Does that include the large, corporate farms?
Ritchie: In the United States, we don’t have very many of what you would call ‘agribusiness’ farms. There are families who own very large chunks of land, particularly in dry regions. The only sector where agribusiness owned farms are really an important factor is in livestock. In those instance you tend to have a very small number of poultry processors who contract, generally with family farmers, but control it through the contract process. But it’s in beef where … not only do three corporations control between 70 and 80 percent of retail beef sales, but those same three corporations now, either directly or through direct feeding contracts, control about half the production of beef. But it’s not because they own huge tracts of land where they run cows, it’s because they own tracts of land where they have feedlots with 100,000 cows and the feedlots buy this cheap grain from the Midwest, thanks to the government subsidy program, and feed a lot of the cows on their own. MM: What can far
