Craig Watts, who previously made a job of raising hundreds of thousands of animals in North Carolina, knows the pain and the crushing economic pressure that can come with the work.
In the 1990s, he needed$ 400,000 in money to create four meat buildings on his Robeson County land. A century later, Watts spent$ 100,000 to enhance the houses, improvements required by the business he was growing birds for.
Meanwhile, Watts ’ income fluctuated —$ 60,000 one year,$ 3,000 another.
“ I put my physician in counseling telling him reports, ” Watts said. “It was terrible. When you talk about levels of stress, financial strain is off it. ”
Big poultry companies, like as Perdue Farms, give producers based on a “tournament program. ” Farmers who fatten their animals most effectively are paid the best. Those who battle to feed their animals have their pay docked.
But a national law finalized this month will provide some economic security and accountability to thousands of farmers who raise chicken birds across the position, said Melanie Canales, a task manager for RAFI-USA, a North Carolina-based nonprofit that advocates for producers.
What’s no clear is whether the new law, which sets a foundation pay for chicken growers, will stay. It is scheduled to go into result in July 2026.
Before therefore, President-elect Donald Trump and his fresh administration may reduce the law, said Steve Etka, plan producer for Campaign for Contract Agriculture Reform, a regional advocate for producers and farmers.
Etka said activists will have to make their case to the new leadership on why chicken producers need the privileges.
In doing so, they’ll war parties like the National Chicken Council, which represents the chicken industry and has lobbied against the shift.
“This concept – which Congress never asked for – will lead to rigid, one-size-fits-all requirements on meat growing contracts that would restrict technology, lead to higher costs for consumers, lower competition, and price jobs by driving some of the best farmers out of the meat company, ” officials with the government wrote during a public comment period last year.
Bob Ford, senior producer of the N. C. Poultry Federation, said some gardeners here will be in favor of the shift. People are happy and generate a nice living under the current laws, he said.
“The people who have been effective aren’t looking for any kind of change, ” Ford said. “The people who have n’t been prosperous are saying ‘ Oh, well. This may help me out. ’ ”
With the meat government opposing the modify, Ford said the North Carolina league, an affiliate of the government, will probably resist it, because well.
Turkey growers in the driver’s seats
This signed “Poultry Grower Payment Systems and Capital Improvement Systems ” law says chicken companies, which supply farmers with chicks and pull, may reduce the bottom earn stated in a farmer’s deal.
“The worst feature of the game system is how it pays some producers less money than the base amount stated in their commitment in order to pay additional producers more, ” Canales wrote in an internet to The Charlotte Observer. “The new rule still allows companies to provide bonuses based on performance but no longer allows them to deduct money below a fixed base price, and this makes grower income more reliable and predictable. ”
The rule also requires that poultry companies provide farmers with research that shows how improvement projects, such as upgrades to chicken houses, would benefit them.
In a 2022 investigation called “Big Poultry, ” The Charlotte Observer and the News & Observer of Raleigh found many farmers were surprised when poultry companies required them to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for equipment upgrades if they wanted to stay in business.
The rule change will help farmers decide if the project is financially in their best interest, Etka said.
“They have n’t really had that before, ” Etka said. “It puts the farmers back in the driver’s seat of their own business. ”
The rule is the U. S. Department of Agriculture’s third regulatory reform under the Packers and Stockyards Act in recent years. The act, formed in 1921, protects farmers and ranchers from unfair and discriminatory practices.
Last year, a USDA rule required that poultry companies be more transparent with farmers, telling farmers in their contracts how many flocks and chicks they’ll receive each year. The information gives farmers insight into how much income they might earn, growers said.
‘Tournament system ’ benefits some, not others
Some North Carolina poultry growers are publicly critical of the tournament system, which pays farmers on how they grow the birds.
Farmers interviewed by the Observer in 2022 complained that the system can punish them for things they can’t control, such as the quality of the chicks, feed they receive from the company or the time that it takes the company to pick up one flock and deliver another.
“They say it is a reward system… but really it ’s a way to penalize farmers unfairly, ” Watts said.
Under the new USDA rule, poultry companies will have to consider factors they control, such as the quality of the birds and feed, when determining how much growers are paid.
In 2015, Watts filed a federal whistleblower complaint alleging that Perdue Farms retaliated against him after he publicly said Perdue sent him sick birds that the company refused to help.
He left the industry in 2016.
Last year, Perdue sued Watts and the U. S. Department of Labor. The lawsuit, filed in federal court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, challenges the constitutionality of Watts ’ case and seeks to stop it from going forward.
A North Carolina powerhouse industry
Growing chickens and turkeys is North Carolina ’s No. 1 agricultural industry. Farmers here raise more than a billion birds annually, taking in some$ 8. 7 billion in cash receipts in 2022, according to the USDA.
That year, The Charlotte Observer and The News & Observer of Raleigh investigated the secrecy cloaking the state’s poultry industry.
Big Poultry, an award-winning series, showed how industrial-scaled farms produce billions of pounds of waste annually with little oversight.
North Carolina officials do not track where that waste goes, the investigation found. They also do not require that neighbors be notified if a poultry farm is planned near their homes. In fact, state leaders do not make public the locations of poultry farms.
The Big Poultry project found that the contracts poultry farmers sign can leave them with mounting debts and little income.
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