Log on to USDA.gov and on the front page it proclaims their top priorities: “Advancing Racial Justice, Equity, and Opportunity,” “Addressing Climate Change,” “Tackling Food and Nutrition Insecurity” and “More, Better, and New Market Opportunities.”
USDA’s priorities have always been on the 80% of the budget that is food and nutrition programs. Recently, climate change has been coming down from the top as a focus of conservation and other ag programs. Now, race and other alleged discrimination practices are paramount issues over USDA’s production agriculture policy.
USDA has released a draft proposal, the second of their projected competition rules. This proposal is different from previous rules, except for trying to gin up more packer lawsuits.
The draft notes that:
“The historic Executive order issued by the Biden-Harris administration, Executive Order (E.O.) 14036—Promoting Competition in the American Economy (86 FR 36987; July 9, 2021), directs the Secretary of Agriculture to address unfair treatment of farmers and improve conditions of competition in their markets by considering rulemaking to address, among other things, certain practices related to market abuses and enhanced competition in the livestock, poultry, and related markets, including unjustly discriminatory, unduly prejudicial, and deceptive practices, in particular retaliation. E.O. 14036 also underscored that an individual should not have to show market-wide harm to secure relief under the Act. AMS has considered that direction in undertaking this rulemaking.”
That EO is concerning, as it proposes more central government interference in the free market.
But USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service has other interpretations. The rule:
“USDA Proposed Rule: Inclusive Competition and Market Integrity under the Packers and Stockyards Act.” The first bullet point: “Protect people at higher risk of unjust treatment in the marketplace, based on their race, gender, sexual orientation, and religious affiliation.”
In all the complaints, lawsuits and rhetoric of cattlemen or groups that have protested their treatment by packers, I can’t recall any of them based on those factors.
The next bullet points deal with banning retaliatory practices and deceptive contracts and monitoring relevant records to ensure compliance.
Contracts are already being addressed with the Cattle Contracts Library Pilot Program. As for the power to examine your records, that sounds like a license to ignore constitutional rights, but the devil will be in the details. What records will actually prove “unjust treatment,” and how would they be used? It would even grant power to examine board of directors’ materials, which I assume would mean cattle companies as well as packers.
The Department of Justice has sued poultry processors three times recently, and even with text messages to bolster their allegations, a jury has rejected the government’s claims every time: not just a bureaucratic decision, but a citizen jury. The definition of “unjust” or “collusion” seems to differ among prosecutors, activists, judges and juries.
Then there is the state attorneys general stunt. USDA is apparently planning on putting a $15 million pot out there to entice state attorneys general to go after packers. Is this some more of the inclusion, prejudice, discrimination mantra to see if they can find a minority feeder to launch a lawsuit against a packer? Jury awards can be quite costly to giant corporations. Is this what we need from an industry standpoint, the government trying to see if it can break a packer or cost one some serious money?
I can’t quibble with this draft statement:
“The increased use of long-term production and marketing contracts in livestock and poultry markets, can foster greater vertical coordination, and potentially allows certain production and marketing efficiencies related to scale and certain enhanced aspects of packer, or even retailer, control over product differentiation.”
The woke diagnosis of the problem: “The most recent data from the 2017 Census of Agriculture indicate that non-white racial and ethnic groups constitute a very small share of contracted livestock and poultry producers—a trend likely due in part to historical discrimination against these groups.”
In other unpleasant political news, there are proposed actions and directions to government agencies from the “Biden-Harris Administration National Strategy on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health.”
The setup is that in the 50 years since the first such White House conference, the U.S. government has failed to eliminate hunger. In addition, there is an “urgent, nutrition-related health crisis—the rising prevalence of diet-related diseases such as type 2 diabetes, obesity, hypertension, and certain cancers.”
According to the report, “The vast majority of Americans do not eat enough vegetables, fruits, or whole grains and eat too much saturated fat, sodium, and added sugars.” Not shockingly, that statement is referenced from the “Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2020-2025.” — Steve Dittmer,WLJ columnist
(Steve Dittmer is the author of the Agribusiness Freedom Foundation newsletter. Views in the column do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of WLJ or its editorial staff.)
