Notes - Agri-culture: Reconnecting People, Land and Nature - page 209

of cattle are in herds of less than 100. By contrast, 96 per cent of all cattle in
New Mexico, 78 per cent in California and 47 per cent in Washington are in
herds of more than 500 animals. Now, only ten businesses account for half of
all US milk production, a staggering 36 billion kilogrammes per year, and 50
account for three-quarters of total production.

8 Table 5.3 Concentration Ratios in the US Food Chain, 1999

Sector Concentration ratio Notes on changes over time

for top four firms
(CR4) (%)

Beef packers 79 Up from 72% in 1990

Pork packers 57 Up from 37% in 1987

Broiler producers 49 Up from 35% in 1986; top

company produces 70 million
kilogrammes per week

Turkey producers 42 Up from 31% in 1988

Flour milling 62 Up from 44% in 1987

Dry corn milling 57 -

Wet corn milling 74 Up from 63% in 1977

Soybean crushing 80 Up from 54% in 1977

Seed corn market 69 -

Source: Heffernan, 1999

The same names keep reoccurring. ConAgra, for example, turns up at every stage
of the food chain except for pesticide and machinery manufacture. ConAgra also
owns about 1000 grain elevators, 1000 barges and 2000 railway cars. Cargill is
in the top four firms which produce animal feed, rear cattle and process cattle.
On the product side, 60-90 per cent of all wheat, maize and rice is marketed
by only six transnational companies. One of these, Cargill, earns more from its
coffee sales alone than the total income of any of the African countries from
which it buys coffee. Again, is not all this efficiency for the best? Should we not
be celebrating such advanced methods of producing more meat, milk and eggs
from each animal and from each square metre of farm?
9 FAO/UNEP, 2000 (www.fao.org/dad-is). See also Blench, 2001. For
more on domestic animals, see Domestic Animal Diversity Information System
(DADIS) at www.dad.fao.org/cgi-dad/$cgi_dad.exe/summaries. Livestock
experts consider that only when there are 100,000 individuals of a given species
is a population stable and able to reproduce without genetic loss. Less than
10,000, and population numbers will decrease rapidly; below 1000, and the
whole population is endangered, with size too small to prevent genetic loss.
Europe has one quarter of the world's cattle, sheep, pig and duck breeds, and
one half of horse, chicken and geese breeds. But in the five years to 1999, the
number of mammalian breeds at risk grew from 33-49 per cent, and bird breeds
at risk rose from 65-76 per cent.