I have been attempting to alert liberal urbanites who care about the war in Iraq to the war they are actually losing here. It is not for control of oil, it is for control of food. As Henry Kissinger said - to warn us or jut flat out promoting the idea, you decide - control food and you control populations.
Your food is being taken over.
JBS is a Brazilian beef operation that is at warp speed buying out or merging with others in the beef "industry" to become far and away the largest beef conglomerate worldwide - and fully vertically integrated.
As I have been trying to say for some time, keep your eyes on agriculture. And look at what is happening here, not just abroad. Corporations are going after agriculture. That means they are now going after control over not oil in Iraq, not minerals in the Congo, but everyone's means of survival - food.
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
JBS-Swift preps to buy Nos. 4 and 5 in beef packing industry
by Bill Jackson
BS-S.A., the parent company of JBS-Swift of Greeley, has shocked the beef industry not only in the United States but worldwide with a purchase that will be officially announced today.
"Wow," was the reaction of Dick Monfort when told of the deal which involves three U.S. companies and one in Australia that JBS is buying for $1.7 billion. In July of last year, JBS bought the former Swift & Co. for almost $1.5 billion.
JBS-S.A. of San Paulo, Brazil, will announce its intentions to buy National Beef Co. of Kansas City, the Smithfield Beef Group and Five Rivers Ranch Cattle Feeding, which is a joint venture of Smithfield Foods and ContiGroup and headquartered at Centerra in Loveland. In addition, JBS is buying the Tasman Group, the largest multi-species meat processor in Australia.
The National Beef purchase was announced by that company late Tuesday; Steve Kay, publisher of Cattle Buyers Weekly in California, confirmed the other purchases with several of his sources. ...
"It's unbelievable. How did they bundle all that together?" Monfort said. And he, like Kay, wondered what the reaction of the U.S. Justice Department would have to the announcement, which means JBS will have the capacity to slaughter 42,500 head of cattle per day in the U.S. That's far ahead of the next two largest, Cargill Meat Solutions at 29,000 head per day and Tyson Foods at 28,300 per day.
In addition, with the purchase of Five Rivers, JBS will become the largest cattle feeder in the world. That company has 10 feedlots in Idaho, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas with a one-time capacity of 811,000 head of cattle.
http://www.greeleytribune.com/...
-- Tribune reporter Sharon Dunn contributed to this story.
Now, let us pair that with a story that came in today.
Brazilian Cattle Ranchers Destroying Indians Habitat in Paraguay
Written by Newsroom
Sunday, 16 November 2008
In the Paraguayan side of the border between Brazil and Paraguay, the last uncontacted Indians in South America outside the Amazon basin have been spotted, apparently fleeing the rapid destruction of their jungle home. The Indians are members of the Ayoreo-Totobiegosode tribe, who live in the dense forests of western Paraguay.
The forest where the Indians live is now being destroyed by Brazilian cattle raisers at a faster rate than the Amazon. The area is being illegally bulldozed to open up the land for cattle ranching.
"It's likely that the presence of bulldozers on their land is forcing the Indians into other areas, east of the zone being deforested," said Jorge Vera of the NGO GAT (Gente, Ambiente y Territorio), an acronym in Spanish for People, Ambiente and Territory, a local support organization for the Indians.
The Totobiegosode have lost a staggering 6,000 hectares of their land this year alone to companies wanting to graze cattle for beef. Since May the amount of their land destroyed has almost tripled. The companies destroying the Totobiegosode's land are both Brazilian: Yaguarete Porá SA and River Plate SA.
Besides the terrifying impact of the destruction of their home by bulldozers, any contact between company workers and the Totobiegosode could easily result in deaths on either side. Many Ayoreo have died in previous encounters.
...
Esoi, a Totobiegosode man who was contacted in 2004 and has relatives among the uncontacted Indians, said today, "I'm appealing to the authorities to stop the destruction of our forest. My family is there now. That's where our houses are. We're losing our forest."
A team from Paraguay's government recently attempted to inspect the area where Yaguarete Porá is working, but company personnel barred them from entering. This met with widespread outrage and condemnation in Paraguay.
Stephen Corry, the director of Survival International, an organization dedicate to defend the human rights of tribal peoples, said, "The Totobiegosode are losing their land at a faster rate than the entire Amazon. If this continues, they may well be wiped out. Paraguay's new President Lugo must act fast to ensure that the illegal destruction of the Totobiegosode's forest by these Brazilian companies stop immediately."
http://www.brazzilmag.com/...
Here in the US, OCM - the Organization for Competitive Markets, a conservative organization is fighting for fairness in agricultural markets (OCMbelieves we must work together, across all commodities, toward the common purpose of returning our food and agriculture sector to true supply-demand based competition), has joined up with another conservative group R-Calf (The Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund represents the U.S. cattle industry in trade and marketing issues to ensure the continued profitability and viability of independent U.S. cattle producers) to fight the JBS Swift merger with National Beef.
They have gotten the justice department to join them in attempting to stop the merger.
http://www.r-calfusa.com/...
http://www.r-calfusa.com/...
Let me stress to liberals who are reading this, that you are looking at two conservative organizations which are fighting for you and for justice in ways you have not noticed. And they are doing so on skimpy staffs and few resources and could use a great deal of attention to this issue as well as all the support you might be able to bring.
If you would like to donate to OCM, you can send help to
Organization For Competitive Markets
P.O. Box 6486
Lincoln
NE
68506
OCM, you should know, is also taking on Monsanto around its monopoly over seeds. Know any other organization actually attempting a frontal assault like that?
http://www.competitivemarkets.com/...
But when they went on the radio in the midwest to talk about their project. the host of the show, Derry Brownfield, who had been broadcasting on the Brownfield-Lear network for years (it has been his joint network originally) was fired the next day by Clyde Lear, his friend. http://www.counterpunch.org/...
And the JBS Swift merger itself?
"That's $1 billion right there," Monfort pointed out. Asked how his late father, Kenny Monfort, might view the announcement, he said, "I'm sure he'd rather be the seller than the buyer."
Kay said he has never seen anything that even comes close to approaching this in his 21 years of watching the industry. National and Smithfield Beef Group are the fourth and fifth largest U.S. beef processors; JBS-Swift is No. 3.
"This is breath-taking," Kay said Tuesday evening. ...
" ... it is acquiring the two beef companies below it that have both been successful in recent years in different ways. It's timing could not be better," he said. The weak U.S. dollar versus the strong Brazilian real makes the acquisitions more financially attractive, Kay added.
... Wesley Batista, CEO of JBS USA Inc., in the press release from National Beef, said "we are thrilled to be able to have National Beef become part of our North American beef processing operations," noting that company reputation for efficiency is recognized worldwide.
Steven Koontz is an agricultural economist at Colorado State University who closely follows the industry. ... Koontz said there are not enough cattle presently to supply all the packing plants, so JBS could close some plants.
http://www.brazzilmag.com/...
For those unfamiliar with what is happening to the independent cattleman - the grass-fed beef cattlemen that are needed if we are actually going to have sustainable agriculture - they are being crushed by this as well as by NAIS. They won't even be able to get their cattle into this monopolized system to be auctioned and sold. Then, on the NAIS side, besides the constitutional violations of privacy and the overwhelming and expensive bureaucratic morass that is destructive enough in general, they can be easily eliminated, one by one, and at will by the USDA (which works for their competition, the big meat packers and Monsanto) at the drop of even a single infraction - which start at $250,000 and jump to $500,000.
http://www.opednews.com/...
Wake up people, this IS the sustainable agriculture you are looking forward to, going down the toilet while you don't even hear the flushing. Get out there and surprise the daylights out of those hard-working conservatives who alone have been holding things together for you and who are fighting for basic freedoms for you. Join OCM and help them fund their badly under-gunned legal battles - against monopoly in both beef and in seeds. Translation: OCM is fighting corporate control over all food.