Poultry farmers struggling to make ends meet due to ‘abusive levels of power’

Jonathan Buttram’s father and grandfather raised chickens, so it was no surprise that the Albertville native became a chicken farmer himself. But over the decades, things changed rapidly, making the life of a farmer nearly impossible.

Eventually, Buttram was forced out of the business after he said Koch Foods retaliated against him for manipulating scales so they didn’t have to pay him what he was owed. He told his story Tuesday in a webinar with Farm Action.

While working with Koch Foods, he said inexperienced employees would come into his chicken houses and change controls without knowing what they were doing. Even when the mistakes they made cost Buttram, he said he could not resolve the issue.

“You might not even be there, and the next thing you know, like me, you end up with two whole houses of dead chickens because they went in touching something that they should not be touching,” Buttram said. “And then when you start complaining to the company about what they just did, they come back at you and threaten to cut you off, shut your mouth and all this sort of stuff like that, and these companies threaten you continually. They make you feel like a sharecropper; then they basically tell you how low you are.”

Buttram is now president of the Alabama Contract Poultry Growers Association. He also appeared in the documentary “Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken!” He was helping farmers with suicide counseling until he appeared in the movie. He said the chicken companies went to growers and told them not to communicate with him anymore.

“Just go ahead and kill yourself,” he said. “Well, I've never taken another suicide call, and I was getting two a week. So, you know what? They don't care if you kill yourself. They've got somebody in line to take your farm if you commit suicide.”

Christopher Leonard, author of “The Meat Racket,” “The Lords of Easy Money” and “Kochland,” has spoken to farmers around the country as a reporter. He said the industry's consolidation has cost farmers and consumers.

“Four companies control about 65% of the poultry market, but really, it's even more concentrated than that,” Leonard said. “Just two companies, Tyson Foods and Pilgrim's Pride – and Pilgrim's is owned by JBS – control about half of the market.”

While it’s evident that chicken prices have increased over the past several years, farmers are not making more money. The industry has what they call a “tournament system” which helps suppress what is paid to a farmer.

Instead of paying individual farmers for their yield by pound, they rank farmers against each other based on the weight of the birds and the amount of feed the farmer was given. It is important to note that the company that contracts with farmers supplies chicken feed.

“Once the farmers are ranked, the companies will give a higher price per pound to the top farmers and a lower price per pound to the lower farmers whose birds didn't gain as much weight,” Leonard explained. “Now, in a way that sounds like your typical bonus system, but here's the key: The bonus for the top performers is actually taken away from the pay of the lower performers.”

Leonard claims the system was developed to pay farmers less and to divide rural communities.

Buttram added that with so much control over a farm, chicken companies can take land from families.

“Now, a chicken house costs a million dollars and you cannot pay for it in your lifetime,” he said. “If you say anything about not making money to them or the chicken company decides that they want that farm because it looks good, it's in a nice area, they will work with the lending institution and see that you go to the bottom of it, the retirement system, because they can control the feed, the chickens and the scales.”

"Then they can take your farm and give it to some of their people, and that's happening more than I've ever seen now,” he continued. “It's happening big time.”

Buttram said he wants lawmakers to act.

“We need more senators to do stuff like that to actually take our word for it because most of them basically think us poultry growers are low-life farmers and don't believe a word we say,” Buttram pleaded. “I only have one thing, and that's my integrity of telling the truth. That's all I have in life.”

Koch Foods has not responded to a media inquiry. However, the company's website states that sustainability is a top priority for Koch Foods.

"By vigilantly protecting our land, air and water resources today, we'll be prepared to meet the world's food supply needs in the future," the website states. "As proof of our commitment to sustainability, we've established the Koch Foods Sustainability in Action Program to help guide sustainability practices throughout many critical components of our day-to-day business..."