The Takeover: Chicken Farming and the Roots of American Agribusiness by Monica R. Gisolfi

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Takeover: Chicken Farming and the Roots of American Agribusiness by Monica R. Gisolfi Sara Egge (bio) The Takeover: Chicken Farming and the Roots of American Agribusiness. By Monica R. Gisolfi. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2017. Pp. 128. $59.95 cloth; $24.95 paper; $24.95 ebook) According to Monica Gisolfi, chicken McNuggets are full of irony and exploitation. They emerged out of a system created by poultry processors whose goal in pursing vertical integration during the twentieth century was to maximize profits for themselves. It began when Upcountry Georgia, cotton farmers in the early-twentieth century began to assume significant debt to merchants and landlords when the cost to produce it outweighed the market price of cotton. Cotton farmers in four counties—Cherokee, Forsyth, Hall, and Jackson—gradually adapted the crop lien system used in cotton production to chicken. As the New Deal placed restrictions on cotton, farmers faced pressure from local businesspeople, national feed companies, and the federal government to turn to chicken. They [End Page 632] tackled diseases such as pullorum by participating in the National Poultry Improvement Plan. They also added electric power to their operations with help from the New Deal's Rural Electrification Administration so that they could grow chickens year-round. World War II transformed the poultry industry by urging farmers to increase production dramatically. Government demand for chicken expanded hatcheries and processing plants. Military contracts stipulated standardized sizes and weights, which led processing plants to prepare chickens cut for table instead of removing only blood and feathers. Federally subsidized research into freezing, processing, feed, disease, and packaging helped to standardize the industry. It also produced inequality as breakthroughs disproportionately favored large processors, especially a processor named Jesse D. Jewell. After World War II, poultry integrators like Jewell developed a profitable business model based on quasi-vertical integration, the feed conversion contract, and the forced sale of new equipment to poultry contract farmers. Gisolfi is at her best when she details how integrators like Jewell took over the modern broiler industry. Early on, integrators made most of their profits from selling chicken farmers the feed for their operations. Jewell soon recognized that processed broilers promised bigger profits, and he invested heavily in the most lucrative aspects of the system, including breeding facilities, dressing plants, factories for preparing the birds, and feed mills. He left the riskiest element—raising the broilers—to poultry farmers. In this way, he and other integrators practiced quasi-vertical integration by choice. In addition, integrators set the terms for contracts that were "so clearly and astoundingly unfair and unreasonable" (p. 39). These processors developed feed conversion contracts in which farmers earned money based on how efficiently they converted feed to meat. Ironically, those who actually raised the birds had no control over marketing and production decisions. In addition, integrators practiced "forced obsolescence," requiring chicken farmers to purchase expensive and up-to-date houses and machinery from them, often returning after less than five years with demands for more "upgrades" and [End Page 633] refusing to offer contracts to any farmers who declined. Farmers had to either choose the terrible contract terms or cease farming; as Gisolfi put it, "they could choose to eat or to starve" (p. 39). What emerged was a "strange variation on capitalism" in which chicken farmers owned the means of production and provided more than half the capital to run the poultry industry (p. 46). But the profits went to integrators like Jewell, who refused to work with any farmer who did not accept the terms of his unequal contracts. Many farmers turned to off-farm work to make ends meet, producing more birds every year but making less money because of the debts integrators made them assume. As the number of chickens increased, so too did the amount of toxic waste in Upcountry Georgia. Gisolfi details the environmental devastation wrought by a serious lack of government regulation and proper waste management procedures. At seventy-two pages, The Takeover is an excellent resource for teachers who want to introduce their students to a small segment of the food system. Gisolfi distills a complex topic into a readable text for newcomers to agricultural...