bottom of the story, please include the following text:
“Modern Farmer is a nonprofit initiative dedicated to raising awareness and catalyzing action at the intersection of food, agriculture, and society. Read more at <link>Modern Farmer</link>.”
Use our widget
We’d like to be able to track our stories, so we ask that if you republish our content, you do so using our widget (located on the left hand side of the article). The HTML code has a built-in tracker that tells us the data and domain where the story was published, as well as view counts.
Check the image requirements
It’s your responsibility to confirm you're licensed to republish images in our articles. Some images, such as those from commercial providers, don't allow their images to be republished without permission or payment. Copyright terms are generally listed in the image caption and attribution. You are welcome to omit our images or substitute with your own. Charts and interactive graphics follow the same rules.
Don’t change too much. Or, ask us first.
Articles must be republished in their entirety. It’s okay to change references to time (“today” to “yesterday”) or location (“Iowa City, IA” to “here”). But please keep everything else the same.
If you feel strongly that a more material edit needs to be made, get in touch with us at [email protected]. We’re happy to discuss it with the original author, but we must have prior approval for changes before publication.
Special cases
-
Extracts. You may run the first few lines or paragraphs of the article and then say: “Read the full article at Modern Farmer” with a link back to the original article.
-
Quotes. You may quote authors provided you include a link back to the article URL.
-
Translations. These require writer approval. To inquire about translation of a Modern Farmer article, contact us at [email protected]
-
Signed consent / copyright release forms. These are not required, provided you are following these guidelines.
-
Print. Articles can be republished in print under these same rules, with the exception that you do not need to include the links.
Tag us
When sharing the story on social media, please tag us using the following: - Twitter (@ModFarm) - Facebook (@ModernFarmerMedia) - Instagram (@modfarm)
Use our content respectfully
Modern Farmer is a nonprofit and as such we share our content for free and in good faith in order to reach new audiences. Respectfully,
-
No selling ads against our stories. It’s okay to put our stories on pages with ads.
-
Don’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually.
-
You have no rights to sell, license, syndicate, or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of our material to any third parties. This means that you cannot actively publish or submit our work for syndication to third party platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. We understand that publishers cannot fully control when certain third parties automatically summarize or crawl content from publishers’ own sites.
Keep in touch
We want to hear from you if you love Modern Farmer content, have a collaboration idea, or anything else to share. As a nonprofit outlet, we work in service of our community and are always open to comments, feedback, and ideas. Contact us at [email protected].OPINION: COVID-19 Stimulus Must Help Farmers Rebuild Our Broken Food System—Not Prop Up Big Ag
by Mike Weaver, Modern Farmer
May 1, 2020
Modern Farmer Weekly
Solutions Hub
Innovations, ideas and inspiration. Actionable solutions for a resilient food system.
ExploreExplore other topics
Share With Us
We want to hear from Modern Farmer readers who have thoughtful commentary, actionable solutions, or helpful ideas to share.
Submit
Mike, I couldn’t have said it any better. It’s a travesty the way the “small” farmer is always put on the back burner. The vast majority of the population has NO idea how their food gets to them, nor do they particularly care. For those that do care, education is crucial. Our current system is set up to implode and the only way to “FIX” it is to support our local farmers and paying them a living wage for our food. The other option is to keep going down this path until it is too late…
This is sad reading, we need a radical change of food systems
I want to learn and to be able to assist farmers in learning a new way of life. Plant based lives. Growing and feeding the world and help repair the world from the abuse of putting meat on people’s plates.