TJ Times-Journal | Farmers Dislike Appropriations Bill

Farmers Dislike Appropriations Bill
By Jared Felkins | TJ Times-Journal | June 8, 2012

GERALDINE – Farmer advocates said a U.S. House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee reported a bill Wednesday that uses a back-door approach to overturn an existing regulation that protects contract poultry growers from company abuses.

The version of the FY2013 agriculture appropriations bill that moved out of subcommittee Wednesday would overturn the 2011 USDA Grain Inspectors, Packers and Stockyards Administration rule.

“My fellow growers and I fought for years to get this rule passed,” said Jonathan Buttram, president of the Alabama Contract Poultry Growers Association and Geraldine farmer. “Those of us who spoke up have been targeted for retaliation. If the rule is overturned, our work will have been in vain.

“I hope that Alabama congressmen [Robert] Aderholt and [Jo] Bonner, and their colleagues on the House Appropriations Committee, will do the right thing, stand up for the farmers they represent and amend the bill to save these hard-won protections.”

Buttram said the rule in question benefits thousands of poultry farmers throughout the country by giving them common-sense protections, including:

• protecting farmers from being forced to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on expensive equipment upgrades in order to keep their contracts and stay on their family farms.

• providing pullet and breeder poultry farmers with much-needed protections under the Packers and Stockyards Act. Previously, these poultry farmers could not contact anyone at USDA for help if they had a contract dispute with their company. Now, they have the same protections as farmers who raise broilers.

• keeping farmers from losing thousands of dollars if they get a flock from a company late through no fault of their own.

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