Agriculture
Chair: Blanche Lincoln (D-AR)
- Max Baucus (D-MT)
- Michael Bennet (D-CO)
- Sherrod Brown (D-OH)
- Bob Casey (D-PA)
- Kent Conrad (D-ND)
- Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)
- Tom Harkin (D-IA)
- Amy Klobuchar (D-MN)
- Pat Leahy (D-VT)
- Ben Nelson (D-NE)
- Debbie Stabenow (D-MI)
- Saxby Chambliss (R-GA)
- Thad Cochran (R-MS)
- John Cornyn (R-TX)
- Chuck Grassley (R-IA)
- Mike Johanns (R-NE)
- Dick Lugar (R-IN)
- Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
- Pat Roberts (R-KS)
- John R. Thune (R-SD)
Appropriations
Chair: Daniel Inouye (D-HI) Ag Sub-Committee
Chair: Herb Kohl (D-WI)
- Byron Dorgan (D-ND)
- Dick Durbin (D-IL)
- Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)
- Tom Harkin (D-IA)
- Tim Johnson (D-SD)
- Ben Nelson (D-NE)
- Jack Reed (D-RI)
- Robert Bennett (R-UT)
- Christopher Bond (R-MO)
- Sam Brownback (R-KS)
- Thad Cochran (R-MS)
- Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
- Arlen Specter (R-PA)
Health, Education, Labor, & Pensions
- Chris Dodd (D-CT)
Agriculture
Chair: B Collin Peterson (D-MN)
V. Chair: B Tim Holden (D-PA)
B Joe Baca (D-CA)
- John Boccieri (D-OH)
B* Leonard Boswell (D-IA)
- Bobby Bright (D-AL)
B* Dennis Cardoza (D-CA)
- Travis Childers (D-MS)
B Jim Costa (D-CA)
- Henry Cuellar (D-TX)
- Kathy Dahlkemper (D-PA)
B Brad Ellsworth (D-IN)
- Debbie Halvorson (D-IL)
B Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-SD)
- Steve Kagen (D-WI)
- Larry Kissell (D-NC)
B Frank Kratovil (D-MD)
- Betsy Markey (D-CO)
B Jim Marshall (D-GA)
P Eric Massa (D-NY)
B Mike McIntyre (D-NC)
- Walt Minnick (D-ID)
B Earl Pomeroy (D-ND)
- Mark Schauer (D-MI)
- Kurt Schrader (D-OR)
B David Scott (D-GA)
B Zachary Space (D-OH)
- Timothy Walz (D-MN)
- Frank Lucas (R-OK)
- Bill Cassidy (R-LA)
- K. Michael Conaway (R-TX)
- Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE)
- Virginia Foxx (R-NC)
- Bob Goodlatte (R-VA)
- Sam Graves (R-MO)
- Timothy Johnson (R-IL)
- Steve King (R-IA)
- Robert Latta (R-OH)
- Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-MO)
- Cynthia Lummis (R-WY)
- Jerry Moran (R-KS)
- Randy Neugebauer (R-TX)
- Phil Roe (R-TN)
- Mike Rogers (R-AL)
- Jean Schmidt (R-OH)
- Adrian Smith (R-NE)
- Glenn Thompson (R-PA) *=House Organic Caucus member B=Blue Dog Democrat
Appropriations
Chair: Dave Obey (D-WI) Ag Sub-Committee
Chair: P Rosa DeLauro (D-CT)
- Sanford Bishop (D-GA)
* Allen Boyd (D-FL)
- Lincoln Davis (D-TN)
*P Sam Farr (D-CA)
*P Maurice D. Hinchey (D-NY)
P Jesse L. Jackson, Jr. (D-IL)
P Marcy Kaptur (D-OH)
- Jack Kingston (R-GA)
- Rodney Alexander (R-LA)
- Jo Ann Emerson (R-MO)
* Tom Latham (R-IA) *=House Organic Caucus member
P=Congressional Progressive Caucus
Education and Labor
P Chair: George Miller (D-CA)
- Jason Altmire (D-PA)
- Robert Andrews (D-NJ)
- Timothy Bishop (D-NY)
P Yvette Clarke (D-NY)
- Joe Courtney (D-CT)
- Susan Davis (D-CA)
P Marcia Fudge (D-OH)
P Raul Grijalva (D-AZ)
P Phil Hare (D-IL)
- Ruben Hinojosa (D-TX)
P Mazie Hirono (D-HI)
- Rush Holt (D-NJ)
- Dale Kildee (D-MI)
P Dennis Kucinich (D-OH)
P Dave Loebsack (D-IA)
- Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY)
P Donald Payne (D-NJ)
- Jared Polis (D-CO)
- Robert Scott (D-VA)
- Joe Sestak (D-PA)
- Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH)
P John Tierney (D-MA)
- Dina Titus (D-NV)
- Paul Tonko (D-NY)
P Lynn Woolsey (D-CA)
- David Wu (D-OR)
- Buck McKeon (R-CA)
- Judy Biggert (R-IL)
- Rob Bishop (R-UT)
- Bill Cassidy (R-LA)
- Michael Castle (R-DE)
- Vernon Ehlers (R-MI)
- Luis F Fortuno (R-PR)
- Brett Guthrie (R-KY)
- Peter Hoekstra (R-MI)
- Duncan D. Hunter (R-CA)
- John Kline (R-MN)
- Kenny Marchant (R-TX)
- Tom McClintock (R-CA)
- Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA)
- Thomas Petri (R-WI)
- Phil Roe (R-TN)
- Todd Russell Platts (R-PA)
- Tom Price (R-GA)
- Mark Souder (R-IN)
- GT Thompson (R-PA)
- Joe Wilson (R-SC) P=Congressional Progressive Caucus
Friday, some 2000 farmers, ranchers, and people who are otherwise involved in agriculture showed up in Colorado at a hearing held by the Department of Justice. The Obama administration sent its bigwigs (Secretary Vilsack and Attorney General Eric Holder), and many who attended were able to give public comments. At the core of the hearing was the so-called "GIPSA rule" - a proposed rule from the USDA that would ensure more fair competition in the livestock industry. (A lot of the details here are very "inside baseball" to the industry, but it seems that the basic gist of the GIPSA rule is that many anti-competitive practices that are now legal will no longer be.) Obviously those who are benefiting from the system as is do not WANT the system to be more fair. (I wrote about some of the dirty tactics used by beefpackers to screw individual producers at the link.)
Predictably, the American Meat Institute (AMI) came out with a statement after the hearing, claiming that economies of scale calls for larger (and thus, fewer) slaughterhouses and that the concentration in the beef industry has not increased since 1995 (which is patently false... the top 4 firms had 76% of the market in '95 compared ton 83.5% in 2005, and there have been more mergers and consolidation since then.).
On the other side of the spectrum, R-CALF USA came out with a statement today saying "independent beef producers who want some refereeing in the marketing game... No one in my circles wants a handout - just a chance to market their cattle in an open and transparent market." and "That is all these many hard-working people, the foundation of Rural America, desire: Enforce the rules."
I watched some of the hearing, when attendees were given 2 minutes apiece to make public comments. There was some support for the GIPSA rule, and some were opposed. Many seemed to come from Republican backgrounds and they just wanted the government to keep its hands out of their business, whether or not that is in their own best interest. It seems like, while some have pragmatic business reasons for opposing the GIPSA rule, others are ideologues who want the government uninvolved on principle, even if that means the big beefpackers can swindle them until they lose their family farms. Some said the solution is more free trade agreements (Colombia and Panama) and rigging up the Food Pyramid to tell Americans to eat more red meat.
I think an important part of the workshop to review will be what was said by the panels, and that will be available online at some point. Also, I hope someone kept a tally on the comments - how many were for the GIPSA rule, how many opposed, and was the split down the line between Cowboys vs. Packers, or not?
Transcripts and video of Friday's hearing will be available at the link, although they are not up yet.
Today's a BIG day for anyone who eats, although most people aren't aware. The U.S. Dept of Justice is holding one of their historic workshops about competition in agriculture, this one focusing on livestock. And EVERYONE is there. It's gonna be a crazy time.
For a bit of background, I would refer folks to check out some of the stuff put together by R-CALF, like this PDF on livestock market consolidation. They are fighting a big bunch of monkey business thrown at them by big beefpackers that should probably be illegal, if it isn't already. A few tactics they are up against are posted below, from another R-CALF briefing document.
I was initially going to title this "USDA Competition Reform Under Threat" but that won't get anyone's attention. The sum total of the impact of this story is that there's a proposed rule (details here) that would dramatically reform the livestock industry to make it more competitive and to take away the unfair advantages factory farms and meatpackers enjoy so that all farmers can fairly compete... and the meat industry is putting Congress and the USDA under heavy pressure to do away with this proposed rule before it goes into effect. The House Ag Committee, in turn, just totally grilled the USDA in a hearing this past week, and they are obviously willing to take action on behalf of the meatpacking and factory farm industries here. Congress NEEDS to hear from us. They need to know that we support fair competition and that we are FOR the proposed GIPSA rule.
I'm leaving Guadalajara tomorrow and likely won't have internet for the next week or so after that, so I can't follow up on this immediately. But I will follow up once I get back in order to provide more information on this so folks can write informed letters to the USDA and to Congress.
Often when non-farmers speak out about agriculture, we get painted as "anti-farmer." I've been outspoken about my dislike of concentration in the seed industry (and, for that matter, a number of industries in the agricultural sector) and I want to share a press release (below) with you from a number of farmer groups who are also upset about seed industry concentration and the resulting higher prices for the seeds they have to buy. The Farmer to Farmer Campaign on a Genetic Engineering has just put out a report on the subject called Out of Hand: Farmers face the consequences of a consolidated seed industry.
The group R-CALF USA is asking the U.S. government to block a proposed merger between JBS and Pilgrim's Pride. Agriculture is an extremely consolidated sector, with only a few major players at the top of practically every industry. But as concentrated as pork, chicken, and turkey each are, beef puts them all to shame. Now it looks like JBS is seeking to do the same in the broiler industry.
Beef was already topping the list back in 1990 when the top 4 companies controlled 72% of the market, but in recent years, a number of major mergers and acquisitions have really increased the power of the companies at the top. First JBS merged with Swift. At that point, here's how the market looked:
2007 Daily Slaughter Capacity
1. Tyson: 36,000 head
2. Cargill: 28,300 head
3. Swift & Co: 16,759 head
4. National Beef Packing Co: 13,000 head
Then JBS/Swift went after National Beef and Smithfield. The Smithfield merger went through - the National Beef one didn't. Now JBS wants to merge with Pilgrim's Pride, the largest broiler producer in the U.S. Pilgrim's Pride is based in Texas, where a favorite dish is "chicken-fried steak." I suppose this merger is an inversion of that - instead of making beef resemble a chicken, the merger would make the chicken industry resemble beef.
The Obama Administration's Dept of Justice has said they plan to go after monopolies in agriculture, specifically pointing to the seed and dairy industries. But if they want us to think they are serious about trust busting, they better do something about the meat packing industry as well.
I've posted R-CALF USA's statement about this merger below.
The Des Moines Register published a fascinating story on Saturday about a small-town Iowa grocer's lawsuit against the industry's top two wholesalers, SuperValu Inc. and C&S Wholesale Grocers. Gary's Foods filed suit eight months ago and was joined by a Maine grocer in January. What's at issue:
The class-action lawsuit seeks monetary damages equal to triple what grocers in the Midwest and New England allegedly have overpaid for food due to the lack of competition since September 2003. [...]
Court papers describe C&S and SuperValu as the nation's top two grocery wholesalers by dollar volume, with combined 2008 revenues in excess of $28 billion. Documents say the companies strongly competed against each other in New England for much of the late 1990s, but things changed dramatically after C&S purchased the assets of a bankrupt Midwestern wholesaler in 2003.
"Faced with the prospect of competing against C&S in the Midwest, SuperValu had one of two options: Either vigorously compete, which would have substantially reduced prices to retailers, or conspire with C&S to eliminate competition between the wholesalers," court papers say.
C&S ultimately sold its new Midwestern assets to SuperValu in September 2003 as part of a deal that also had C&S purchase all of SuperValu's distribution facilities in New England. But court papers allege that there was a separate, "secret noncompete agreement" signed at the same time - a deal that was not publicly disclosed and unknown to the plaintiffs until "a former SuperValu executive" disclosed its existence to them in late 2008.
The wholesalers are trying to have the lawsuit dismissed on procedural grounds. According to the Des Moines Register, a hearing is expected next month in a Minnesota court.
The Packers and Stockyards Act (PSA) of 1921 should - in theory - regulate competition in the livestock industry. However, in 2006, the Office of Inspector General and the Government Accountability Office both found out that - oops! - the USDA hadn't properly enforced the PSA for nearly a decade. To those who know much about the difficulties family farmers face in the livestock industry, this probably wasn't too much of a surprise. The meatpacking industry is highly consolidated (particularly the beef industry, in which 4 companies slaughter about 90% of all cattle in the U.S.) and they use a practice called captive supply (owning or controlling livestock via contracts) to keep the prices they pay to family farmers very low.
Read on, for the story of one rancher who tried to do something about this issue and ended up being retaliated against by Tyson...
I wrote earlier today about the dairy industry as a whole being in crisis. Which they are. Milk prices are at about 50% the cost of production - and unlike a factory, you can't turn off a cow. Well, you can kill it - and that's what's going to happen to a lot of dairy cows very soon.
But in addition to the problems with milk in general, the situation is even sadder for organic dairies right now. Because on top of the normal crunch they'd be feeling, they've got an enormous corporation (Dean, the maker of Horizon) rubbing salt in their wounds by CUTTING retail prices and offering discounts... all while threatening to cancel the contracts of dairy farmers and building a new factory farm!
Hundreds of thousands of America's dairy cows are being turned into hamburgers because milk prices have dropped so low that farmers can no longer afford to feed the animals.
Currently, farmers are getting about $.80 per gallon - HALF of the estimated $1.65 it costs per gallon to produce it. Meanwhile, consumers are paying about $3.67 per gallon (twice the cost of the milk, but four times what the farmer receives!) We've currently got 9.3 million dairy cows in our country, and more than 1.5 million of them could be headed to McDonalds before the year is up if prices don't change soon.
Dairy farmers don't price milk by the gallon. They go by the hundredweight (i.e. 100 lbs of milk), abbreviated cwt. The average price for 2008 was $17.44/cwt. Currently, it's at $9.30/cwt and some estimate it will fall even more in the near future, keeping below the break-even price for another six months!
But there's more! This article treats dairy as if it were a simple issue of supply and demand, mentioning decreased demand abroad for U.S. cheese and butter, and a drop in people eating out at home. Fair enough, but as I wrote in a previous diary, the link between supply and demand in dairy is broken. There's a major problem with anti-competitive behavior by a powerful few. And even if the issue WERE supply and demand - if we've all got oversupply killing our prices, then why can't we get together on this and stop using rbGH to lower supply and quit allowing foods to include imported (and crappy) milk protein concentrate (MPC) to increase demand???
Tyson may be able to sell chicken at less than it costs to produce it - they are also in the beef and pork businesses and they can profit there to stay solvent overall. Pilgrim's Pride only sells chicken - if they are forced to sell chicken at less than it costs to produce it, that's gonna hurt.
If this is truly the case and Philpott is right about Tyson's intent, this might lead to even MORE consolidation in the already-consolidated chicken industry (the largest 4 companies control 58.5% of the market). That's bad.
In another equally disturbing article about Tyson, Philpott reports on a recent interview with Don Tyson. In the interview, Tyson shares plans to expand operations overseas in India, China, and Brazil. Great, so our appetite for cheap chicken can pollute the rest of the world too.
Great news... kind of. The beef packing industry is INCREDIBLY consolidated. At the start of 2008, the four largest beef packers controlled 80% of the market. And then number 3 (JBS Swift) decided to merge with number 4 (National Beef) and number 5 (Smithfield). Would that have happened, the top 3 companies would have controlled 90% of the market.
It seems that the Smithfield merger is a go, but the National Beef merger is not. Why? Because the Department of Justice came to the same conclusion I (and many others) did:
The DOJ concluded that combining JBS-Swift and National Beef, the third- and fourth-largest U.S. beef packers, respectively, would result in lower prices paid to cattle suppliers and higher beef prices for consumers. In court documents, the department deal also would eliminate a "competitively significant" packer and place more than 80 percent of domestic cattle slaughter capacity in the hands of three companies: JBS, Tyson Foods Inc. and Cargill Inc., the department said.
A DOJ spokesman said the department is not challenging JBS's proposed purchase of Smithfield Beef Group, the nation's fifth-largest beef packer, or the Five Rivers cattle feeding operation.
