Farm and Food File

In a now too-common “price fixing in broiler story in U.S agriculture, chicken parts,” reportArcher Daniels Midland ed Agriculture.com. last month agreed to pay farmers $45 million to settle what the March 13 Wall Street Journal described as “price-fixing allegations leveled at its peanut processing division.” FARM & FOOD FILE • In mid-January 2021, Tyson Foods, Inc. “reached an agreement in the broiler chicken antitrust civil price fixing litigation brought against the company, as well as many other poultry

While $45 million is, By Alan Guebert processors, to pay $221.5 indeed, peanuts to ADM (its million,” estimated 2020 revenue will top $65 billion) this isn’t the first time the OPINION according Chicago-based company has faced to Meat+Poultry.com. market manipulation charges. In the late 1990’s, ADM spent years and millions on criminal and civil price-fixing settlements. • One of those other processors was (again) Pilgrim’s Pride which (again) “agreed to pay $75 million on Jan. 11. Both companies did not admit liability

But ADM isn’t the only ag master of as part of the settlements.” the universe to settle recent civil lawsuits over alleged market irregularities. For example: And while all this lawyerly rockpicking with the chicken giants was occurring in 2020, “The Justice • In October 2020, Brazilian-owned Department… deepen(ed) federal antiPilgrim’s Pride Corp., the nation’s sec- trust scrutiny of the $213 billion U.S ond-largest poultry processor, agreed meat industry, following complaints to pay $110.5 million to settle U.S. from farmers and meat buyers about Justice Department allegations of industry pricing practices,” noted the Wall Street Journal last June 5.

Those being scrutinized were the red meat kings: “The Department recently issued civil subpoenas to… JBS USA Holding Inc. [the majority owner of Pilgrim’s Pride Corp., of course,] Tyson Foods. Inc., Cargill Inc., and National Beef Packing Co…”

Despite all this new movement on price fixing, there’s nothing new about price fixing. The roots of U.S. antitrust law, after all, reach back to the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 and the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914.

What is new, however, is that cooperation and coordination is more commonplace among competitors that, counter intuitively, make it more difficult for the government to police.

Peter Carstensen, a professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin law school and senior fellow at the American Antitrust Institute, examined the recent flood of ag class action settlements in a March 8 post for ProMarket, at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business.

What he found was a company “called AgriStats” that “about a decade ago” began to collect “detailed information” from almost every processor “about their ongoing business activities and then distributed that information to all the participating processors. Hence, everyone knew what everyone else was doing.”

Clearly, this was an “information exchange system [that] seriously harmed the competitive process,” right?

Yes, notes Carstensen, a leading scholar in ag antitrust, “But,” he adds, “antitrust law has failed to connect those dots doctrinally.” And, worse, “The current state of antitrust law makes direct challenges to information exchanges [like AgriStats] difficult.” That is even more worrisome given Big Agbiz’s continued consolidation into critical aspects of almost every farm and food sector like hogs, poultry, beef, vegetables and, now, row crops. That’s exactly what 12,000 peanut farmers asserted in the ADM case: that “ADM’s Golden Peanut division coordinated with two other processors to report faulty supply and pricing data, keeping prices for farmers low for the past six years,” reported the Journal. It, and its two other competitors denied any wrongdoing; but all three (who handle virtually every peanut in the U.S.) paid to end the suits: ADM $45 million; the other two, Birdsong Peanuts and Olam International, paid a collective $58 million. That, of course, is nothing to the peanut giants. In fact, when taken as part of the entire pay-without-admitting-guilt strategy used by Big Agbiz in 2020-21, “the settlements to date,” writes Carstensen, “represent barely one percent of a single year’s sales.” Antitrust reform is in the air, however. More on that later. The Farm and Food File is published weekly through the United States and Canada. Past columns, events and contact information are posted at www. farmandfoodfile.com. v Rob-See-Co announces NorthStar acquisition

ELKHORN, Neb. — Rob-See-Co, an independent seed company located in Elkhorn, Neb. acquired NorthStar Genetics, a Minnesota-based seed company. The acquisition enables Rob-SeeCo to expand in the soybean market and provide its expertise in the corn market to NorthStar Genetics Dealers and growers.

Rob-See-Co expects to work with all of NorthStar Genetics’ dealers and will continue to sell NorthStar Genetics brands through the 2021 growing season. In 2022, the company plans to sell solely Innotech brand soybeans, but continue to sell NorthStar Genetics corn products along with Rob-See-Co corn products. The company will operate out of Rob-See-Co’s headquarters in Elkhorn.

To learn more about Rob-See-Co, visit www.robseeco.com.

This article was submitted by RobSee-Co. v

By BRAD RACH Director, National Farmers’ Dairy Division OPINION sentation with a single vote impossible. The Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 1937 passed during a time when over 16 million How many votes could represent the majority of America’s dairy farmers in a hearing concerning federal dairy regulations? The correct answer is 10. How can that be, you ask? The time has arrived to amend the act so all executive branch decisions must be approved in a one farmer, one vote manner by all dairy farmers whose livelihood is affected by the horses and mules still powered much of agriculture’s field work. We need to bring voting provisions of the act more in line with the agricultural system that feeds us in the 21st century. v

To understand what’s going on, you need to know decision. two things. The first is that more than half of America’s licensed dairy farmers belonged to one of the top 10 dairy cooperatives in 2019. The second is Letter: Church showed lack of foresightsomething called bloc voting, which allows cooperative managers to vote on behalf of all their mem- To the Editor, The lack of foresight of the Holy Redeemer trustbers. It was authorized by the Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 1937. If you want to think about that law, it might help you to have some (early) 20th century dairy farm The Back Roads article of March 12, 2021 on “Budejovice” left me feeling very sad. What a beautiful story of a gentleman’s willingness and ability to restore the 1868 church! It was apparent that he ees to see the need for insuring the building left a serious imbalance of purpose in their thinking. All of the donation, besides the man’s health, seemed to have met with a petty lack of thought. data in mind. Here are some highlights: was energized physically and mentally — his cancer Helen Schultz

Cows were being milked on over 5 million farms. went into remission. Canby, Minn.

An average farm had five cows. California, a state known for having larger-than- Letter: Hagen is a concerned citizenaverage dairy farms, averaged 10 cows per farm. Fast forward to today. The corresponding highlights are: To the Editor, Reading the opinion letter from Mr. Tommy Stiles (“Take Mr. Hagen’s Pen,” March 5/March 12) was Instead I found a citizen concerned with the socialist direction this country is taking with little regard to the hard lessons of history.

Licensed dairy farms tallied up to 34,187 in 2019. quite the eye-opening experience. I want to thank Then I read Mr. Stiles’ letter again with the same

Average-sized dairy farms in the United States The Land for having the courage to print it. If the evaluation. To do so is a chilling look into what today have close to 200 cows. average American (democrat or republican) ever America is facing. His disagrees with Dick Hagen, Most dairy farms in the United States have fewer than 200 cows. On the other extreme, the 2017 Census of Agriculture reported 714 dairies with at least 2,500 cows. Of those dairies, 189 had over 5,000 cows. The Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 1937 established the authority of the executive branch, acting through the Secretary of Agriculture, wondered what we are up against, his letter erases all doubt. I read Dick Hagen’s article from Jan. 29 again because I thought it was a respectable opinion, an accurate, historical look into how all prosperous civilizations have slowly but surely deteriorated and collapsed. I read slowly, looking for the anger Mr. Stiles accused him of. Nothing. I looked for division and hatred throughout Dick’s article. They should be obvious, Mr. Stiles referenced them not which is fine, manages one respectable sentence, then launches a personal assault on Dick’s character, career and all who agree with him. When faced with an opinion he doesn’t like, Mr. Stiles doesn’t present a civilized dialog, instead he attacked and asked to have Dick Hagen silenced. Please wake up. This is the power of socialism staring all Americans in the face. to mandate marketing orders and promotion pro- once, but twice. It had to be there, an old (again ref- Tom Haak grams on behalf of farmers. Rules were set in place erenced twice) man like Mr. Hagen is surely incapa- Wood Lake, Minn. for farmers to vote their acceptance or rejection of ble of changing his ways at his age. Just one probthe executive actions. All farmers are covered in the lem: I couldn’t find those things in Dick’s words. act, but I am only referring to dairy farmers here. While I generally favor marketing orders for dairy farmers, the bloc voting provision has outlived any Farm safety video available from Extension usefulness it may have once had. In 1937, there were millions of farmers, none having access to 21st century communications methods. ROCHESTER, Minn. — In partnership with American Family Insurance, the University of Minnesota Farm Safety and Health Team is launchThe videos are all shorter than five minutes. They provide a mix of information, demonstration, and discussion. The first video in the series covers road-

Furthermore, dairy cooperatives were generally ing a new series of farm safety videos. The purpose way safety and includes information about pre-trip small and local, so the interests of one member of this project is to share crucial farm safety mes- inspections, equipment for roadway safety, and safe farmer were not likely very different from those of sages and reminders with the agricultural commu- driving habits. The video can be found at https://z. another. Efficiency, if nothing else, could be used to nity. umn.edu/AgRoadwaySafetyVideo. justify bloc voting. The videos can be used for many audiences includ- For more resources visit extension.umn.edu/farm-

Contrast this with today when dairy farm num- ing youth, farmers, agriculturalists, and health pro- safety and follow the Extension Farm Safety and bers are measured by the thousands rather than fessionals. “This is a great opportunity for us to Health Team on Twitter @UMNFarmSafety. the millions. The communications options available to today’s dairy farmers far exceed those of the 1930s. Add to that the sea change in cooperative share safety and health messages more widely,” said Emily Krekelberg, Extension Educator for Farm Safety and Health. “Especially right now, when we This article was submitted by Emily Krekelberg, University of Minnesota Extension. v size and influence — the largest cooperatives have are coming up on the busy spring planting season thousands of members, representing a range of farm and are unable to do safety training face-to-face.” sizes and geographic locations that make fair repre-