One has to wonder what the leaders of the Environmental Protection Agency were thinking when they invited the world’s agribusiness giants to sit at and run the agency’s gargantuan-named Farm, Ranch, and Rural Communities Federal Advisory Committee (FRRCC). Chaired by a representative of Del Monte Foods the “independent advisory committee” also includes the global giant, Syngenta (seeds), the Florida Fruit and Vegetable Association, and the multinational meat conglomerates, JBS (beef) and Smithfield (hogs). Perhaps the EPA didn’t get last November’s announcement about the U.S. Departments of Justice and Agriculture joint hearings on competition (or lack thereof) and regulatory issues in agriculture—hearings at which the agbiz giants are rightly and routinely taken to task by the farm and rural people and communities who pay the true cost of their control of agriculture.
The real irony of this little-known committee is the re-appointment of Smithfield’s “Vice President for Corporate Affairs and Chief Sustainability Officer,” charged with running the company “in a socially responsible and sustainable way.” Apparently the EPA’s “Office of the Agricultural Counselor to the Administrator” didn’t bother to look around his own agency to learn of Smithfield’s environmental record in the countryside, including its ongoing efforts to thwart the decade-old consent decree its PSF subsidiary entered to clean up its hog operations in Missouri. As well, the agency apparently chose to ignore the $11 million jury verdict the company incurred in March for the stench from its PSF operations—the largest monetary award ever in a hog “farm” odor nuisance case. Perhaps Smithfield’s VP will help the EPA Federal Advisory Committee develop strategies for skirting corporate environmental responsibility in the countryside.
For decades federal policy—regardless of which Administration or party is in power—has facilitated the gutting of the nation’s farm structure and the destruction of its rural communities. The demise of family farms was greased by the cozy relationship between the Congress, successive Administrations, and federal agencies that eventually turned into the takeover of food production by the industrial agribusiness machine that now dominates rural America and the entire nation.
That the EPA is now party to this process with its “FRRCC” is an abomination. We expected better of this Administration, of this EPA. What we seem to have gotten is more of the same. We can only hope that the Departments of Justice and Agriculture will hold fast and prevail in their brewing efforts to expose and rein in the agbiz trusts.
The EPA will surely contend that the Committee has “balance,” with representatives from the North Dakota Farmers Union, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Environmental Defense Fund, and the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, notwithstanding that the Chair is from Del Monte. For these representatives there is a singular suggestion: resign. To be party to this charade is to perpetuate any notion that this Committee will contribute anything of substance and meaning to the relentless struggle for the sustainability of rural America, for economic justice in the countryside, and for the well-being of farm, ranch, and rural communities and, indeed, for the nation itself.