Farmers now get only 7.8 cents for every dollar we spend on food.
[[link removed]]
[[link removed]]Want to help stop Big Ag from getting even bigger? Ask Congress today to support
this bill!
Dear Supporter,
Would you like to see a food system where family farmers, food system workers,
local communities and consumers have more power?
Then we need to stop Big Ag corporations from getting even bigger.
Tell Congress: Stop the Big Ag Merger Mania! Protect Family Farms, Consumers &
the Environment by passing the Food and Agribusiness Merger Moratorium and
Antitrust Review Act of 2019!
[[link removed]]
TAKE ACTION
[[link removed]]The Food and Agribusiness Merger Moratorium and Antitrust Review Act of 2019,
introduced by Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Rep.Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), would
protect family farmers who are at the mercy of the food and agriculture giants
who have the power to raise their costs and cut their pay.
Why do we need a moratorium on mergers in the food and agriculture sector?
Let’s look at a recently proposed merger
[[link removed]] in the struggling dairy industry as one example of what happens when the Big
Guys swallow up the Little Guys.
The Big Guy in this case is the nation’s largest dairy cooperative, Dairy
Farmers of America (DFA). The Little Guy is St. Albans Co-Op Creamery in
Vermont, a state where organic integrity, family farms and clean water
[[link removed]] are already in peril and stand to get even worse under a merger with DFA.
Organic integrity: The difference between conventional and organic dairy
[[link removed]] is clear. But as the Cornucopia Institute has revealed
[[link removed]] , there are also big differences in the quality of organic dairy brands. The
Cornucopia Institute provides an organic dairy scorecard [[link removed]] that rates organic dairy brands on a 0 to 5 cow scale. The scale compares
“organic” factory farms that violate rules requiring cows to graze on pasture
and that regularly add non-organic cows to their herds, with farms that strictly
adhere to U.S. Department of Agriculture standards for certified organic
dairies. Dairy Farmers of America and St. Albans are on opposite ends of the
organic integrity spectrum, based on the brands they supply: DFA supplies the
Kemps brand, which gets a 0-cow rating
[[link removed]] from Cornucopia. St. Albans supplies Organic Valley, which gets a 4-cow rating.
Family farms: In theory, cooperatives like St. Albans and DFA exist to sell their farmers’
produce at a return which will provide them a decent living. In practice, many
farmers find that they have no choice but to join the cooperative that dominates
their region, and which forces them to sell their product at a loss. DFA has been repeatedly—and successfully— sued
[[link removed]] by its farmer members for this kind of anticompetitive behavior and price
fixing. As a co-op member of DFA, St. Albans was technically on the plaintiffs’
side in these lawsuits, but the Vermont co-op had its own poor track record
[[link removed]] when it comes to anticompetitive behavior. Allowing the two companies to merge
into one, will only concentrate more power in the hands of the co-ops—and less
money in the hands of dairy farmers.
Clean water: Dairy Farmers of America is a mega-polluter. According to [[link removed]] a report from the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy and GRAIN, DFA is
the fourth largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the meat and dairy
industry, when the company’s livestock feed and agrochemicals operations are
included. (The five largest meat and dairy corporations combined—JBS, Tyson,
Cargill, DFA and Fonterra—are responsible for more annual greenhouse gas
emissions than ExxonMobil, Shell or BP). The manure produced by DFA’s dairies is
part of its greenhouse gas emissions, but even more immediately it’s a cause of
water and air pollution. That’s why DFA has strategically located its recent
projects in states like Nevada, which are not known for dairy, but are known for what the co-op noted as “ agriculture-friendly regulations
[[link removed]] .” But, even progressive Vermont
[[link removed]] has found it difficult (or not politically expedient) to rein in dairy
pollution. The DFA-St. Albans merger would just make matters worse. make things worse. iI
farmers can’t get fair prices from the new, super-sized co-op, they’ll be forced
to sell out to larger farms, or get larger themselves, in an effort to create
economies of scale to produce more milk at lower costs. This predictable
consolidation will create larger farms that are more concentrated, with less
pasture and greater numbers of cows in feedlots, eating less grass and more
grain. The load of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and manure going into
Vermont’s waterways will increase along with farm sizes.
The St. Albans-DFA merger would make all of these problems much worse. As Ed Maltby, executive director of the Northeast Organic Dairy Producers
Alliance told FERN
[[link removed]] reporter Leah Douglas, he sees “nothing good” coming from the St. Albans-DFA merger.
The proposed merger is just one example of the problems with consolidation in
food and agriculture. There are dozens of major mergers with equal or greater
impact, including Monsanto & Bayer, Dow & Dupont, Whitewave & Danone, and Iowa
Premium & National Beef Packing Company.
Tell Congress: Stop the Big Ag Merger Mania! Protect Family Farms, Consumers &
the Environment by passing the Food and Agribusiness Merger Moratorium and
Antitrust Review Act of 2019!
[[link removed]]
TAKE ACTION
[[link removed]]Thank you!
Alexis, for the OCA team.
P.S. To help support this, and other campaigns, please consider making a donation to OCA
[[link removed]] . Nearly 80 percent of our support comes in the form of small donations from
individual donors. Thank you!
[[link removed]]
[[link removed]]Organic Consumers Association is a tax-exempt, non-profit organization, under
the section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. All charitable donations are
deductible to the full extent allowed by law.
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