Forwarded message: Delivered-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Delivered-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1998 19:40:53 -0700 From: "Albert V. Krebs" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: THE AGRIBUSINESS EXAMINER #2 X-UID: 847 --------------86F3FFE9297CB631D2E37C2B The AGRIBUSINESS EXAMINER Monitoring corporate agribusiness from apublic interest perspective Issue #2 September 10, 1998 "THIS IS NOT BUSINESS ETHICS 101" "This is not Business Ethics 101. This is how you deal with the real world. You have to mislead the competition." Reid Weingarten has told jurors in a closing argument at the current ADM trial in Chicago. In reality, competitors lied to each other routinely, but Weingarten told jurors that no price-fixing agreements were made. Weingarten, who represents ADM's Terrance Wilson, who along with Michael Andreas and ex-FBI mole Mark Whitacre are accused of fixing prices and market shares with fellow lysine producers. ADM, "Supermarkup to the World," pleaded guilty to antitrust charges and paid a $100 million fine in 1996. Whatever the verdict in this case, which some have called the best documented corporate crime in American history with some 200 hours of audio and video recordings, the trial has provided an interesting peek into the world of corporate speak. Earlier in the trial Weingarten told jurors in an opening statement, "there was bluffing; the philosophy here is to hold your competitor's hand so you don't get stabbed in the back." And it was Mark Whitacre who recalled that also within the ADM family it was common to hear the advice that "the competitor is our friend and the customer is our enemy." During the current trial, one of the tapes shows executives from rival livestock-feed market companies meeting secretly in an Atlanta hotel under cover of a trade show getting ready to talk prices when they hear a knock on the door. "Yes? FTC?" jokes Ajinomoto Co. executive Kanji Mimoto, in a guilty reference to regulators at the Federal Trade Commission. As it turned out, Mimoto wasn't far off. An FBI agent posing as a bellhop was delivering a bugged briefcase to the private room, while his colleagues were recording the meeting with a hidden video camera. As Greg Burns writes in the Chicago Tribune, "The ADM trial tapes reveal a casual disregard for the rules of commerce that seems to confirm the worst suspicions about big business. The jet-set life of executives at powerful global companies is cast in a dark light, giving the impression that lawlessness is a routine part of doing business on the world stage." "IF THEY COME FOR YOU IN THE MORNING, THEY WILL COME FOR ME IN THE EVENING." - ANGELA DAVIS The calm of a 16-day international seminar on Globalization and Resistance being held in Cologny, Geneva late last month was shattered on August 27 when it was raided by some 40 police officers following a week of close police surveillance. Fifty participants, from 17 countries, were subsequently taken in riot vans to the local police station. Officers illegally searched individuals and private belongings, detaining all 50 participants at the station. The detainees, including a six-year old girl from the Ukraine, were held for over two hours without explanation. Most were eventually released without charge.However, five remained in police custody for yet another five hours. Four of these were then released - the fifth is still in custody. The seminar was convened to discuss economic globalization and its impact on communities and the environment, as well as peoples' efforts to reclaim control over their own lives. The seminar was entirely educational and consisted of lectures and discussions only by international economists, journalists, representatives of people's movements, and workers from human rights and other non-governmental organisations. Speakers included well-known people like Professor Nanjundaswami from the Karnataka Farmers Movement of India and prominent author and President of the Observatoire de la Mondialisation, Susan George, who had lectured to the seminar two days earlier. George said she had found, "a group of peaceful and law-abiding young people." She deplored the police actions and called for the immediate release of those detained. The police, in a concerted action, entered the seminar site at 7.30 am, waking the guests, searching their accommodation without a warrant, and confiscating personal property. They refused to give receipts for the items, which included videos, notebooks, an artist's portfolio, personal diaries and photographs, and the organizers' documents. When a woman from the seminar asked a policeman, "Isn't what you're doing illegal?," he replied, "Yes, totally " Police were also overheard making racist, sexist, and anti-Semitic comments. Taking a passport from the stack, a policeman said, "Oh, that's the Jew!" A Bangladeshi charity worker who had just been awoken was singled out for particularly offensive treatment. The seminar was aimed at critically challenging the hegemonic consensus of neoliberal ideology that elevates free trade to a provider of great wealth and prosperity for all. Critics of such a philosophy point out that the world we live in is increasingly coming under the control of unaccountable, undemocratic, and highly centralized, transnational institutions such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organisation (WTO), and the European Union. Powerful tools for the development of the neoliberal agenda are trade treaties such as the proposed Multilateral Agreement on Investment and various other regional trade agreements. It is also pointed out that power and wealth are concentrating in the hands of transnational corporations, such as Shell, Nestle, IBM, and Monsanto. Decision making shifts further and further from local community control, and into the hands of corporate lobby groups, such as the International Chamber of Commerce, and the Geneva based World Economic Forum. For MAI-not (un)subscription information, posting guidelines and links to other MAI sites see http://mai.flora.org/ WAITING FOR GLICKMAN It came as no surprise to independent cattle ranchers or family farmers that a controversial cattle marketing practice costs them tens of millions of dollars each year, according to an economic analysis released by the Western Organization of Resource Councils (WORC). The organization of cattle ranchers and family farmers believes the analysis gives Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman more than enough evidence that he needs to restrict the use of the marketing practice, called "captive supplies" by ranchers. Eighteen months ago, the United States Department of Agriculture asked for public comment on a "petition for rulemaking" filed by WORC. The petition asked USDA to limit the use of "captive supplies" of cattle by beef packers. Cattle that packers own and feed in their own feed lots are called "captive" because the packers control them. Packers also sign contracts with feedlot owners to buy some or all of their cattle, which are also called "captive." Many farmers and ranchers say that beef packers' use of captive supplies limits open competition and lowers the price they get for their cattle — without lowering the price of beef to consumers. At the present time the USDA is still considering new rule-making power based on proposals submitted to it by WORC which would 1) disallow formula or basis pricing on forward contracted slaughter cattle; 2) require that forward contracts be offered in an open, public manner, and 3) require that packer-fed cattle be sold on an open, public market. Currently, beef packing companies can take such cattle without ever bidding in open markets, such as livestock sale barns. By keeping their packing plants full for days and weeks at a time with such "captive supplies" they can easily force open market prices (or "cash" market prices) down by simply not buying for long periods. Currently, with the huge numbers of cattle that are fed by the major meatpackers plus non-negotiated formula cattle, there is little interest left in their competing in the cash market. An independent analysis published recently by Les Messinger, Market analyst for Barnes Brokerage in Chicago, shows conservatively, that the cattle producer has lost $220 per head since the growth in captive supplies (March, 1994) and the loss of competition among the big three packers, IBP, Cargill and ConAgra, who today currently control over 81% of the beef slaughtering industry. The recent analysis, prepared for WORC by agricultural economist Catherine Durham of Oregon State University, uses information in a study done for USDA to estimate how much the use of captive supplies lowered prices paid to cattle producers. The total impact of captive supplies on cattle prices was between $51.9 million and $527 million, according to Professor Durham's analysis. The difference in the numbers depends on which of several models in the USDA study is used, and on other assumptions needed to make the estimate. "USDA officials have denied that there is evidence of harm to cattle producers from captive supplies," said Tom Breitbach, a Circle, Montana, farmer speaking for WORC. "This analysis by Dr. Durham shows there is evidence of significant harm to producers. If USDA won't act with this evidence, what on earth good is it?," Breitbach asked. Meanwhile, back at the USDA corral Glickman has met with a bipartisan group of U.S. senators to discuss legislation that would require that meat be labeled as domestic or imported. A memo circulating within the USDA's leadership ranks recently caught the attention of some agricultural groups. The memo expressed some USDA officials' opposition to the meat-labeling provision because it could cost the government $60 million a year to enforce and could hurt U.S. exports. Glickman has told reporters that he is willing to work with lawmakers to reach a sensible plan for meat labeling, as long as the plan would not distort trade. ONLY ABOUT 86 YEARS TOO LATE Arguing that "as a capital-intensive, export-dependent sector, U.S. agriculture is directly and significantly affected by monetary policy," Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., is urging President Bill Clinton to appoint an agricultural expert to fill the vacancy on the Federal Reserve Board. "A nominee familiar with the U.S. food and fiber sector - coupled with the requisite expert knowledge of monetary policy and the world financial system - would be an asset to the Board of Governors," he wrote. Lugar said he would like to see a candidate who has experience in "some facet of agriculture or agribusiness, whether in production, processing, lending or some other field of endeavor." Some one say from Cargill Investments, or perhaps Dwayne O. Andreas when he decides to retire as Chairman of the Board from ADM, "Supermakerup to the World," or maybe Dean Kleckner from the American Farm Bureau Federation, or John S.Reed, chairman of the board of Citicorp and a Monsanto board member? One should not, however, expect to see an ordinary family farmer nominated for such a position given the "esteem" in which they are held in the agricultural financial community. As Neill McKinstray, manager of transportation and market development with Andersons Inc., recently pointed out in commenting on how there has been no rush among farmers to embrace a pilot program launched by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in trading over-the-counter agriculture options in the U.S earlier this year. "The CFTC still believes that farmers don't have the mental capacity to use this system without heavy oversight," McKinstray complained. THE BRACERO PROGRAM LIVES !!!! Relentless in their determination to revive the bracero system corporate agribusiness's grower class are once again vigorously lobbying the federal government and Congress to win approval of the program. This past summer under the guise of "guest worker" legislation in the U.S. Senate they took the first step in bringing forth the program. The Senate approved bill would allow U.S. growers to import unlimited numbers of Mexican farmworkers under no-strike, short-term contracts. The original bracero program was created during World War II after Public Law 45 was enacted which denied American farmworkers the right to leave their jobs and prohibited the use of federal funds to improve their wages and living conditions. Then the U.S. Department of Labor signed agreements with the governments of Mexico and the British West Indies to import workers under temporary, no-strike contracts. Though the program was intended as a wartime manpower emergency measure, Congress repeatedly extended it beyond 1945, with the number of braceros peaking during the Korean War. It was not until 1964 after four to five million Mexican farmworkers endured miserable working conditions in the U.S. that that the Congress, despite the protestations of corporate agribusiness and its principal stalking horse --- the American Farm Bureau Federation --- finally voted to end the program. Currently have the farm worker work force is 1.6 million, according to the Department of Labor's National Agricultural Workers Survey. That includes about a million domestic workers (mostly immigrants), perhaps 600,000 undocumented workers, and about 20,000 H2-A workers (foreign farmworkers whom growers import legally under short-term contracts). Illegal workers still account for as much as 70% of the seasonal farm work force, depending on the crop. As Cindy Hahamovitch an associate professor of history at the College of William & Mary, points out using undocumented workers is, of course, illegal, and growers don't like the H2-A program because it comes with strings attached. Growers who want H2-A workers must demonstrate that domestic workers aren't available, pay prevailing wages and provide free housing that meets federal migrant housing standards. "In return," she adds, "growers get workers who can't just switch jobs if they don't like the wages or conditions and who can be deported for striking. Growers complain that this system is cumbersome and too costly. Critics call it indentured servitude." Advocates of the current Senate bill argue that the current "guest worker" program differs from the original bracero program in that it includes measures designed to protect workers. What they neglect to say is that the bracero program also came with stringent standards for working and living conditions; provisions that American farmworkers never enjoyed. The current Senate plan would remove most of what growers don't like about the H2-A program. There would be no limit on the number of farmworkers growers could import, and the responsibility would be on federal officials to prove that domestic workers are available before denying a grower the right to import workers. In addition, growers would no longer have to provide housing and they would only be obligated to guarantee that their workers earned the minimum wage as a group, not as individuals. Growers under the original bracero program supposedly couldn't get braceros if their housing didn't make Labor Department standards; they were required to pay at least a set minimum wage; and the workers were guaranteed subsistence and three-quarters of the promised wages, even if they were idled because of freezes or floods. The Mexican government negotiated this contract, and also acted as a sort of union negotiator for its countrymen. "The problem," as Hahamovitch observes, "then and now is that labor regulations are useless if the workers don't have the power to enforce them. Once the war ended and government officials turned their attention to other matters, Mexicans found themselves sleeping in sordid labor camps, drinking contaminated water and accepting whatever wages they were offered. The regulations designed to protect them were rarely enforced. Those who complained or went on strike were deported and blacklisted. "What's to stop a new bracero program from devolving into a similar system? Farmworkers still lack the right of collective bargaining and "guest workers" are particularly vulnerable because they labor under the threat of deportation. It is worth noting that if their was in fact a labor shortage today, farm wages would be rising. Yet Congress's fact-finding commissions have found that farm wages have been falling for 20 years, and housing conditions in the East Coast migrant stream and in California are deteriorating. Remarkably, the states where growers protest loudest about labor scarcity are the places where wages are lowest. "Two remarkable things are happening," Douglas Massey, a University of Pennsylvania sociologist and an expert on Mexican migration recently told the Wall Street Journal. "Immigration has shifted from being a narrow regional phenomenon, where 75% of migrants went to California, to a national phenomenon involving every region." The other change, he says, "is the diversity of Mexican employment categories." Al French, an Agriculture Department labor expert, also notes that even when farm wages keep pace with nonfarm wages, nonfarm jobs are prized because of the relatively high prices many migrants are required to pay for temporary housing and because of the work days they lose moving from farm to farm. MARRIAGES MADE IN CORPORATE HEAVEN If, as some are predicting, that within three to five years agriculture, or as it is beginning to be euphemistically called, "life sciences" will be dominated by three biotech megacomplexes (Monsanto, DuPont and Novartis), then it should come as no surprise that such an arrangement will have the blessing of the government and its various federal regulatory agencies. The betrothal, according to the Third World Network, the Edmonds Institute and others, has already begun. David W. Beier . . . former head of Government Affairs for Genentech, Inc., now chief domestic policy advisor to Al Gore, Vice-President of the United States. Linda J. Fisher . . . former Assistant Administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Pollution Prevention, Pesticides, and Toxic Substances, now Vice President of Government and Public Affairs for Monsanto Corporation. L. Val Gidings . . . former biotechnology regulator and (biosafety) negotiator at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA/APHIS), now Vice President for Food & Agriculture of the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) Marcia Hale . . . former assistant to the President of the United States and director for intergovernmental affairs, now Director of International Government Affairs for Monsanto Corporation Michael (Mickey) Kantor. . . former Secretary of the United States Department of Commerce and former Trade Representative of the United States, now member of the board of directors of Monsanto Corporation Josh King . . . former director of production for White House events, now director of global communication in the Washington, D.C. office of Monsanto Corporation Terry Medley . . . former administrator of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) of the United States Department of Agriculture, former chair and vice-chair of the United States Department of Agriculture Biotechnology Council, former member of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) food advisory committee, and now Director of Regulatory and External Affairs of Dupont Corporation's Agricultural Enterprise Margaret Miller . . . former chemical laboratory supervisor for Monsanto, now Deputy Director of Human Food Safety and Consultative Services, New Animal Drug Evaluation Office, Center for Veterinary Medicine in the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA).* William D. Ruckelshaus . . . former chief administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA), now (and for the past 12 years) a member of the board of directors of Monsanto Corporation. Michael Taylor . . . former legal advisor to the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA)'s Bureau of Medical Devices and Bureau of Foods, later executive assistant to the Commissioner of the FDA, still later a partner at the law firm of King & Spaulding where he supervised a nine-lawyer group whose clients included Monsanto Agricultural Company, still later Deputy Commissioner for Policy at the United States Food and Drug Administration, and now again with the law firm of King & Spaulding.* Lidia Watrud . . . former microbial biotechnology researcher at Monsanto Corporation in St. Louis, Missouri, now with the United States Environmental Protection Agency Environmental Effects Laboratory, Western Ecology Division. Clayton K. Yeutter . . . former Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, former U.S. Trade Representative (who led the U.S. team in negotiating the U.S. Canada Free Trade Agreement and helped launch the Uruguay Round of the GATT negotiations), now a member of the board of directors of Mycogen Corporation, whose majority owner is Dow AgroSciences, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Dow Chemical Company. * Margaret Miller, Michael Taylor, and Suzanne Sechen (an FDA "primary reviewer for all rbST and other dairy drug production applications" ) were the subjects of a U.S. General Accounting Office INVESTIGATION IN 1994 for their role in FDA's approval of Posilac, Monsanto's formulation of RECOMBINANT BOVINE GROWTH HORMONE. The GAO Office found "NO CONFLICTING FINANCIAL INTERESTS WITH RESPECT TO THE DRUG'S APPROVAL" and only "one minor deviation from now superseded FDA regulations." (Quotations are from the 1994 GAO report) JOHN MORRISON, R.I.P. In the video "Agriculture is About to Get Very Small," Steve Barker, Vice-President of Marketing, Research and Development for Agribank, outlines how it is almost inevitable that in the not too distant future agriculture will be dominated by three megacomplexes who will in turn have alliances with contract producers. The only exception to that, he notes "is the poultry industry where we see evidence that poultry farmers are `pushing back.'" There is, he continues, "large concern on the part of poultry famers that they are not getting a fair shake from their processors. One has to question whether or not they just might be two decades ahead of their peers who don't understand what the whole relationships issue with processors\integrators is." John Morrison, 58, who for the past six years was the Executive Director of the National Contract Poultry Growers Association and the President of the National Contract Growers Institute was one of those family farm "visionaries," one of the first poultry growers to "push back." Born in New Mexico he spent over 25 years in the oil exploration business in Texas and Louisiana after graduating from the New Mexico School of Mining in Sequoia, NM and serving in the Army and being based in Louisiana from the late 1950's to early 1960's. In 1986, Morrison left his position as president of a Dallas based oil and gas exploration company and moved to Louisiana to become a contract poultry farmer prior to his staff role with the NCPGA. As a leader in the NCPGA, he worked to expand and strengthen the organization of poultry growers and expanded their work with family farmers throughout the country through active participation and membership in the Washington DC based National Family Farm Coalition and the Denver, CO based National Farmers Union. On Sunday, September 6 , John Morrison died suddenly of an apparent heart attack at his home in Dubberly, Louisiana.He is survived by his wife Judi of Dubberly, LA; two daughters Johnna Elzen of Colliersville, TN and Jennifer Graham of Memphis, TN; two stepsons Cory Kurk and Alex Kurk of Dubberly, and four grandchildren, Beau Adam Bernard, Cameron Bernard, Lacey Bernard, and Aaron Graham of Memphis. He is also survived by eleven brothers and sisters from across the country. Morrison's family suggests that memorial gifts be made to the National Contract Growers Institute, PO Box 780, Minden, LA 71055 in lieu of flowers. Morrison's home address is 160 Pierce Ln, Dubberly, LA 71024. --------------86F3FFE9297CB631D2E37C2B <HTML> <FONT SIZE=+1>The</FONT> <BR><FONT SIZE=+2>AGRIBUSINESS</FONT> <BR><FONT SIZE=+2>EXAMINER</FONT> <P><I>Monitoring corporate agribusiness from apublic interest perspective</I> <P>Issue #2 September 10, 1998 <BR> <P><FONT SIZE=+1>"THIS IS NOT BUSINESS ETHICS 101"</FONT> <P>"This is not Business Ethics 101. This is how you deal with the real world. You have to mislead the competition." Reid Weingarten has told jurors in a closing argument at the current ADM trial in Chicago. In reality, competitors lied to each other routinely, but Weingarten told jurors that no price-fixing agreements were made. <BR> <BR>Weingarten, who represents ADM's Terrance Wilson, who along with Michael Andreas and ex-FBI mole Mark Whitacre are accused of fixing prices and market shares with fellow lysine producers. ADM, "Supermarkup to the World," pleaded guilty to antitrust charges and paid a $100 million fine in 1996. <P>Whatever the verdict in this case, which some have called the best documented corporate crime in American history with some 200 hours of audio and video recordings, the trial has provided an interesting peek into the world of corporate speak. <P>Earlier in the trial Weingarten told jurors in an opening statement, "there was bluffing; the philosophy here is to hold your competitor's hand so you don't get stabbed in the back." And it was Mark Whitacre who recalled that also within the ADM family it was common to hear the advice that "the competitor is our friend and the customer is our enemy." <P>During the current trial, one of the tapes shows executives from rival livestock-feed market companies meeting secretly in an Atlanta hotel under cover of a trade show getting ready to talk prices when they hear a knock on the door. "Yes? FTC?" jokes Ajinomoto Co. executive Kanji Mimoto, in a guilty reference to regulators at the Federal Trade Commission. As it turned out, Mimoto wasn't far off. An FBI agent posing as a bellhop was delivering a bugged briefcase to the private room, while his colleagues were recording the meeting with a hidden video camera. <P>As Greg Burns writes in the <U>Chicago Tribune</U>, "The ADM trial tapes reveal a casual disregard for the rules of commerce that seems to confirm the worst suspicions about big business. The jet-set life of executives at powerful global companies is cast in a dark light, giving the impression that lawlessness is a routine part of doing business on the world stage." <P><FONT SIZE=+1>"IF THEY COME FOR YOU IN THE MORNING, THEY WILL COME FOR ME IN THE EVENING." - ANGELA DAVIS</FONT> <P>The calm of a 16-day international seminar on Globalization and Resistance being held in Cologny, Geneva late last month was shattered on August 27 when it was raided by some 40 police officers following a week of close police surveillance. Fifty participants, from 17 countries, were subsequently taken in riot vans to the local police station. <P>Officers illegally searched individuals and private belongings, detaining all 50 participants at the station. The detainees, including a six-year old girl from the Ukraine, were held for over two hours without explanation. Most were eventually released <BR>without charge.However, five remained in police custody for yet another five hours. Four of these were then released - the fifth is still in custody. <P>The seminar was convened to discuss economic globalization and its impact on communities and the environment, as well as peoples' efforts to reclaim control over their own lives. The seminar was entirely educational and consisted of lectures and discussions only by international economists, journalists, representatives of people's movements, and workers from human rights and other non-governmental organisations. <P>Speakers included well-known people like Professor Nanjundaswami from the Karnataka Farmers Movement of India and prominent author and President of the Observatoire de la Mondialisation, Susan George, who had lectured to the seminar two days earlier. George said she had found, "a group of peaceful and law-abiding young people." She deplored the police actions and called for the immediate release of those detained. <P>The police, in a concerted action, entered the seminar site at 7.30 am, waking the guests, searching their accommodation without a warrant, and confiscating personal property. They refused to give receipts for the items, which included videos, notebooks, an artist's portfolio, personal diaries and photographs, and the organizers' documents. <P>When a woman from the seminar asked a policeman, "Isn't what you're doing illegal?," he replied, "Yes, totally " Police were also overheard making racist, sexist, and anti-Semitic comments. Taking a passport from the stack, a policeman said, "Oh, that's the Jew!" A Bangladeshi charity worker who had just been awoken was singled out for <BR>particularly offensive treatment. <P>The seminar was aimed at critically challenging the hegemonic consensus of neoliberal ideology that elevates free trade to a provider of great wealth and prosperity for all. Critics of such a philosophy point out that the world we live in is increasingly <BR>coming under the control of unaccountable, undemocratic, and highly centralized, <BR>transnational institutions such as the World Bank, the International Monetary <BR>Fund, the World Trade Organisation (WTO), and the European Union. Powerful tools for the development of the neoliberal agenda are trade treaties such as the proposed <BR>Multilateral Agreement on Investment and various other regional trade agreements. <P>It is also pointed out that power and wealth are concentrating in the hands of transnational corporations, such as Shell, Nestle, IBM, and Monsanto. Decision making shifts further and further from local community control, and into the hands of corporate lobby groups, such as the International Chamber of Commerce, and the Geneva based World Economic Forum. <P>For MAI-not (un)subscription information, posting guidelines and links to other MAI sites see <BR><A HREF="http://mai.flora.org/">http://mai.flora.org/</A> <P><FONT SIZE=+1>WAITING FOR GLICKMAN</FONT> <P>It came as no surprise to independent cattle ranchers or family farmers that a controversial cattle marketing practice costs them tens of millions of dollars each year, according to an economic analysis released by the Western Organization of Resource Councils (WORC). <P>The organization of cattle ranchers and family farmers believes the analysis gives Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman more than enough evidence that he needs to restrict the use of the marketing practice, called "captive supplies" by ranchers. <P>Eighteen months ago, the United States Department of Agriculture asked for public comment on a "petition for rulemaking" filed by WORC. The petition asked USDA to limit the use of "captive supplies" of cattle by beef packers. Cattle that packers own and feed in their own feed lots are called "captive" because the packers control them. <P>Packers also sign contracts with feedlot owners to buy some or all of their cattle, which are also called "captive." Many farmers and ranchers say that beef packers' use of <BR>captive supplies limits open competition and lowers the price they get for their cattle — without lowering the price of beef to consumers. <P>At the present time the USDA is still considering new rule-making power based on proposals submitted to it by WORC which would 1) disallow formula or basis pricing on forward contracted slaughter cattle; 2) require that forward contracts be offered in an open, public manner, and 3) require that packer-fed cattle be sold on an open, public market. <BR> <BR>Currently, beef packing companies can take such cattle without ever bidding in open markets, such as livestock sale barns. By keeping their packing plants full for days and weeks at a time with such "captive supplies" they can easily force open market prices (or "cash" market prices) down by simply not buying for long periods. <P>Currently, with the huge numbers of cattle that are fed by the major meatpackers plus non-negotiated formula cattle, there is little interest left in their competing in the cash market. An independent analysis published recently by Les Messinger, Market analyst for Barnes Brokerage in Chicago, shows conservatively, that the cattle producer has lost $220 per head since the growth in captive supplies (March, 1994) and the loss of competition among the big three packers, IBP, Cargill and ConAgra, who today currently control over 81% of the beef slaughtering industry. <BR> <BR>The recent analysis, prepared for WORC by agricultural economist Catherine Durham <BR>of Oregon State University, uses information in a study done for USDA to estimate how much the use of captive supplies lowered prices paid to cattle producers. The total impact of captive supplies on cattle prices was between $51.9 million and $527 million, according to Professor Durham's analysis. The difference in the numbers depends on which of several models in the USDA study is used, and on other assumptions needed to make the estimate. <BR> <BR>"USDA officials have denied that there is evidence of harm to cattle producers from captive supplies," said Tom Breitbach, a Circle, Montana, farmer speaking for WORC. "This analysis by Dr. Durham shows there is evidence of significant harm to producers. If USDA won't act with this evidence, what on earth good is it?," Breitbach asked. <BR> <BR>Meanwhile, back at the USDA corral Glickman has met with a bipartisan group of U.S. senators to discuss legislation that would require that meat be labeled as domestic or imported. A memo circulating within the USDA's leadership ranks recently caught the attention of some agricultural groups. The memo expressed some USDA officials' opposition to the meat-labeling provision because it could cost the government $60 million a year to enforce and could hurt U.S. exports. <P>Glickman has told reporters that he is willing to work with lawmakers to reach a sensible plan for meat labeling, as long as the plan would not distort trade. <P><FONT SIZE=+1>ONLY ABOUT 86 YEARS TOO LATE</FONT> <P>Arguing that "as a capital-intensive, export-dependent sector, U.S. agriculture is directly and significantly affected by monetary policy," Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., is urging President Bill Clinton to appoint an agricultural expert to fill the vacancy on the Federal Reserve Board. <P>"A nominee familiar with the U.S. food and fiber sector - coupled with the requisite expert knowledge of monetary policy and the world financial system - would be an asset to the Board of Governors," he wrote. Lugar said he would like to see a candidate who has experience in "some facet of agriculture or agribusiness, whether in production, processing, lending or some other field of endeavor." <P>Some one say from Cargill Investments, or perhaps Dwayne O. Andreas when he decides to retire as Chairman of the Board from ADM, "Supermakerup to the World," or maybe Dean Kleckner from the American Farm Bureau Federation, or John S.Reed, chairman of the board of Citicorp and a Monsanto board member? <P>One should not, however, expect to see an ordinary family farmer nominated for such a position given the "esteem" in which they are held in the agricultural financial community. As Neill McKinstray, manager of transportation and market development with Andersons Inc., recently pointed out in commenting on how there has been no rush among farmers to embrace a pilot program launched by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in trading over-the-counter agriculture options in the U.S earlier this year. <P> "The CFTC still believes that farmers don't have the mental capacity to use this system without heavy oversight," McKinstray complained. <P><FONT SIZE=+1>THE <I>BRACERO</I> PROGRAM LIVES !!!!</FONT> <P>Relentless in their determination to revive the <I>bracero</I> system corporate agribusiness's grower class are once again vigorously lobbying the federal government and Congress to win approval of the program. <P>This past summer under the guise of "guest worker" legislation in the U.S. Senate they took the first step in bringing forth the program. The Senate approved bill would allow U.S. growers to import unlimited numbers of Mexican farmworkers under no-strike, short-term contracts. <P>The original <I>bracero</I> program was created during World War II after Public Law 45 was enacted which denied American farmworkers the right to leave their jobs and prohibited the use of federal funds to improve their wages and living conditions. Then the U.S. Department of Labor signed agreements with the governments of Mexico and the British West Indies to import workers under temporary, no-strike contracts. <P>Though the program was intended as a wartime manpower emergency measure, Congress repeatedly extended it beyond 1945, with the number of <I>braceros</I> peaking during the Korean War. It was not until 1964 after four to five million Mexican farmworkers endured miserable working conditions in the U.S. that that the Congress, despite the protestations of corporate agribusiness and its principal stalking horse --- the American Farm Bureau Federation --- finally voted to end the program. <P>Currently have the farm worker work force is 1.6 million, according to the Department of Labor's National Agricultural Workers Survey. That includes about a million domestic workers (mostly immigrants), perhaps 600,000 undocumented workers, and about 20,000 H2-A workers (foreign farmworkers whom growers import legally under short-term contracts). Illegal workers still account for as much as 70% of the seasonal farm work force, depending on the crop. <P>As Cindy Hahamovitch an associate professor of history at the College of William & Mary, points out using undocumented workers is, of course, illegal, and growers don't like the H2-A program because it comes with strings attached. Growers who want H2-A workers must demonstrate that domestic workers aren't available, pay prevailing wages and provide free housing that meets federal migrant housing standards. <P>"In return," she adds, "growers get workers who can't just switch jobs if they don't like the wages or conditions and who can be deported for striking. Growers complain that this system is cumbersome and too costly. Critics call it indentured servitude." <P>Advocates of the current Senate bill argue that the current "guest worker" program differs from the original bracero program in that it includes measures designed to protect workers. What they neglect to say is that the <I>bracero</I> program also came with stringent standards for working and living conditions; provisions that American farmworkers never enjoyed. <P>The current Senate plan would remove most of what growers don't like about the H2-A program. There would be no limit on the number of farmworkers growers could import, and the responsibility would be on federal officials to prove that domestic workers are available before denying a grower the right to import workers. In addition, growers would no longer have to provide housing and they would only be obligated to guarantee that their workers earned the minimum wage as a group, not as individuals. <P>Growers under the original bracero program supposedly couldn't get <I>braceros</I> if their housing didn't make Labor Department standards; they were required to pay at least a set minimum wage; and the workers were guaranteed subsistence and three-quarters of the promised wages, even if they were idled because of freezes or floods. The Mexican government negotiated this contract, and also acted as a sort of union negotiator for its countrymen. <P>"The problem," as Hahamovitch observes, "then and now is that labor regulations are useless if the workers don't have the power to enforce them. Once the war ended and government officials turned their attention to other matters, Mexicans found themselves sleeping in sordid labor camps, drinking contaminated water and accepting whatever wages they were offered. The regulations designed to protect them were rarely enforced. Those who complained or went on strike were deported and blacklisted. <P>"What's to stop a new <I>bracero</I> program from devolving into a similar system? Farmworkers still lack the right of collective bargaining and "guest workers" are particularly vulnerable because they labor under the threat of deportation. <P>It is worth noting that if their was in fact a labor shortage today, farm wages would be rising. Yet Congress's fact-finding commissions have found that farm wages have been falling for 20 years, and housing conditions in the East Coast migrant stream and in California are deteriorating. Remarkably, the states where growers protest loudest about labor scarcity are the places where wages are lowest. <P>"Two remarkable things are happening," Douglas Massey, a University of Pennsylvania sociologist and an expert on Mexican migration recently told the <U>Wall Street Journal</U>. "Immigration has shifted from being a narrow regional phenomenon, where 75% of migrants went to California, to a national phenomenon involving every region." The other change, he says, "is the diversity of Mexican employment categories." <P>Al French, an Agriculture Department labor expert, also notes that even when farm <BR>wages keep pace with nonfarm wages, nonfarm jobs are prized because of the <BR>relatively high prices many migrants are required to pay for temporary housing and because of the work days they lose moving from farm to farm. <P><FONT SIZE=+1>MARRIAGES MADE IN CORPORATE HEAVEN</FONT> <P>If, as some are predicting, that within three to five years agriculture, or as it is beginning to be euphemistically called, "life sciences" will be dominated by three biotech megacomplexes (Monsanto, DuPont and Novartis), then it should come as no surprise that such an arrangement will have the blessing of the government and its various federal regulatory agencies. The betrothal, according to the Third World Network, the Edmonds Institute and others, has already begun. <P><U>David W. Beier<B> </B></U>. . . former head of Government Affairs for Genentech, Inc., now chief domestic policy advisor to Al Gore, Vice-President of the United States. <P><U>Linda J. Fisher </U>. . . former Assistant Administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Pollution Prevention, Pesticides, and Toxic Substances, now Vice President of Government and Public Affairs for Monsanto Corporation. <P><U>L. Val Gidings</U> . . . former biotechnology regulator and (biosafety) negotiator at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA/APHIS), now Vice President for Food & Agriculture of the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) <P><U>Marcia Hale </U>. . . former assistant to the President of the United States and director for intergovernmental affairs, now Director of International Government Affairs for Monsanto Corporation <BR> <BR><U>Michael (Mickey) Kantor</U>. . . former Secretary of the United States Department of Commerce and former Trade Representative of the United States, now member of the board of directors of Monsanto Corporation <BR> <BR><U>Josh King</U> . . . former director of production for White House events, now director of global communication in the Washington, D.C. office of Monsanto Corporation <BR> <BR><U>Terry Medley </U>. . . former administrator of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) of the United States Department of Agriculture, former chair and vice-chair of the United States Department of Agriculture Biotechnology Council, former member of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) food advisory committee, and now Director of Regulatory and External Affairs of Dupont Corporation's Agricultural Enterprise <BR> <BR><U>Margaret Miller</U> . . . former chemical laboratory supervisor for Monsanto, now Deputy Director of Human Food Safety and Consultative Services, New Animal Drug Evaluation Office, Center for Veterinary Medicine in the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA).* <BR> <BR><U>William D. Ruckelshaus </U>. . . former chief administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA), now (and for the past 12 years) a member of the board of directors of Monsanto Corporation. <BR> <BR><U>Michael Taylor </U>. . . former legal advisor to the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA)'s Bureau of Medical Devices and Bureau of Foods, later executive assistant to the Commissioner of the FDA, still later a partner at the law firm of King & Spaulding where he supervised a nine-lawyer group whose clients included Monsanto Agricultural Company, still later Deputy Commissioner for Policy at the <BR>United States Food and Drug Administration, and now again with the law firm of King & Spaulding.* <BR> <BR><U>Lidia Watrud </U>. . . former microbial biotechnology researcher at Monsanto Corporation in St. Louis, Missouri, now with the United States Environmental Protection Agency Environmental Effects Laboratory, Western Ecology Division. <BR> <BR><U>Clayton K. Yeutter</U> . . . former Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, former U.S. Trade Representative (who led the U.S. team in negotiating the U.S. Canada Free Trade Agreement and helped launch the Uruguay Round of the GATT negotiations), now a member of the board of directors of Mycogen Corporation, whose majority owner is Dow AgroSciences, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Dow Chemical Company. <BR> <BR>*<I> Margaret Miller</I>, <I>Michael Taylor</I>, and <I>Suzanne Sechen</I> (an FDA "primary reviewer for all rbST and other dairy drug production applications" ) were the subjects of a U.S. General Accounting Office INVESTIGATION IN 1994 for their role in FDA's approval of Posilac, Monsanto's formulation of RECOMBINANT BOVINE GROWTH HORMONE. The GAO Office found "NO CONFLICTING FINANCIAL INTERESTS WITH RESPECT TO THE DRUG'S APPROVAL" and only "one minor deviation from now superseded FDA regulations." (Quotations are from the 1994 GAO report) <P><FONT SIZE=+1>JOHN MORRISON, R.I.P.</FONT> <P>In the video "Agriculture is About to Get Very Small," Steve Barker, Vice-President of Marketing, Research and Development for Agribank, outlines how it is almost inevitable that in the not too distant future agriculture will be dominated by three megacomplexes who will in turn have alliances with contract producers. The only exception to that, he notes "is the poultry industry where we see evidence that poultry farmers are `pushing back.'" <P>There is, he continues, "large concern on the part of poultry famers that they are not getting a fair shake from their processors. One has to question whether or not they just might be two decades ahead of their peers who don't understand what the whole relationships issue with processors\integrators is." <P>John Morrison, 58, who for the past six years was the Executive Director of the National Contract Poultry Growers Association and the President of the National Contract Growers Institute was one of those family farm "visionaries," one of the first poultry growers to "push back." <P>Born in New Mexico he spent over 25 years in the oil exploration business in Texas and Louisiana after graduating from the New Mexico School of Mining in Sequoia, NM and serving in the Army and being based in Louisiana from the late 1950's to early 1960's. In 1986, Morrison left his position as president of a Dallas based oil and gas exploration company and moved to Louisiana to become a contract poultry farmer prior to his staff role with the NCPGA. <P>As a leader in the NCPGA, he worked to expand and strengthen the organization of poultry growers and expanded their work with family farmers throughout the country through active participation and membership in the Washington DC based National Family Farm Coalition and the Denver, CO based National Farmers Union. <P>On Sunday, September 6 , John Morrison died suddenly of an apparent heart <BR>attack at his home in Dubberly, Louisiana.He is survived by his wife Judi of Dubberly, LA; two daughters Johnna Elzen of Colliersville, TN and Jennifer Graham of Memphis, TN; two stepsons Cory Kurk and Alex Kurk of Dubberly, and four grandchildren, Beau Adam Bernard, Cameron Bernard, Lacey Bernard, and Aaron Graham of Memphis. He is also survived by eleven brothers and sisters from across the country. <P>Morrison's family suggests that memorial gifts be made to the National Contract <BR>Growers Institute, PO Box 780, Minden, LA 71055 in lieu of flowers. Morrison's home address is 160 Pierce Ln, Dubberly, LA 71024. <BR> <BR> </HTML> --------------86F3FFE9297CB631D2E37C2B-- -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
