Mike Callicrate | No-Bull Food News

September, 1929 – The Farmers Union Herald, St. Paul, Minnesota

From NFU historian Tom Giessel, Larned, Kansas

Will Harris didn’t like the direction industrial ag was taking him, so he did something amazing.

Who was the primary force in concentrating the beef industry, eliminating competition, and reducing cattle producers share of the consumer beef dollar? Who led the elimination of half a million cattle producers, 80,000 independent feeders, and most of the small to mid-sized local/regional slaughter plants? During my presentation at the annual R-CALF convention, I asked the question, “How many of you have heard of Bob Peterson?” Very few, mostly those around my age, raised their hands. It’s not surprising considering its been 27 years since 1996, the year of the South Dakota Governors Conference, and when Bob Peterson was President and CEO of IBP, the nations biggest meatpacker.

My point in asking the question was to help people understand what happened to their markets and why the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) has been so supportive of the big meatpackers fleecing of our ranchers and cow-calf producers.

The year 1996 was also the year we filed the antitrust lawsuit against IBP. The case finally made it to trial in 2004 with the jury awarding the cattlemen $1.28 billion. The trial judge reversed the jury verdict and made the cattlemen pay Tyson’s court costs. We lost the jury award and any hope of the injunctive relief that would have stopped the big meatpacker stealing.

Yes, I said Tyson. During the conference, Dr. William Heffernan warned Peterson, that even IBP, may not be big enough to compete with global conglomerates. He was right. Five years later, IBP, the largest beef packer in the world, sold to the biggest chicken producer, Tyson.

For some history on how we got here:

Cows and other ruminate animals are a gift to humanity and the world with their ability to transform inedible plants into highly nutritious human food, while at the same time improving the environment. We need a lot more of them on the planet.

So how do we bring back cows, land stewardship, animal husbandry, and the ability to feed ourselves?

See the following presentation by clicking on the arrows on the right and left side of the images.

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The pandemic exposed the many failures and empty grocery shelves of our highly concentrated and consolidated food system. The Biden administration said, in the interest of food security, “Let’s build back better.”

Millions of dollars have been directed to building new infrastructure, but unfortunately the administration didn’t get the permission from the big-food cartel to allow market access to the existing small plants that showed amazing resilience under pandemic pressure, or the new local/regional processors that have been built since, or who foolishly expanded operations post pandemic. And critically, President Biden didn’t get buy-in from USDA leadership, or USDA’s career employees who hold primary allegiance to big-food.

Big-food is stealing from producers, exploiting workers, destroying rural communities, and price gouging  consumers (not inflation), while government bows to the interests of criminals and the concentrated wealth and power of the global food cartel.