Diestel vs Goliath
Food Chain Radio Show #1239
Michael Olson, Author & Urban Farming Agriculturalist
Diestel vs Goliath and the Family Turkey
Guest: Heidi Diestel Orrock, CEO, Diestel Turkeys
In the 1239th edition of the Food Chain, we learned how many of the nation’s poultry farmers have become serfs with mortgages to a few, very-large integrated companies.
Michael Olson Food Chain Radio – Diestel vs Goliath – Heidi Diestel Orrock, CEO, Diestel Turkeys
The farmers are called “serfs with mortgages” because, though they might own their own land, or at least hold the mortgage on their land, they have become serfs to the giant companies that own the chickens, the chicken feed and the market for the chickens.
The farmers have little control over which chickens to raise, how to feed them or how to treat them. At the end of the day, many contract chicken farmers are left with little more than a mountain of debt incurred in building chicken houses for their company overseers, and a mountain of chicken manure.
When chicken farmers rebel against this system, as did Perdue Farms contract farmer Craig Watts, they are bullied back into submission by the fact they have mortgaged their land to build the chicken houses, and have no other market for their chickens.
In thinking about what kind of chickens the “serfs with mortgages” farmers are likely to produce for their giant corporate overseers, we got to thinking there must be a better way. And so we ask…
Leave a comment below: Where can we find food with its farmers face on it?
Nationally syndicated Food Chain Radio airs live Saturday mornings 9-10AM Pacific.
