MyDD :: Edwards and the Packer Ban

Edwards and the Packer Ban

by Natasha Chart, Tue Aug 14, 2007 at 05:26:10 PM EST

DesmoinesDem's post about John Edwards below highlighted his rural strategy, which includes something that most people's eyes would slide right over: A ban on meat packer ownership of livestock.

This is what Sen. Wellstone said when he supported a packer ban in 2002. That provision went down to defeat and wasn't included in the 2002 Farm Bill, but his comments are still just as applicable:

... Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., backed by groups like the Minnesota Farm Bureau and National Farmers Union, says this [livestock industry ownership] concentration is a recipe for monopoly.

"We know what these packers do," Wellstone said. "They buy when prices are low, and then if the prices should go up they sell to keep prices low. It's like a cartel. They're basically jacking the independent producers around and they're basically using their power to pretty much dictate prices. And that's unacceptable."

... "The problem for our independent (farmers) is that it's like you have an auction to go to and you only have two or three people to sell to. You don't get a very decent price," Wellstone said. "Well, that's what's happening now as these packers are controlling more and more of the market. Our independent producers are put at a severe disadvantage." ...

The packer ban is a very important issues to rural districts where agriculture predominates, and his championing of it has been cited as one of the reasons why the very progressive Wellstone was able to draw on such a broad base of support. This year, Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) is expected to reintroduce a version of the 2002 competition reform and packer ban as one of several supporting Senators, and in concert with Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA).

Consider calling your Senators to ask them to support Harkin's competition reform and the packer ban. The Senate is going to be voting on their version of the Farm Bill in September, and none of the reforms made it into the House version in July. Your support would be greatly appreciated by everyone who cares about this issue.

It'd be nice if we didn't have to wait to get it until we get a new president.

Tags: livestock, agriculture, John Edwards (all tags)

Permalink :: 19 Comments :: Post a Comment

Re: Edwards and the Packer Ban (3.00 / 1)

Good for Edwards!

- John McCain

by Bob Brigham on Tue Aug 14, 2007 at 05:41:16 PM EST

Re: Edwards and the Packer Ban (none / 0)

This is a good diary. As an urban dweller, I often miss issues like this. This is one reason why Edwards will do well in a general election -- he can reach rural voters becuase he understands their issues. His accent also gives him greater credibility than, for example, Kerry had with rural voters.

Good diary. I hope you write more on rural issues.

by TomP on Tue Aug 14, 2007 at 06:18:17 PM EST

Re: Edwards and the Packer Ban (none / 0)

Edwards voted against the 2002 packer ban that you cite and that Sen. Wellstone spoke so eloquently about. He also voted against a packer ban in 2001. I do believe that a packer ban is extremely important, but I wouldn't give Edwards kudos for deciding to be for one when he decided to run for president. Here's a link to the roll call vote. He voted "yea" on tabling Grassley's packer ban and "nay" on Sen. Johnson's amendment in 2001.

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/ro ll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?con gress=107&session=2&vote=00023

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/ro ll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?con gress=107&session=1&vote=00367

by BlueTruth on Tue Aug 14, 2007 at 06:20:40 PM EST

Re: Edwards and the Packer Ban (none / 0)

Oh My Gawd!

John Edwards changed his mind!

Holy jumpin' ReThug meme 'Good Hair' Edwards be one o' dem 'flip-floppers'.

As recently as 2001 he had a different position.

Perhaps you might consider The MittLess or Rudi-the-Great for your support. As ReThugs they never change their mind and so....

You would be 'comfortable' with them.

by Pericles on Tue Aug 14, 2007 at 07:13:18 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Edwards and the Packer Ban (none / 0)

No it is a very good point, at some point historians are going to ask, "what is the path that took John from many such middle of the muddle old DLC positions, to his obviously day-in-day-out heart of the progressive populist fighter that he has become.

He fought before, but I think somewhere, in determining the lies that lead him and America to war perhaps, or the true venality of those arrayed against us, he realized what kind of change had happened to America, and what level of challenge we face.

A good fighter became a great American; we will read this history, and possibly see the film, but for now it is enough to wonder at it, and to work for it.

by inexile on Tue Aug 14, 2007 at 07:34:09 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Edwards and the Packer Ban (3.00 / 1)

While I get that farmers and such might like high prices, I don't get why this should be regarded as a good thing for the rest of us who actually have to buy the meat. Low prices are good for poor and middle class families, even if they're bad for a few farmers. This isn't a cut and dried issue.

by LaX WI on Tue Aug 14, 2007 at 08:20:03 PM EST

Re: Edwards and the Packer Ban (none / 0)

The good thing will be that there will still be farmers left. All the small outfits are going to be driven out of business.

by Natasha Chart on Wed Aug 15, 2007 at 12:35:07 AM EST
[ Parent ]

what she said, plus (none / 0)

the smaller farmers are somewhat more likely to use sustainable methods in their livestock management.

If everything goes industrial, expect more overuse of antibiotics, hormones, etc.

John McCain: 100 years in Iraq "would be fine with me."

by desmoinesdem on Wed Aug 15, 2007 at 03:52:27 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Edwards and the Packer Ban (none / 0)

Is there a public good in this interference with commerce? Or only a political good?

This smacks of pork barrel legislation. It uses the power of the Federal government to aid one group of constituents to the detriment of the country as a whole. Where will these farmers AND the packers be when the supermarket chains start importing cheap beef from China, because this featherbedding has driven prices up?

by antiHyde on Tue Aug 14, 2007 at 11:28:30 PM EST

Re: Edwards and the Packer Ban (none / 0)

Pork barrel legislation? To ban price fixing and market manipulation? Please tell me you're kidding. And it isn't something that costs the government money, except insofar as it has to enforce the law.

But if you want public goods ...

- Reduce pressures that encourage ever larger confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) that put healthier farming models out of business

Could help shorten the food supply chain, making it less vulnerable to fuel price shocks
Cut carbon emissions; CAFO farming worldwide produces 17% of manmade greenhouse gas emissions
Could expand the availability of pasture-raised meat, which is healthier for humans to eat, as well as for watersheds and carbon emissions
Reduce the power of CAFO lobbies, which currently can each suck nearly a hundred grand a year (will be more if the House version of the 2007 caps go in) in manure handling infrastructure payments out of scarce conservation funding

And one more thing: it'd be a chance for farmers to get a fair wage for their work. Why should we agitate for union members' rights to earn a decent wage, but not agitate for the farmers?

by Natasha Chart on Wed Aug 15, 2007 at 12:54:16 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Edwards and the Packer Ban (none / 0)

Why should we agitate for union members' rights to earn a decent wage, but not agitate for the farmers?

Because farmers are businessmen. Should we ban auto companies from owning parts suppliers? Should we ban Xerox from owning a laser scanner manufacturer?

What about Toll Brothers buying Weyerhauser?

by antiHyde on Wed Aug 15, 2007 at 08:39:18 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Edwards and the Packer Ban (none / 0)

Farms are businesses that have to buy everything at retail and sell everything at wholesale. They get a ridiculously small percentage of your food dollar.

Small farms are essentially in the position of being sharecroppers for the large agribusiness concerns. They rarely have a choice in where to sell their goods, they have no control over the distributon infrastructure, and they're going out of business at rates in the ballpark of the Great Depression.

And this affects you because the consolidation and corporatization of farming is exorbitantly wasteful of fossil fuel, highly polluting, very vulnerable to contamination and supply chain disruption, and enormously destructive of ecosystems. Additionally, it isn't as productive in terms of the amount of plant food grown per acre as mixed crop farming, and is only competitive because of subsidies and market distorting monopoly practices on the part of the same large corporations.

Our food economy is a disaster, and both farmers and consumers are getting screwed by it.

by Natasha Chart on Wed Aug 15, 2007 at 11:38:15 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Edwards and the Packer Ban (none / 0)

antiHyde asks should be ban corporations from owning other corporations?

In my opinion, yes. But Thom Hartmann writing in Common Dreams <http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0101-07.htm> says it better than I can.

"Jefferson and Madison proposed an 11th Amendment to the Constitution that would "ban monopolies in commerce," making it illegal for corporations to own other corporations, banning them from giving money to politicians or trying to influence elections in any way, restricting corporations to a single business purpose, limiting the lifetime of a corporation to something roughly similar to that of productive humans (20 to 40 years back then), and requiring that the first purpose for which all corporations were created be "to serve the public good."

The amendment didn't pass because many argued it was unnecessary: Virtually all states already had such laws on the books from the founding of this nation until the Age of the Robber Barons."

Let me add that I think it is especially henious when the press, which is protected by the constitution, is merged with other commercial interests, such as the case of General Electric (the world's largest military supplier) owning a network (NBC) which cheerleads us into an illegal war.

by Ready2Fight on Wed Aug 15, 2007 at 04:04:19 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Edwards and the Packer Ban (none / 0)

I greatly respect Thom Hartman and I'm sorry that he is no longer on Air America, at least in a time slot that I can listen too.

But Thom is a Socialist and I am not. I see nothing wrong with vertical integration. If packers raise their own cows rather than buying cows of unknown origin, maybe we will be better protected from Mad Cow Disease. Or at least know who to sue.

The outrageous news about Mattel and Playschool shows what happens with outsourcing, namely loss of control over the product.

by antiHyde on Thu Aug 16, 2007 at 10:10:45 PM EST
[ Parent ]

correction (none / 0)

Hartmann and "listen to".

by antiHyde on Thu Aug 16, 2007 at 10:14:51 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Edwards and the Packer Ban (none / 0)

Not the way to look at it at all. Agriculture done by large, concentrated farms is substantially different than agriculture done by many, smaller farms. And importantly, the confined animal feed lots favored by concentration of agricultural markets is a significant disease vector. That's why they have to use so many antibiotics, because their animals are kept in such terrible conditions that they'd just keel over and die otherwise.

But further, it isn't socialism to say that we ought to have a lot of producers and more competition in the market. Though our agribusiness concerns are private, they operate like Maoist bureaucracies, and are exactly the sort of concentrated monopoly Adam Smith would have opposed. It's raw capitalism, untainted by neoliberal corporation worship, to believe that the market should not be unfairly tipped to the people who, in the end, do the worst job of producing safe, high quality food.

by Natasha Chart on Tue Aug 21, 2007 at 02:22:21 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Edwards and the Packer Ban (none / 0)

Generally, I support government regulation, like an umpire, to cure the ills of laissez-faire capitalism rather than government directive, like a foreman. Conservatives, on the other hand, truly believe in the power of free markets and the invisible hand. The fallacy in that is that truly free markets don't seem to exist except in commodity trading pits and the various stock markets. Every other market seems to be in some state of monopoly or oligopoly. The bad news for Conservative theory is that when looking at the aforementioned actual free markets, the invisible hand seems to be very shaky!

I don't know enough about the current state of agriculture to be positively for or against this bill, but I'll try to keep an open mind.

by antiHyde on Wed Aug 22, 2007 at 07:49:23 PM EST
[ Parent ]

what is wrong with Collin Peterson? (none / 0)

Seems like nothing good made it into his version of the bill. All my environmentalist and sustainable ag friends are disappointed.

John McCain: 100 years in Iraq "would be fine with me."

by desmoinesdem on Wed Aug 15, 2007 at 03:51:02 AM EST

Do you have an hour or two? (none / 0)

The man is a fright. He's the founding Blue Dog, the 2nd most disloyal Democrat in that caucus, dated Katherine Harris when she was in Congress, totally corporate.

I'll write more about him this weekend, should get around to it.

by Natasha Chart on Wed Aug 15, 2007 at 11:31:52 AM EST
[ Parent ]

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