May 23, 2008 (LPAC)--Frank Endres, a California farmer (northern Sacramento Valley) and one of 33 directors on the board of the National Farmers Organization, is blasting the role of the cartels in destroying farm output capacity and causing food shortages. In an interview he gave on May 21 for {EIR} (cover date May 30), in the context of the international Schiller Institute mobilization to kill the WTO, meet emergency food needs, and double world food production, Endres focuses on the cartel threat for just one company to control 35% of the U.S. beef supply. New acquisitions by JBS Swift & Co. will give it this much control. JBS Swift is a division of the beef giant JBS S.A., based in Brazil, which has been fostered as an arm of world food control.
Endres said: "One of the things that's been happening--and it's in all segments of agriculture, it goes through our general economy at the same time--is that the government has refused to enforce the anti-trust laws. In doing so, they've allowed a tremendous amount of consolidation in the food industry... You have other national corporations now that control a very large amount of each commodity.
"We're presently in a battle, along with the cattle organization called R-CALF USA, against this JBS livestock company out of Brazil, that has just bought out three large meatpackers and cattlefeeding operations in the United States, which is going to give them now, over 35 percent of control over the livestock slaughter in this country. Our action against this is at the Justice Department right now, and a lot of the livestock people and other farmers are very, very concerned about this because this JBS holding company out of Brazil, has been investigated and fined for taking a monopoly position there, and controlling the price of cattle in Brazil. And it's really upset the livestock people down there.
"Now they've moved into this country and bought out three of these large companies, which will give them a commanding share of the livestock market here. They bought Smithfield's beef division, and Five Rivers cattle feeding operations. They are going to have a one time capacity of over 875,000 head of cattle in their feeding operations. This is very, very dangerous to have that much control.
"What these acquisitions do, is further bankrupt the livestock producer. To produce calves in this country, you can't do that on a factory type operation, you've got to have family-owned farming operations and ranching operations all over the country, in order to produce the start of the whole livestock industry, and that's the feeder calves. And so they're [JBS] going to put a monopoly control on that, and it's going to continue to keep the prices depressed on that.
"Right now, the price on most calves are about 40 percent of parity, or 40 percent of what we need to pay our bills. And there is no reason for this. We have a shortage of calves actually, in this country. If you take the amount of calves for the past 10 years, and the livestock that we produce, the consumption of beef in this country outstrips the production that we have of beef cattle in this country. We don't raise enough beef in this country to feed the people. We are forced to import beef to keep the people fed."
Enders also described the current chaos among dairy farmers in California, where years of lack of a regulated environment for milk--a very perishable product--has led to a situation where Nestles and other cartel processors (Unilever, Suiza, Altria/Kraft; for milk powder, cheese, fluid milk, etc.) have left the farmer in the lurch for whether he can market his output or not.
"What we've got out here in California, is that we have had increased production, and we don't have the processing facilities to handle it. Over the past three months, farmers have had to dump their milk, to continue milking their cows. In other words, their milk tanks get full, and oftentimes, they don't have any place to go with that milk. So they've had to resort to dumping.
"Now by dumping, that means that they will either have to take the milk and deliver it out of state, at a discount price. Or they will have to sell it to what is called, calf ranches, which give them next to nothing for the milk. Or if they can't get the milk transported in time, by the time their cows come around to get milked again, and if their milk tanks are full, and if they can't get it picked up by the trucking companies, they have to literally dump it in the sewer.
"At one time there was approximately 128 loads that were dumped. Those are large 7,000 gallon tank trucks. "What happens is that, when these trucks have to go deliver milk out of state to get rid of it, the turn-around time is doubled, and those trucks can't get back in time to pick up the next milk up at the dairies. And the milk goes out of condition if they don't pick it up in so many hours.
"There's a shortage of trucks, there is a shortage of processing facilities, and that needs to be corrected."
