Big Chicken, Indebted Farmers

The US chicken industry is dominated by just a few very large, vertically integrated companies. They directly control every stage of chicken production from hatching to distribution, except that they outsource the riskiest stage--raising the birds from chick to mature bird--to independent farmers. In this episode, guest Patti Anderson of the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future describes this system, explains how it traps many farmers in debt, and tells us about the most recent effort to make the system more just for farmers.After that: the farmer questionnaire!Some links related to the chicken conversation and the proposed rule changes:Patti suggests this blog post for a summary of the rule changesA recent op-ed in Civil Eats about the tournament systemHere's an official summary of the proposed rule-changes