| Our work includes:
- Empowering farmers by providing critical information on
the long-range impact of contracting in the poultry industry
- Developing and promoting state and federal reforms to
protect the rights of individual contract farmers and farmer-controlled
cooperatives
- Supporting active, farmer-controlled associations that
can reduce the isolation and vulnerability of individual
contract growers
- Educating consumers about the implications of market consolidation
and vertical integration through collaboration with social
justice, church, community -based, environmental, and civic
organizations
- Providing analysis and technical assistance for viable
market alternatives.
The current RAFI-USA Contract Agriculture Reform Program
is an expansion of our 15 years of support for contract poultry
farmers trapped in bad contracts. The poultry industry has
been fully vertically integrated and dominated by contract
production for almost forty years. Poultry growers can document
the evolution of contracting in the poultry industry from
a mutually beneficial agreement among neighbors to a one-sided,
legalized form of debt bondage.
The poultry industry model of corporate concentration, vertical
integration and contract production is rapidly spreading to
other commodities including pork, tobacco, beef, soybeans,
and other crops. Responding to these changes and drawing from
the poultry experience, RAFI-USA is providing analysis of
the long-term social, legal and economic impacts of the contract
agriculture system and possible viable alternatives.
In addition, RAFI-USA is working in collaboration with other
national farm and community organizations for reforms to protect
the family farmer who turns to contract production.
Learn more about the Campaign
for Contract Agriculture Reform and federal contract
reform initiatives.
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