COWBOYS VERSUS MEATPACKERS: THE LAST ROUNDUP - Foodopoly: The Battle Over the Future of Food and Farming in America - page 98

and slaughter cattle, they can be sellers or buyers at an auction. They are sometimes on both sides of a sale,
such as when the slaughterhouse they own buys cattle from one of the company feedlots. They distort or
manipulate prices through these relationships. For example, the meatpackers can slaughter their own cattle
when the price is high and buy at auction when prices are low, driving down prices for other independent
cattle producers.
Company-owned feedlots can be immense. The world's largest beef processor, JBS, owns the Five
Rivers Cattle Feeding company, which in 2010 had a capacity of 839,000 head on thirteen feedlots in Co-
lorado, Idaho, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, and Wisconsin. The average Five Rivers feedlot
has about a 65,000-head capacity, but the largest, in Yuma, Colorado, has a capacity of 125,000. In July
2010, JBS announced that it intended to buy McElhaney feedlot, one of the country's twenty-five largest
feeding operations, with 130,000 head of beef. 18 This continued consolidation is dramatically increasing
the market power of the Brazilian company, which is headquartered in São Paulo. 19
Corporate-owned feedlots are much bigger than independently owned ones, and they lack roots in their
local communities. Cargill, an international company headquartered in Minnesota, has feedlots in Texas,
Colorado, and Kansas. Decisions made by JBS originate far away in Brazil. While farmers and ranchers
drink the same water and breathe the same air as their neighbors, the corporate owners of these largest
feedlots are located thousands of miles from any environmental problems they may create.
Most cattle feedlots are located in rural counties, yet the large numbers in these areas produce the same
amount of waste as some of America's largest cities. The manure is stored on-site until it is spread onto
nearby farm fields. But feedlots can flood or generate polluted runoff, and overapplied manure can leach
into groundwater or leak into nearby waterways.
According to Duke University's Center on Globalization, Governance & Competitiveness, only about
60 percent of the larger feedlots have any formal written guidelines for environmental issues in general,
and only about half have manure-management programs. Most feedlots use waste lagoons to capture run-
off, and many use berms and fencing or landscaping to control runoff and minimize erosion.
Runoff from spray fields and lagoons pollutes waterways and drinking water with heavy metals, patho-
gens, antibiotics, and ammonia. Effects on human health occur from exposure to bacteria, viruses, or other
toxics in the animal waste. Water pollution around feedlots raises nitrate levels and can cause “blue baby
syndrome” in infants, a disease that can be fatal or cause developmental problems. The nitrogen pollution
also causes algae to grow uncontrollably, choking out sunlight and nutrients needed by fish and plants.
Feedlots in Texas are partially responsible for the seven-thousand-square-mile dead zone in the Gulf of
Mexico. Numerous lakes in the state have been seriously polluted by feedlots. 20
By the last decade of the twentieth century, ranchers could see that the future for independence was
bleak, given the ever-increasing power of the meatpacking industry. Although the existing laws could be
used to curb coercive market power, the U.S. Department of Justice and USDA have taken a laissez-faire
approach to agricultural market power in recent decades. Pressure mounted on lawmakers to force GIPSA
to use the power that was given to them when Woodrow Wilson was president to level the playing field and
allow small producers to compete with large-scale factory farms. The “fair farm rules” have been waiting
to be written by the agency since 1921.
An informal coalition of farm organizations—the National Family Farm Coalition, the Rural Advance-
ment Foundation International (RAFI), the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund (R-CALF), and the
National Farmers Union—were joined by the Western Organization of Resource Councils, Food & Water
Watch, the Organization for Competitive Markets (OCM), the Missouri Rural Crisis Center (MRCC), the
Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, and others to fight for a new section in the 2008 Farm Bill
that would provide a more competitive market for livestock growers. While the alliance did not achieve