Farm Bill Priority #1: Fewer Factory Farms, More Grassfed Meat!

U.S. Senator Cory Booker (D-N.J.), a member of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, has reintroduced a package of bills geared towards reforming the country’s agriculture sector. One of these bills, the Farm System Reform Act, would mean the end of factory farming and more grassfed meat. The Farm System Reform Act:

• Untangles the wicked problem of factory farming by getting to its root: the power imbalance between the companies that control the meat industry and the family farmers who do their bidding;
• Makes the Big Four meatpacking companies liable for the waste, pollution and adverse health impacts of their factory farms; and
• Restores mandatory and meaningful country of origin labeling to protect American beef and pork farmers from unfair competition from overseas, while expanding this protection to dairy farmers.

Before we tell you more about what the Farm System Reform Act would do, let us tell you why we need it.

Life would be a lot better if we had more grassfed meat.

The American Grassfed Association lists the reasons grassfed meat is the healthy choice for people, communities, animals and the planet:

• Grassfed and pasture-based farming restores natural ecosystems and wildlife habitat, reduces reliance on petrochemicals, improves the soil with organic matter, and reduces greenhouse gasses, especially C02.
• Research shows that grassfed meat is lean, contains a high percentage of good fats – Omega 3s and CLA — and beneficial antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals.
• Small family farms provide jobs and strong economies in rural communities and create sustainable businesses for succeeding generations.
• Cattle, goats, sheep, and bison evolved to eat grass.Feeding them a diet of cereal grains creates an acidic environment in their digestive systems, and can lead to disease and the need for treatment with antibiotics.

This is the meat people want to eat. Sixty-two percent of Americans say they would prefer to eat grassfed meat.

But that’s not the meat U.S. farm policy is delivering to consumers.

The Farm Bill subsidizes corn-fed factory farms and does little to support ranchers and farmers who graze their animals from start to finish. 

Every ruminant animal in America spends some of its life on grass, but approximately 95 percent of the cattle in the US are still finished or fattened on grain for the last 25 to 30 percent of their lives.

The biggest obstacle to farmers and ranchers raising 100 percent grassfed beef is the processing bottleneck caused by the stranglehold the big-four meatpackers have over the industry.

American grassfed farmers also face competition from imported beef.

The problem has been so bad that imported beef has been falsely labeled “Product of the U.S.A.” On March 11, 2024, the U.S. Department of Agriculture finalized a rule that limits voluntary “Product of USA” or “Made in the USA” label claims to meat, poultry and egg products derived from animals that are actually born, raised, slaughtered and processed in the United States. The rule takes effect January 1, 2026. There is still no mandatory country of origin labeling for beef.

The Farm System Reform Act would tackle these obstacles by strengthening the Packers & Stockyards Act to crack down on the monopolistic practices of meatpackers and corporate integrators, making the companies that profit from pollution pay and restoring mandatory country-of-origin labeling requirements. 

The bill would also place an immediate moratorium on new factory farms and factory farm expansion and ban factory farming altogether as of 2041. 

Cracking Down on the Meat Monopoly

The meat monopoly set the prices. 

Cattle ranchers are at their mercy. According to Food & Power’s profile of the beef industry, “In many regions of the country, ranchers report finding as few as two buyers in a market, and increasingly these buyers do not compete against one another.”

Let’s face it. When the farmer is locked into having to go to one company for everything—to buy animals, buy feed for the animals and have those animals slaughtered—it doesn’t take an economist to predict the farmer will get fleeced by that company.

In 2018, the U.S. Department of Agriculture found JBS underpaid family farmers and ranchers at three slaughterhouses in Colorado, Nebraska and Texas, shorting them millions of dollars. 

USDA fined JBS only $79,000.

“That’s pennies to them,” Steve Krajicek, who sells to JBS, told the Washington Post. “They make in excess of $1 million a day at the Nebraska plants. It’s not even enough for them to blink an eye or to reconsider how they are doing business.”

So, the theft continued, forcing farmers to start a “Stop the Stealin’” campaign.

Mike Callicrate estimates the transfer of wealth from farmers to beef companies to be $41 billion annually:

“31% more of the consumer dollar is going into the cartel’s pockets than a 1970s competitive market allowed. 31% of the current $4,026 retail value for the average finished steer or heifer equals $1,248 per head loss to the producer. With an annual cattle slaughter of 33 million head, the cattle industry is suffering a $41 billion annual loss.”

That’s how it works for beef, where four meatpackers–Tyson, JBS, Cargill, and National Beef–control 85 percent of slaughter. 

With pork, four meatpackers—Smithfield, Tyson, JBS, and Cargill—control 70 percent of slaughter, and most farmers have only one or two packers to sell to, so the predatory pricing problem is the same. 

To make things even worse for hog farmers, Smithfield lobbied to overturn state laws that forbade corporate farming so they could edge independent family farmers out of breeding, raising and fattening hogs.

Now, the four biggest meatpackers are among the top pork farmers. According to Successful Farming’s latest “Pork Powerhouses” report, in 2022, Smithfield was the top pork farming company, JBS, which bought Cargill’s pork business in 2015, was the 5th biggest, and Tyson ranked 14th.

This is “vertical integration” where the meat monopolies own everything about the business, except the farm. These “integrators” own or control the animals from birth to slaughter, but a farmer raises them on contract.

The farmers take on all the risks, costs and responsibilities, borrowing money and going into debt to meet their contractual obligations. If animals die, water is polluted or anything else goes wrong, companies are off the hook—and there’s no requirement that farmers be paid fairly. 

In poultry, where the control of the top four companies—Tyson, JBS, Cargill and Mountaire Farms—is approaching 60 percent, the meatpackers are very aggressive about driving down the prices they pay to farmers. They keep farmers locked in abusive contracts where the big corporation owns the animals and dictates how they must be raised, while the farmers have responsibility for raising them and dealing with their waste.

Integrators like Tyson Foods use a “tournament system” where the companies rank each farmer. Those who rank at the bottom take a pay cut that is used to give a bonus to the top farmer. The ranking is supposed to be based on how cost-effective farmers are in raising their birds, but it has been used by companies to discriminate against certain farmers.

The Packers and Stockyards Act was supposed to protect family farmers and ranchers from meatpackers’ unfair and discriminatory business practices, but it has never been fully enforced.

That is beginning to change.

In 2021, Tyson and Perdue agreed to a $35 million settlement to a lawsuit alleging that the companies have pushed farmers into debt and locked in their compensation at unprofitably low rates.

In 2022, when Sanderson Farms (owned by Cargill) sought to merge with Wayne Farms to make Cargill the number-three chicken company, the Department of Justice was able to extract some concessions. Cargill agreed to base-pay for farmers and promised to make its grower contracts more transparent.

On March 5, 2024, the U.S. Department of Agriculture finalized the Inclusive Competition Rule, a new rule under the Packers and Stockyards Act that reforms chicken farmers’ pay industry-wide. The Inclusive Competition Rule doesn’t require base-pay like Cargill was required to provide for the Sanderson-Wayne merger, but it does prohibit:

• Retaliation against farmers for: lawful communications or refusals to communicate; assertion of contractual and Packers & Stockyards Act rights; participation in associations and cooperatives; or exploring or entering into a business relationship with a competing company; and
• False or misleading representations regarding contract formation, performance, termination or refusal to contract.

The new rule has significant limitations. It excludes turkey farmers and it doesn’t apply to farmers outside the poultry sector.

The Farm System Reform Act would extend the rule across the entire meatpacking sector.

Making the Real Polluters Pay

The government calls factory farms CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations). According to the Environmental Protection Agency, CAFOs are defined as animal feeding operations that don’t allow animals to graze or forage in pastures, fields or rangelands. Instead, CAFOs “congregate animals, feed, manure and urine, dead animals and production operations on a small land area.”

Large CAFOs produce as much as 1.4 billion tons of waste each year. Manure could be kept dry and composted, but most is liquified, pooled in lagoons, then discharged on farmland, inevitably polluting drinking water along the way. 

Who profits from all this polluting activity?

The meat monopoly. The meat belongs to the corporate integrators. The waste problem belongs to the farmer.

The Farm System Reform Act would shift responsibility for pollution and other harms caused by factory farms from farmers to the integrators who control their operations.

Under the Act, integrators exercising substantial control over a CAFO will be responsible and liable to contract growers and neighboring communities for the waste, pollution and adverse health impacts associated with the operation of the CAFO.

Phasing Out Factory Farming

The Farm System Reform Act would place a moratorium on large concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs). Under the bill, large CAFOs could not commence or expand operations and, after January 1, 2041, could not continue to operate.

What is a large CAFO?

The Environmental Protection Agency defines a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation as one where:

• animals have been, are, or will be stabled or confined and fed or maintained for a total of 45 days or more in any 12-month period, and
• crops, vegetation, forage growth, or post-harvest residues are not sustained in the normal growing season over any portion of the lot or facility.

Large CAFOs are defined primarily by the number of animals. The size of the animal and the way the manure is handled is also factored in, but by the numbers, a large CAFO would generally have, for example: 

• 1,000 or more cattle or cow/calf pairs
• 700 or more mature dairy cattle
• 10,000 or more swine
• 125,000 or more chickens

Recognizing their economic plight, the Farm System Reform Act acknowledges that the best way to get farmers out of factory farming is through a voluntary debt-forgiveness and transition-assistance program.

The Act authorizes $100 billion over 10 years for a voluntary buyout program for owners of factory farms who wish to transition to a better way to farm or get out of the business altogether.

Under the Act, funds could be used to partially or fully pay off outstanding debt incurred to construct and operate the factory farm or to cover transition costs for alternative agriculture activities such as raising pasture-based livestock, growing specialty crops, or organic commodity production.

But, as of 2041, large CAFOs would be illegal.

TAKE ACTION: Tell Congress to support the Farm System Reform Act!

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