Opinion: Big Ag’s corporate culture of indifference has been years in the making

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A corporate culture of indifference permeates America. A crash earlier this month that resulted in the death of 43 pigs near our family farm in southeastern Minnesota — as discussed in a May 17 commentary (“Dodge County crash that resulted in the deaths of 43 pigs wasn’t just an accident”) — is illustrative of this indifference. Disposal of the dead pigs was easy. Within hours, the euthanized pigs were added to dead boxes or composting stations in area swine factory farms, heaped a little higher with pig piles of dead pigs.

Years of corporate conditioning has created this culture of indifference. Thanks to decades of corporate propaganda, a corporate culture of indifference encourages farmers to look away as thousands of small farmers are forced out of business. In the transition to a corporate nation, multinational giants such as Hormel, JBS, Smithfield, Tyson and others have created a closed system that is only open to those farmers willing to construct a factory farm to industry specifications. Only those farmers who construct a large industrial facility capable of holding several thousand animals are given access to the corporate marketplace. Tethered to multinational corporations through a series of contracts, multinational corporations have successfully created a corporate network of contract growers that extends deep within America’s rural areas. In the wake of this fundamental change, thousands of independent farmers and farm families have been forced off the land.

Twenty years ago, as my family and other neighbors fought installation of the largest factory farm in Minnesota at the time, the Minnesota Farm Bureau Foundation published a pamphlet titled “When an Activist Group Comes to Town: Protecting Your Community from Unwanted Division.” The surprisingly detailed guide purports to offer advice to “local governments and communities in addressing controversies caused by rural economic development.” In reality, the publication addresses only one type of rural development — industrial-size animal feedlots, aka “factory farms.” The bureau’s propaganda acknowledges that factory farms (referred to as “expanded farms” by the industry) are often blamed for driving family farmers out of business.

“When an Activist Group Comes to Town” characterizes those who oppose factory farms as “activists,” a reference to farm families like mine who have been on the land for generations, and “outside special interests,” a subtle reference to the Land Stewardship Project (LSP), a Minnesota nonprofit that works with communities to promote sustainable agriculture. Fighting installation of corporate factory farms next to intergenerational family farms, LSP became increasingly involved in legal battles as residents faced off against multinational corporate giants, industry lobbyists and corporate attorneys.

As corporate agriculture strips wealth from rural communities, a corporate culture of indifference turns a blind eye to the environmental impact of corporate factory farms — theft of groundwater resources by water-intensive industrial operations, contamination of waterways with high nitrates and other pollutants and pollution of the air with dangerous methane, ammonia, hydrogen sulfide and other dangerous emissions that contribute to climate change. To those involved in this abusive form of corporate agriculture, it’s just the “smell of money.”

The corporate culture of indifference also extends to immigrant laborers. As a child, our closest neighbors were migrant workers living in neighboring migrant camps. Each summer, migrant families from Mexico traveled to Minnesota to pick asparagus and other vegetables. My parents never hid my siblings and me from the corporate injustices plaguing rural communities, as we observed the crude living conditions — cement block huts with no air conditioning, no bathroom, no stove and no oven. A gang bathroom provided toilets and shower facilities for the nearly 200 migrant workers and their children, while a single hot plate heated food for families living inside these crude facilities.

Under today’s system of corporate agriculture, the seasonal migrant workers of my youth have graduated to low-paying, year-round positions working inside corporate factory farms and meat processing plants operated by multinational giants. For decades, these giants and their corporate pawns have lured immigrant laborers seeking a better life into rural areas, serving as the foundation of corporate agriculture.

This fundamental change to the makeup of rural communities has not gone unnoticed by rural residents. Industry propaganda such as “When an Activist Group Comes to Town” initially referred to pushback by community members as “racism,” and as a “major argument used to create opposition to expanding farms,” as “they will employ non-English speaking people and thus strain local school districts and bring increased crime to communities. The assumption that the addition of immigrants who do not speak English will bring crime to communities is racist and unsupported by research and experience. Fear of different cultures is at the heart of racism.”

Yet, today’s corporate rhetoric targets immigrant laborers working inside corporate factory farms and corporate meat processing facilities — the very same laborers ushered into rural areas by multinational giants. With threats of deportation, this is nothing more than a corporate power play to instill fear in today’s immigrant laborers.

In order to promote the corporate agenda, groups such as the Republican-aligned Farm Bureau help to promote corporate policy. Farm Bureau members are encouraged to run for public office, not to promote our democracy, but to further the corporate agenda and protect their own corporate interests. “When an Activist Group Comes to Town” encourages proponents of modern agriculture, aka corporate agriculture, to “work to create a ‘farm-friendly’ environment in your county and township.” More specifically, it instructs them to “Vote for and support pro-agriculture candidates for county commissioner and township officer. Actively recruit farmers to serve as elected officials, and don’t be afraid to take your turn serving as a township supervisor. Work with your farm groups to educate local elected officials about modern agriculture. Make sure farmers are represented in land use planning discussions in your county … . Be there to support other farmers in your community as they apply for a permit for a new or expanded facility.”

This culture of corporate indifference has consequences. Today’s rural Americans stand among the ashes of hometowns ravaged by corporate giants, crushed by the corporate intruder. Corporate agriculture has not only destroyed the rural spirit and harmony of living as one with the land but of living with one another as well. The gloomy shadow of corporate factory farms evaporates friendships, corporatizes the food system, annihilates independent farmers, breaks the animals’ connection to the land and shatters the joys that make up rural life.

In this culture of corporate indifference, trouble is brewing in rural America that is now evident on a national level: the ideological divides, the emboldened racism and targeting of immigrants, the hate and rancor. In this cruel atmosphere of indifference, we will eventually discover that we need one another.

Sonja Trom Eayrs is the author of “Dodge County, Incorporated: Big Ag and the Undoing of Rural America.”