BREAKING:
Trump’s USDA just postponed a major reform designed to empower poultry farmers against corporate monopolies.
It was set to go into effect in July.
Now, it’s postponed to December 2027.
We fully supported this rule that would fix the broken “tournament system” used by corporations that dominate the poultry industry to pit small farmers against each other.
Journalist Christopher Leonard broke down everything you need to know about the tournament system and why it needs to be reformed:
“Just two companies, Tyson Foods and Pilgrim’s Pride—and Pilgrim’s is owned by JBS—control about half of the [poultry] market.”
“And it’s not just that so few companies control it today.”
“This business is vertically integrated.”
“A company like Tyson Foods, for example, owns the feed mill, they own the slaughterhouse, they own the trucking line, they own the hatchery, and they work with farmers under contract.”
“When we have an industry that’s consolidated like it is today, we see an old playbook that monopolies use to extract more profit than ever.”
And the “most notorious” mechanism they use to extract profit and dominate the industry is the “payment regime that’s called the tournament system.”
“These poultry companies… take information on all the farmers that deliver chickens during a given week, and then they rank the farmers against each other based on how fat those birds got on the amount of feed that the farmer was given.”
“The companies will give a higher price per pound to the top performers and a lower price per pound to the lower performers whose birds didn’t gain as much weight.”
“In a way, that sounds like your typical bonus system, but here’s the key: the bonus for the top performers is actually taken away from the pay of the lower performers.”
This now-postponed USDA reform would have banned payment deductions from lower-performing farmers, eliminating these corporations’ key tool to pit small farmers against one another.
We strongly urge the USDA to re-commit to implementing this reform by July 2026 for the sake of small farmers, who are struggling more than ever in the face of price spikes as a result of geopolitical conflict.
@USDA@CLeonardNews
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