2019-11-25, 07:50 PM
có nhiều sự nguy hiểm và rủi ro ngoài dư định bà con nào muốn mạo hiểm đầu tư vào lãnh vực nuôi gà công nghiệp cho những hãng meat processing companies such as Tyson Foods, Perdue Foods and Koch Foods off-load ownership and risks to the farmers; chỉ một trận dịch là có thể mất vốn lẫn lời ; nợ nhà bank trả cả đời không hết
"During the 1960s, Tyson Foods realized that chicken farming was a losing game. When Tyson executives examined operations at the company, they saw that farming was the least profitable, and most risky, side of the business. When they looked to invest in the future, they decided not to invest in farms. One of the people privy to those discussions was Jim Blair, who for decades was one of the company's top attorneys.
"You need to allocate whatever capital you have where it produces the most return on your investment. Owning the land itself wasn't in that category," Blair explained. The company was more interested in the new equipment being developed for slaughterhouses. Buying just one of the big steel machines could cut out the need for hundreds of hours of labor.
"That isn't true, of course, in a 400-by-40-foot-wide chicken house. You can't crowd the chickens in. [When] there's too much chickens, you create disease and you lose efficiency. You can't keep a curve on the growth of production in the chicken house," Blair recalled.
The economics of chicken farming was stubborn, and new technology wasn't changing it. So Tyson plowed its capital into the slaughterhouses, where new dollars bought new machines that cut production time and fattened profit margins. The least profitable part of the business was left to the contract chicken farmers."
HAD called the Tyson plant again and again, for months, begging them to come, demanding help. She and her husband, Jerry, had been raising chickens for two decades, and they'd never been through anything like the last six months. It was a strange disease, or an industrial accident, or both. It was something gone wrong on a grand scale. The birds were simply dying. It seemed like they had started rotting even while they were still alive. She and Jerry worked 10-hour days, seven days a week. Their labor seemed to do nothing but dig them deeper and deeper into debt. But the Yandells had no choice but to continue working. Their home, their farm, and their livelihood depended on whether the birds lived or not.
About every eight weeks, a Tyson truck delivered chicks to the Yandell farm outside Waldron, Ark. Jerry and Kanita's job was to raise the tens of thousands of birds, fattening them up until Tyson returned six weeks later to collect them for slaughter. It was a routine the couple knew well, one that defined the rhythm of their 26-year marriage and the lives of their three boys.
It was a routine that collapsed in the fall of 2003, when the birds started dying overnight in great piles. Jerry and Kanita hadn't seen anything like it. Tyson field technicians visited the farm and looked inside the plastic freezers full of limp white carcasses. They told the Yandells to turn up the heat, turn on the fans, and give the birds more water.
Kanita walked through the houses and picked the rotten birds off each other. Their bodies were like soft, purple balloons by the time she gathered them. They fell apart to the touch, legs sloughing off the body when she tried to pick them up. It was like they were unraveling from the inside at a heated speed. She kept calling the Tyson field men, asking them to come and inspect the buckets full of liquefying birds.
Around Christmas, Kanita and Jerry realized it didn't matter. Whatever burned through the chickens had eaten their livelihood as well. They had taken on more than $260,000 in debt to build the chicken houses. The sickness wiped out the birds. And the dead birds wiped out their paycheck. This would be the last flock and the end of their farm. The end of their home.
A crew of Tyson men came to gather the last flock, wearing plastic suits as if fending off a plague. Kanita asked why they were dressed in biohazard suits. They told her the suits were a precaution, nothing to worry about.
"I'll be ruined by this," she said. "I'll lose my farm."
"I'm sorry," one of the men said.
"You look at my boys and you tell them how sorry you are about it," she said.
......
The company (Tyson) always owns the chickens, even after it drops them off at the farm; it doesn't sell baby chicks to the farmer and buy them back when they're grown. So the farmer never owns his business's most important asset. Tyson also owns the feed the birds eat, which is mixed at the Tyson plant according to the company's recipe and then delivered to the farm on Tyson's trucks according to a schedule that Tyson dictates. Tyson dictates which medicine the birds receive to stave off disease and gain weight, and Tyson field veterinarians travel from farm to farm to check the birds' health.
Tyson also sets the prices for its birds. When the chickens arrive at the slaughterhouse, Tyson weighs them and tallies up how much it owes the farmer on a per-pound basis. When that price is determined, Tyson subtracts the value of the feed it delivered to grow the birds.
The terms and conditions of Tyson's relationship with its farmers are laid out in a contract, the single most important document for a farmer's livelihood. It ensures the steady flow of birds a farmer needs to pay off utility bills and bank debt. But for all their importance, the contracts are usually short and simple documents. While a farmer's debt is measured in decades, the contracts are often viable for a matter of weeks and signed on a flock-to-flock basis. The contracts reserve Tyson's right to cancel the arrangement at any time.
Farmers like the Yandells, who are only called "farmers" for lack of a better word, don't usually pay attention to the fine print of their contracts. They know it doesn't matter anyway. The power arrangement is set by Tyson, and the farmer learns the rules quickly enough, whatever the documents might say. Vertical integration gives companies like Tyson the kind of power that feudal lords once held.
"During the 1960s, Tyson Foods realized that chicken farming was a losing game. When Tyson executives examined operations at the company, they saw that farming was the least profitable, and most risky, side of the business. When they looked to invest in the future, they decided not to invest in farms. One of the people privy to those discussions was Jim Blair, who for decades was one of the company's top attorneys.
"You need to allocate whatever capital you have where it produces the most return on your investment. Owning the land itself wasn't in that category," Blair explained. The company was more interested in the new equipment being developed for slaughterhouses. Buying just one of the big steel machines could cut out the need for hundreds of hours of labor.
"That isn't true, of course, in a 400-by-40-foot-wide chicken house. You can't crowd the chickens in. [When] there's too much chickens, you create disease and you lose efficiency. You can't keep a curve on the growth of production in the chicken house," Blair recalled.
The economics of chicken farming was stubborn, and new technology wasn't changing it. So Tyson plowed its capital into the slaughterhouses, where new dollars bought new machines that cut production time and fattened profit margins. The least profitable part of the business was left to the contract chicken farmers."
HAD called the Tyson plant again and again, for months, begging them to come, demanding help. She and her husband, Jerry, had been raising chickens for two decades, and they'd never been through anything like the last six months. It was a strange disease, or an industrial accident, or both. It was something gone wrong on a grand scale. The birds were simply dying. It seemed like they had started rotting even while they were still alive. She and Jerry worked 10-hour days, seven days a week. Their labor seemed to do nothing but dig them deeper and deeper into debt. But the Yandells had no choice but to continue working. Their home, their farm, and their livelihood depended on whether the birds lived or not.
About every eight weeks, a Tyson truck delivered chicks to the Yandell farm outside Waldron, Ark. Jerry and Kanita's job was to raise the tens of thousands of birds, fattening them up until Tyson returned six weeks later to collect them for slaughter. It was a routine the couple knew well, one that defined the rhythm of their 26-year marriage and the lives of their three boys.
It was a routine that collapsed in the fall of 2003, when the birds started dying overnight in great piles. Jerry and Kanita hadn't seen anything like it. Tyson field technicians visited the farm and looked inside the plastic freezers full of limp white carcasses. They told the Yandells to turn up the heat, turn on the fans, and give the birds more water.
Kanita walked through the houses and picked the rotten birds off each other. Their bodies were like soft, purple balloons by the time she gathered them. They fell apart to the touch, legs sloughing off the body when she tried to pick them up. It was like they were unraveling from the inside at a heated speed. She kept calling the Tyson field men, asking them to come and inspect the buckets full of liquefying birds.
Around Christmas, Kanita and Jerry realized it didn't matter. Whatever burned through the chickens had eaten their livelihood as well. They had taken on more than $260,000 in debt to build the chicken houses. The sickness wiped out the birds. And the dead birds wiped out their paycheck. This would be the last flock and the end of their farm. The end of their home.
A crew of Tyson men came to gather the last flock, wearing plastic suits as if fending off a plague. Kanita asked why they were dressed in biohazard suits. They told her the suits were a precaution, nothing to worry about.
"I'll be ruined by this," she said. "I'll lose my farm."
"I'm sorry," one of the men said.
"You look at my boys and you tell them how sorry you are about it," she said.
......
The company (Tyson) always owns the chickens, even after it drops them off at the farm; it doesn't sell baby chicks to the farmer and buy them back when they're grown. So the farmer never owns his business's most important asset. Tyson also owns the feed the birds eat, which is mixed at the Tyson plant according to the company's recipe and then delivered to the farm on Tyson's trucks according to a schedule that Tyson dictates. Tyson dictates which medicine the birds receive to stave off disease and gain weight, and Tyson field veterinarians travel from farm to farm to check the birds' health.
Tyson also sets the prices for its birds. When the chickens arrive at the slaughterhouse, Tyson weighs them and tallies up how much it owes the farmer on a per-pound basis. When that price is determined, Tyson subtracts the value of the feed it delivered to grow the birds.
The terms and conditions of Tyson's relationship with its farmers are laid out in a contract, the single most important document for a farmer's livelihood. It ensures the steady flow of birds a farmer needs to pay off utility bills and bank debt. But for all their importance, the contracts are usually short and simple documents. While a farmer's debt is measured in decades, the contracts are often viable for a matter of weeks and signed on a flock-to-flock basis. The contracts reserve Tyson's right to cancel the arrangement at any time.
Farmers like the Yandells, who are only called "farmers" for lack of a better word, don't usually pay attention to the fine print of their contracts. They know it doesn't matter anyway. The power arrangement is set by Tyson, and the farmer learns the rules quickly enough, whatever the documents might say. Vertical integration gives companies like Tyson the kind of power that feudal lords once held.