Focus on Arts and Ecology

American farmers are in trouble if their leaders are as ill-informed about the threats facing farmers today as the roundtable showed. None of the leaders pointed out the threats that farmers face caused by bad policy choices made by their agencies. Rather than discuss solutions to threats, they focused on ongoing lawsuits against pork giant Murphy Brown, LLC. They scapegoated neighbors of swine farms, lawyers for those neighbors and the news media generally. Scapegoating deflects blame for the failure of these leaders to move swine farm waste treatment technology into the 21st century.

American farmers are seeing their wallets hit by the pointless trade war which the Trump Administration has declared on the world. Since the 1970s, American farm policy has depended on expanding exports and government price supports to make large-scale farming profitable across the country. Farm policy was constructed around asking commodity producers to get big or get out. American farmers hurt by Chinese and EU tariffs are victims of the Trump administration’s agricultural policy failures. Not one of the leaders at the meeting identified the trade war as a threat to farmers. Nor did any of them suggest revisiting other policies that leave farmers more vulnerable to export demand slumps.

Instead of correcting the crisis it made, the Trump administration announced $12 billion in emergency aid to help farmers hurt by the trade war. That same amount of federal money could pay to place modern waste management systems on more than 10,000 swine farms across the United States, taking care of the problem facilities in many states. A large federal investment in new technology would improve farmer’s lives, relieve their neighbor’s injuries and create new industries in rural communities. But no one at the meeting mentioned this idea.

Even if the federal officials cannot get money for our farmers to upgrade their aging swine farm waste treatment systems, the state officials at the press conference could have offered some relief, but none mentioned it. Farmers reliant on animal production contracts do not have the income to cover the costs of superior animal waste management technology in North Carolina, but the state has a program that should have made these changes over the past decade: the swine waste lagoon conversion program.

Since the waste lagoon conversion program was given to the North Carolina Department of Agriculture, it has dwindled rather than grown. No public report has been issued on the program to the North Carolina General Assembly for ten years. If the North Carolina Department of Agriculture had prioritized funding and implementation of this program, they could have paid for farmers to eliminate the farm conditions creating odors, flies and noxious fumes by using superior technology to replace lagoons and sprayfields. N.C. Agriculture Commissioner has been quick to blame the lawsuits for the farmer’s problem. But Troxler has been completely silent about his Department’s program which could have helped the farmers. Instead of growing the swine lagoon conversion program, he allowed it to wither on the vine for ten years.

Elected agricultural leaders should be inviting a dialog on how to replace lagoons and sprayfields, instead of arranging one-sided scapegoating sessions. Lagoons fill with sludge over time and equipment breaks down. Those lagoons and sprayfield systems are old, and long overdue to be replaced by superior technology. The companies have made a business choice to cut off growers’ contracts if a verdict comes down. The law does not require them to cut them off, nor does the law protect growers, as it should. North Carolina’s General Assembly could have provided growers with contract protections years ago. The NC General Assembly have chosen not to protect growers, even as the connection between growers and hog owners has grown more distant from local business, to national and now international corporate ownership. No one at the meeting mentioned this problem or offered simple solutions that could protect farmers.

The third verdict against Murphy Brown, LLC came down during the meeting. Senator Thom Tillis commented on it that the group needed to show the plaintiffs that “we are bigger than them and we are going to shut them down.” Senator Tillis made no mention of the trade war, or the failure to support superior technologies or the failure to protect contract grower rights. Rather he threatened to use his political power to shut the courthouse doors to swine farm neighbors.

Farmers who grow livestock under contracts have no bargaining power to dictate contract terms in most markets. These contracts are proprietary and members of the public rarely get a chance to view one. The contract of Joey Carter was introduced as supporting evidence for one of Defendant’s arguments, giving us all glimpse of the current terms. There was only one contract term that was subject to negotiation, and that was contract duration, according to the deposition testimony of a Murphy Brown officer introduced by the plaintiffs.

Under its provisions, the term farmer is not even used. Smithfield’s Murphy-Brown subsidiary owns the hogs and pays “growers” a daily fee for raising each hog. Murphy-Brown agreed to pay Carter $.082 per day per hog. The contract required Carter to obey all laws, all of Murphy Brown’s policies and to “indemnify” Murphy-Brown from all losses due to the grower’s omissions. So the Murphy-Brown contract with Carter put him in a similar position to that of an insurer for Murphy-Brown. Murphy Brown was only obligated to supply hogs to Carter for a limited time. Carter was required to pay for waste disposal, safe animal housing, access road maintenance, reporting, animal welfare, dead animal disposal and any other measures dictated by the company in its discretion.

Carter’s grower contract may be typical or it may be exceptional, but it is not fair to Carter. Nearly all risk of loss and compliance assurance was transferred to him in exchange for a fixed cost, requirements contract term subject to extension at Murphy Brown’s discretion. Given that so many American farmers are operating under such contracts, it appears the American farmer is in trouble for trading open markets for monopsony control. Growers should be afforded some basic contract protections by law, as advocates for farmers have proposed for years.

The American farmer is in trouble, but neglect of farmer interests by elected agricultural leaders is their largest problem. American farmers need more effective leaders to start a new dialog. Effective leaders do not create scapegoats, because scapegoating solves nothing. Effective leaders seek solutions. Engineers have solved the problems created by hog waste. New policies can encourage innovation. New laws can protect growers from onerous production contract provisions. New leadership can spur investment in superior technology.