The
modern, highly centralized, factory farm model of raising and slaughtering
hogs, cows, etc., has shown its weaknesses exceedingly well lately:
. . . This unhealthy degree of concentration
was not always so. It began as a strategic project of Nelson Rockefeller and
the Rockefeller Foundation after World War II. The idea was to create a
corporate strictly-for-profit vertical integration and cartelization of the
food chain as John D. Rockefeller had done with Standard Oil and petroleum.
Rockefeller money funded two Harvard Business School professors. John H. Davis,
former Assistant Agriculture Secretary under Eisenhower, and Ray Goldberg, both
at Harvard Business School got financing from Rockefellers to develop what they
named “agribusiness.” In a 1956 Harvard Business Review article, Davis wrote that
“the only way to solve the so-called farm problem once and for all, and avoid
cumbersome government programs, is to progress from agriculture to
agribusiness.” iv
The Harvard group was part
of a Rockefeller Foundation four-year project in cooperation with economist
Wassily Leontieff called “Economic Research Project on the Structure of the
American Economy.” Ray Goldberg, an ardent proponent of GMO crops, later
referred to their Harvard agribusiness project as, “changing our global economy
and society more dramatically than any other single event in the history of
mankind.” v Unfortunately, he may have been not all wrong.
In fact what it has done
is to put control of our food into a tiny handful of global private
conglomerates in which the traditional family farmer has all but become a
contract wage employee or bankrupted entirely. In the USA today some industrial
cattle feedlots hold up to 200,000 cattle at a time driven by one thing, and
one thing only, and that is economic efficiency. According to USDA statistics,
the number of cow/calf ranch operations in the US has dropped from 1.6 million
in 1980 to less than 950,000 today. Similarly, the number of small
farmer/feeders – those who fatten the cattle in preparation for eventual
slaughter – has declined by 38,000. Today fewer than 2,000 commercial feeders
finish 87 percent of the cattle grown in the United States.
Food production, like
electronics, has become global, as cheap foods are mass packaged and shipped
worldwide. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, Russian shops
were flooded with Western agribusiness brand products from Nestle, Kelloggs,
Kraft and the like. Domestic farm production collapsed. Much the same has taken
place from India to Africa to South America as cheaper multinational products
drive out local farmers. China before the current crisis imported 60% of its
soybeans from US-controlled grain companies such as Cargill or ADM.
The system is essentially
one in which farming has transformed to become factories to produce protein. It
takes GMO corn and GMO soybeans to feed the animal, add vitamins and
antibiotics in massive amounts to maximize weight gain before slaughter. The
vertical integration of our food supply chain under globalization of the past
decades has created an alarming vulnerability to precisely the kind of crisis
we now have. During all past food emergencies production was local and regional
and decentralized such that a breakdown in one or several centers did not
threaten the global supply chain. Not today. The fact that today the United
States is far the world’s largest food exporter reveals how vulnerable the
world food supply has become. Coronavirus may have only put the spotlight on
this dangerous problem. To correct it will take years and the will to take such
measures as countries like Russia have been forced to do in response to
economic sanctions.
--Prof William Engdahl, https://journal-neo.org/2020/04/20/the-agribusiness-model-is-failing/
The problem, however,
isn’t one of supply but one of consolidation, according to Christopher Leonard,
author of “The Meat Racket.” Speaking to Bloomberg News, and as reported by
numerous news outlets, he said, “This is 100% a symptom of consolidation. We
don’t have a crisis of supply right now. We have a crisis in processing. And
the virus is exposing the profound fragility that comes with this kind of
consolidation.”
Tyson, JBS SA and Cargill
Inc. control the majority of U.S. beef, most of which gets processed in a
limited number of large plants. Because the processing is concentrated into a
small number of large facilities, a statement for the White House noted,
“[C]losure of any of these plants could disrupt our food supply and
detrimentally impact our hardworking farmers and ranchers.”
While the move to keep
meat and poultry processing plants open was met with criticism from unions
calling for increased protections for workers in the cramped conditions, the
White House cited statistics that closing one large beef processing plant could
lead to a loss of more than 10 million servings of beef in a day.
Further, the White House
noted that closing one processing plant can eliminate more than 80% of the
supply of a given meat product, such as ground beef, to an entire grocery store
chain.
--Dr Joseph Mercola, https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2020/05/12/are-meat-inspectors-spreaders-of-disease.aspx
There
are some solutions in view, however. Dr
Mercola notes one:
The Processing Revival and
Intrastate Meat Exemption (PRIME) Act would allow farmers to sell meat
processed at these smaller slaughtering facilities, allow states to set their
own meat processing standards and allow farmers to sell meat to consumers
without USDA approval. As noted by the Farm & Ranch Freedom Alliance:
“These facilities meet
state regulations as well as basic federal requirements. They are typically
very small with few employees. The extensive and complicated federal
regulations that apply to massive meatpacking facilities are neither needed nor
appropriate for these operations, which might process as much meat in an entire
year as the large facilities do in a single day.
Their small scale also
means that they are better able to provide necessary social distancing and
sanitation measures while safely continuing operations.”
In addition to improving
access to locally raised meat and reducing meat prices, the PRIME Act would
support income for small farmers while also helping establish vital
infrastructure in rural communities and reducing stress to animals caused by
long-distance hauling.
As it stands, consumers
who can’t pay for or store hundreds of pounds of meat from a share program are
unable to access meat from a custom slaughterhouse. Farmers are also unable to
sell locally raised meat processed at a custom slaughterhouse at local farmers
markets.
This, however, would
change under the PRIME Act, which could help solve short-term supply problems
as well as prompt changes that are needed in the long term. Rep. Thomas Massie,
R-Ky., who introduced the act, tweeted May 3, 2020:
“Thousands of animals will
be killed & wasted today instead of feeding families. Meanwhile Congress
takes an extended vacation. Pass the PRIME Act now to allow small American
owned meat processors to catch the ball that the Chinese, Brazilian, &
multinational processors dropped.”
--Ibid.
Here
at the South, the memory of better ways of animal husbandry do exist, even if
they are buried at present beneath the Olympic swimming pool sized manure pits
of the CAFO ‘farms’ operating on her land:
Yonder
is a description from one of Dixie’s homelands (Scotland) that ought to drive
all Southerners to weep tears of repentance before the Lord and before the
creatures He has made and given to our care:
Yet one more romantic
evocation of the era from Alexander Carmichael’s Carmina Gadelica paints
an irresistible bucolic scene:
“The milking-songs of the
people are numerous and varied. They are sung to pretty airs, to please the
cows and induce them to give their milk. The cows become accustomed to these
lilts and will not give their milk without them. This fondness of the Highland
cows for music induces owners of large herds to secure milkmaids possessed of
good voice and some ‘go.’ It is interesting and animating to see three or four
comely girls among a fold of sixty, eighty or a hundred picturesque Highland
cows on meadow or mountain slope. The moaning and heaving of the sea afar, the
swish of the wave on the shore, the caroling of the lark in the sky, the
unbroken song of the mavis on the rock, the broken melody of the merle in the
break, the lowing of kine without, the answering of calves within the fold, the
singing of the milkmaids in unison with the movement of their hands, and of the
soft sound of the snowy milk falling into the pail, the gilding of hill and dale,
the glowing of the distant ocean beyond, as the sun sinks into the sea of
golden glory, constitute a scene which the observer would not, if he could,
forget.”
--Katherine Czapp, https://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/traditional-diets/the-good-scots-diet/
--
Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England,
South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð,
unworthy though we are!
Anathema to the Union!
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