As the U.S. economy reels from the impacts of tariffs, and cattle and beef supplies run short, we should go back and try to understand how we got here. How a handful of corporations leveraged Canadian and U.S. producers against one another to profit and capture our food supply.
The picture above is from a 2003 presentation at the Tiffin Center in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada. As you can see from the following presentation, there was push back to the growing corporate concentration, but only by a few, mostly ignored voices.
The two biggest cattle feeders in Canada were in the audience that winter day. Although highly subsidized, many of the best and most efficient Canadian feeders were driven out of business by the meatpacking cartel – IBP (now Tyson), ConAgra (now JBS), and Cargill, the same market predators cooperating in the demise of our U.S. cattle industry.
Montana cowboy and cartoonist, Wally Badgett, captured the reality.
“Professional management and efficiency can be instruments to impoverish communities or they can be instruments to enrich communities…The Priority of People Over Capital.” – Greg MacLeod
See the following for the full 2003 presentation:
Alberta Ag Tiffin Conference Lethbridge, Alberta
