GET THOSE BOYS OFF THE FARM! - Foodopoly: The Battle Over the Future of Food and Farming in America - page 7

of the economic system. At that time only five corporations controlled more than 60 percent of the meat
industry—an industry that is even more consolidated today.
Despite their efforts, in 1921 Congress passed the Packers and Stockyards Act, a hard-fought yet poorly
designed bill that sought to restore competition to the meatpacking industry. The legislation vested “ex-
pansive rule-making authority” in the secretary of agriculture to develop a set of “market facilitating regu-
lations” that would address the unfair practices of the industry that prevent livestock growers from receiv-
ing a fair price for their animals. The law was also supposed to enhance existing antitrust law by providing
“a second layer of comparable law that the Secretary would enforce through cease and desist orders.” Al-
though the law worked pretty well to curb excesses through the 1970s, neither of these mandates has been
seriously enforced since the 1980s.
The Obama administration of 2008 failed to keep a campaign promise to write regulations curtailing the
abuses of the meat-industry monopoly. This was after a yearlong investigation and hearings held around
the country during which farmers testified about abusive practices. In the fall of 2011, Republicans who
controlled the House of Representatives ensured that there would be no funding at the Departments of
Agriculture or Justice to pursue regulations. So the 1921 legislation continues to be ineffective—as was
intended by many of those who voted for it in 1921. 8
Similarly, the post-World War I crash of farm prices led populists to call for the abolition of futures
trading, because the speculation and price manipulation involved in it worsened the situation. President
Harding, seeking to head off legislation to end trading, proposed legislation to regulate it. The Futures
Trading Act of 1921 mandated that trades not conducted on an exchange licensed by the federal govern-
ment would be taxed. It was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1922, and was reintroduced after
manipulation caused wheat prices to collapse. The new bill, the nearly identical Grain Futures Act of 1922,
used the commerce powers granted to Congress under the Constitution to tax futures trading. Speculation
continued to plague farmers during the period leading up to the 1929 stock market crash. 9
One sixth of U.S. farms were lost to bankruptcy, foreclosure, or delinquenttax sales between 1930 and
1935. Thousands of other families left their farms voluntarily or took on debt-induced mortgages. Franklin
Roosevelt feared that the growing alignment of farmers, the unemployed, and labor unions could become
a political force that could organize a socialist revolution, so he set about undercutting the coalition that
had formed and won third-party electoral victories in several states. Two weeks after his election, as part
of his program to save capitalism, Roosevelt announced a “new means” for rescuing agriculture. Central
to the plan were the policies enacted in the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933, which established parity
for farmers, and the Commodity Exchange Act of 1936, which aimed to halt rampant speculation in farm
products.
The backlash against agrarian revolt—from the last half of the nineteenth century to the Progressive era
and the Depression of the 1930s—was powerful. Corporate leaders feared a reorganization of the economy
and a more socially, economically, and racially egalitarian society, and so they took measures to disrupt the
growing coalition of the economically disadvantaged. This response took many forms, from red-baiting
and jailing dissenters to organizing disinformation campaigns and creating groups like the CED.
The CED's members were afraid of the potential political power of farmers and sought to reduce this
population by creating agricultural policies that would shrink rural numbers and solve the problem of a
rural insurrection that could withhold food from urban areas. The disparate economic interests represented
in the group were united in viewing the world with an urban lens and as one reinvented by technology.
Reforming agriculture meant substituting capital for farm labor and replacing small farms with large ones
that would be vertically integrated into the companies that needed the raw materials to standardize and
mechanize the food system.