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North Carolina's Capitalists' Pigs Sharecropping in the New Millennium

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North Carolina's Capitalists' Pigs Sharecropping in the New Millennium Trinity College Trinity College Digital Repository Resist Newsletters Resist Collection 12-31-1998 Resist Newsletter, Dec. 1998 Resist Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/resistnewsletter Recommended Citation Resist, "Resist Newsletter, Dec. 1998" (1998). Resist Newsletters. 309. https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/resistnewsletter/309 Inside: FLOC Reaches to NC Farm Workers ISSN 0897-2613 • Vol. 7 #10 A Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority December 1998 North Carolina's Capitalists' Pigs Sharecropping in the New Millennium STAN GOFF At the end of the day, the integrator appro­ farmer-peasant class had not disappeared priates the majority of the value produced, but remained strong; so strong, in fact­ e independent family farm is headed and the contract grower averages between asserted the professor-that it remained o extinction," says Don Webb, a eight and 10 dollars an hour. Thus Mr. more significant than the wage-laboring T:former independent swine farmer Webb's notion that this is a twenty-first class. The current state of agriculture, how­ from Stantonsburg, North Carolina. "The century form of tenancy. ever, looking at the North Carolina hog in- folks who're still on their land in dustry as an example, makes it this part of North Carolina-the appear that Dr. Hook's critique ones who signed corporate con­ VD.Allltl& l =• ~ = ~ ~: was premature. tracts-are in denial. They' re Found during the first half of 1998 The application of modem sharecroppers now, and ain't management practices and tech­ Discharge of hog waste 60 nothin' but pride and hopeless­ nology to pork production has Discharge into surface water 25 ness keeps 'em in denial about converted farms and slaughter­ Inadequate freeboard 525 bein' sharecroppers." houses into meat factories. The Freeboard less than one-foot 58 Webb's reference to share­ subdivision of every process Lack of certified operator 12 cropping is based on the con­ into the simplest component Over-application of waste 161 tractual relationship between tasks has resulted in completely Failure to meet setback 3 farmers (referred to as contract "de-skilling" production. The Inadequate land 33 growers) and integrators, the majority of the actual sweat in­ Crops different than plan 197 huge corporations who own the vested in every stage of produc­ TOTAL VIOLAnONS 1074 genetically engineered live­ fl DEFICIENCIES tion-the precise mechanical stock. The integrators com­ Source: NC Division ol Mitt• a...1/ty application of engineered foods, pletely control livestock opera­ hormones, and drugs to con­ tions. They arrange for its trans­ Fewer than 10 percent of the facilities were inspected for the fined animals-is coming from statistics above. No charges have been filed against farm owners. portation, processing, and mar­ wage laborers. keting; they dictate facility specs, includ­ While the application of this specific The "management" of the grower facil­ ing approved builders, chemicals, food ad­ contractual arrangement to agriculture was ity by the "farmer" is conducted in accor­ ditives, and pharmaceuticals to be used for pioneered by poultry corporations, the dance with a strict, formulaic rule-book. The maximum growth and disease control; and underlying trends were predicted as early situation for the contract grower is less akin they specify the management practices the as Karl Marx. In 1955, Dr. Sidney Hook to sharecropping-where a poor farmer ap­ "farmer" will employ. made the claim (in Marx and the Marxists: plied his or her knowledge of the art of The contract grower pays for facility Ambiguous Legacy, Princeton, 1955) that agriculture to production for a "share"­ construction with huge loans, indebting Marx had erred in his prediction that even and more akin to the "manager" of a himself for the long haul, and assumes all agriculture would become "proletarianized" McDonald's hamburger stand: an alienated financial, legal, and environmental liability. From Hook's perspective in 1955, the continued on page two Vol. 7, #10 RESIST Newsletter Page 1 North Carolina's Capitalists' Pigs continued from page one hogs. By 1997, fewer than 4,000 growers national attention. Ten million swine expel surrogate, saddled with accountability by remained, but the state herd was conser­ nine million tons of excrement into their his debts and stripped of his creativity. vatively estimated at over 10 million, in a state environment every year. That amounts to Farmers who have not signed these con­ where only around 7 million people reside. 52,500 tons ofnitrogen, 40,000 tons ofphos­ tracts have been left far behind. The re­ phorus, 37,000 tons of potassium, and a sulting concentration of the industry is The New Environment smorgasbord of heavy metals. striking. In 1983, the State Department of The environmental impact ofthis growth, Rick Dove, a Neuse River Keeper, ex­ Agriculture reported over 24,000 swine most of which occurred in the eastern quar­ plains that these numbers by themselves growers raising just over 2 million head of ter of the state, has been the subject of are significant. "We are importing over a hundred million pounds of nitrogen from Nebraska in the form of com, ~d dumping it into the ecosystem ofNorth Carolina east Hog Farms in North Carolina, 1983-1997 of Interstate 95 in the form of crap. That Information Source: NC Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services nitrogen, just one of the nutrients being imported, does not disappear. It cycles all through the ecosystem here- in the water, the soil, and the air-cycling and recycling. That irrevocably changes the actual com­ 20,000 position ofthe air, soil, and water in a macro way for which we can't even predict the long term consequences." 15,000 Add to Dove's macro-analysis the fish kills from algae blooms, the condemned wells, the airborne ammonia that provokes 10,000 respiratory emergencies, flesh-eating pfisteria (called the "cell from hell"), and a host of other public health concerns, not 5,000 continued on page three 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 Hogs and Pigs in North Carolina, 1983-1997 Information Source: NC Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services ILLEGITIMATE AUTHORITY ,W,,tli~ ~-«J CNWtfJl- fMCe 1967 For information and grant guidelines, write to: Resist, 259 Elm Street, Suite 201 Somerville, MA 02144 www.resistinc.org Resist Newsletter is published ten times a year by RESIST, Inc., (617)623-5110. The views expressed in articles, other than edi­ torials, are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the opinions of the 4,000 RESIST staff or board. RESIST Staff: Robin Carton Carol Schachet 2,000 Newsletter Editor: Carol Schachet Printing: Red Sun Press 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 Printed on Recycled Paper with soy ink ·O~- Page2 RESIST Newsletter December 1998 North Carolina's Capitalists' Pigs continuedfrom page two saw the mega-slaughterhouse as a threat Maxwell Foods, Inc., and Wendall Murphy to mention the environmental racism im­ to the Cape Fear River, to a local aquifer, of Murphy Family Farms, Inc., the major plicit in the siting of these facilities, and and as a magnet for even more rapid expan­ integrators in the state, to be the key mem­ the picture is clear. Even 60 Minutes has sion of pork production in Eastern North bers of then-Carolina Food Processor's found the environmental story worthy of Carolina. But Tar Heel, North Carolina, and Board of Directors. This is an interlocking their attention, twice. What have not ap­ surrounding Bladen County are among the directorate; a seamless legal connection peared on the public media's radar screen poorest areas in the state, with the highest between the different phases of the pro­ are the economic implications of corporate levels of unemployment, especially among duction process that translated into $1.14 bil­ agriculture. the African-American and Native Ameri- lion in insider business for Smithfield in 1997. Biggest Fish Eat the Merely Big Ones [T]he United States Department of The concentration of the industry pro­ ceeds apace in other ways as well. The Agriculture ... again demonstrat[ed] the paradox of Smithfield's increased output from 24,000 to 30,000 kills a day is that the government's willingness to privatize gains market for American pork is plummeting. on behalf of corporate America but to Processing capacity is up, and the size of the North Carolina herd is up. But four of socialize their losses. the six largest foreign importers ofAmerican pork-Mexico, Japan, South Korea, and Russia--can no longer afford to buy Ameri­ Monopolization and Vertical Integration can populations. Smithfield offered 4,000 can with their own currencies in free fall. In the parlance of modem economists, jobs as the big carrot, and called on their In February, when the Japanese reces­ the consolidation of an industry across one political muscle to do the rest. sion began to take a serious toll on U.S. stage of the production process is referred Then-State Senator Wendall Murphy, pork, the United States Department of Ag­ to as horizontal integration. The pulling who just happens to be the largest hog riculture stepped in and bought up $30 mil­ together of the various stages of the pro­ producer in the world, and then-Governor lion worth of the "other white meat" to prop duction process under one corporate roof Jim Martin were told by Director George up prices, again demonstrating the is called vertical integration. Reality is that Everett of the Division of Environmental government's willingness to privatize gains both forms of "integration" are inextrica­ Management that the Cape Fear River was on behalf of corporate America but to so­ bly linked and occur simultaneously to at or above nutrient carrying capacity, and cialize their losses.
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