Putting local farmers out of business

The great Indian liberator Mohandas Gandhi famously said:
“The world has enough to meet everyone's need, but not everyone's greed...”

Those promoting industrial agriculture sometimes claim that factory farming brings jobs and investment. But in reality, owners of factory farms seek to minimise costs, and hire few workers. Furthermore, the jobs that are created are generally undesirable due to the hazardous conditions to which the workers are routinely exposed. Although communities expect the construction of a factory farm to help support local businesses, large-scale industrial agriculture operations typically purchase all necessary building materials, equipment and supplies from companies outside the region. As a result, factory farms provide very little stimulus to the economies of local communities.

Leading development organisations – including the FAO, The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) – now acknowledge that factory farming puts small farmers out of business. This is nothing new in Europe and North America, where small farmers have been witnessing at first hand the devastating effects of industrialisation for decades. Put simply, large corporations corner the market and there are limited opportunities left for small, independent producers.

This industrialisation brings with it ‘vertical integration’, whereby producers of grain for feed, other input suppliers, breeders, ‘rearers/growers’ and meat processors and packers all merge under one giant company controlling meat production from ‘cradle to grave’.

In this system, farmers who rear animals do so under contract to large corporations. Some small farmers who are unable to compete with factory farming operations become contract growers themselves. They generally have to finance their own start-up costs (buildings, equipment, etc.) in this hi-tech, capital-intensive business, and often borrow from the corporation. This ties them to the corporation – as does reliance on the corporation’s inputs and markets, making it easy for the corporation to exploit them without redress. So it is hardly surprising that many contract farmers end up earning less than a living wage.

These contract farmers are often told exactly what and how to produce, and have no control over their own processes.