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Isn't American chickens treated horribly and living in awful conditions to drive the price down? If the price is inflated there should be economic room for bett

Isn't American chickens treated horribly and living in awful conditions to drive the price down? If the price is inflated there should be economic room for better conditions instead.

grzm 10y ago
It drives cost down. price − cost = profit
xherberta 10y ago
Right. I'm willing to PAY for better conditions for chicken. Who's with me?!
st3v3r 10y ago
Should be, but then shareholders wouldn't get as fat of a dividend, and the board members might have to live with a 20' yacht instead of a 27' one.
coldtea 10y ago
It's the same with GMO food. It's advertised as a way for cheaper food (that will "feed the world"), but instead it's mostly a way for higher margins (more profit) for the same inflated prices (besides the DRM/IP-like control on the seeds).
- randomdata 10y ago
  How do you figure? We farmers spend most of our time not producing food, but sharpening our pencils. If the higher cost of the seed wasn't offset in other ways, we wouldn't consider using it in the first place. It has to pay. The grain business, where I operate, is so competitive that even a small amount of overspending will result in losing money. Do that too many times and you'll be out of business completely. To add to that, the market requires quite a bit more for non-GMO food. Right now I can tell you that non-GMO soybeans carry a $2.50/bu. premium. That gives you a pretty good idea of how much more it costs to grow non-GMO food, at least as far as soybeans go, as that is what it is taking to attract farmers to consider growing those varieties. That is after factoring in DRM/IP-like costs.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    >How do you figure? Well, e.g: "Farmers are reconsidering the use of biotech seeds as it becomes harder to justify their high prices amid the measly returns of the current farm economy" http://www.wsj.com/articles/behind-the-monsanto-deal-doubts-about-the-gmo-revolution-1473880429 http://www.wsj.com/articles/behind-the-monsanto-deal-doubts-... "The introduction of genetically engineered (GE) crops has corresponded with increasing monopolization of seed by biotechnology companies and higher seed costs. This has led to tragedies in some countries, while pushing out conventional, non-GE seeds and reducing farmer seed choices." http://www.fooddemocracynow.org/blog/2013/oct/4/the_gmo_seed_monopoly_fewer_choices_higher_prices http://www.fooddemocracynow.org/blog/2013/oct/4/the_gmo_seed... "Angelika Hilbeck, senior scientist at the Institute of Integrative Biology at ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology), and several other researchers analyzed seed catalogs in Spain, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. They found that in Spain—the largest European country to adopt GM corn—farmers’ seed choices declined overall and increasingly became a choice among GM varieties. “Non-GM cultivars of maize were replaced with fewer GM cultivars,” Hilbeck said. But, in three EU countries that ban plantings of GM corn—Germany, Austria, and Switzerland—farmers have either many more corn seed varieties available to them now than in the 1990s (Germany and Austria) or at least the same number (Switzerland). Hilbeck presented their findings at a conference on GM crop cultivation in Bremen, Germany in June 2012." http://non-gmoreport.com/articles/march2013/farmers-seed-options-GMO-producing-countries.php http://non-gmoreport.com/articles/march2013/farmers-seed-opt...
    - randomdata 10y ago
      I mean, I agree that we are backing away from GMOs to some extent. That $2.50/bu premium is worth it. On my farm, we haven't grown GMO soybeans in almost 10 years because of it. But the fact remains that it takes that additional $2.50+ to cover the costs of non-GMOs. If you took that away, it'd be pretty difficult to not return back to growing GMOs. The costs are lower, and the savings really are being passed on to the customer, in this case – to the tune of $2.50/bu. I'm still interested in your analysis of how it directly applies to our farms, rather than a bunch of random links. We don't need third-party media to have a discussion with each other. I'm sure you have some good points of your own.
randomdata 10y ago
There may be room, but you still need a market demand. The chickens were pushed into awful living conditions because those were the chickens that people were buying.

Isn't American chickens treated horribly and living in awful conditions to drive the price down? If the price is inflated there should be economic room for better conditions instead.

grzm 10y ago

It drives cost down. price − cost = profit

xherberta 10y ago

Right. I'm willing to PAY for better conditions for chicken. Who's with me?!

st3v3r 10y ago

Should be, but then shareholders wouldn't get as fat of a dividend, and the board members might have to live with a 20' yacht instead of a 27' one.

coldtea 10y ago

It's the same with GMO food. It's advertised as a way for cheaper food (that will "feed the world"), but instead it's mostly a way for higher margins (more profit) for the same inflated prices (besides the DRM/IP-like control on the seeds).

randomdata 10y ago
How do you figure? We farmers spend most of our time not producing food, but sharpening our pencils. If the higher cost of the seed wasn't offset in other ways, we wouldn't consider using it in the first place. It has to pay. The grain business, where I operate, is so competitive that even a small amount of overspending will result in losing money. Do that too many times and you'll be out of business completely. To add to that, the market requires quite a bit more for non-GMO food. Right now I can tell you that non-GMO soybeans carry a $2.50/bu. premium. That gives you a pretty good idea of how much more it costs to grow non-GMO food, at least as far as soybeans go, as that is what it is taking to attract farmers to consider growing those varieties. That is after factoring in DRM/IP-like costs.
- coldtea 10y ago
  >How do you figure? Well, e.g: "Farmers are reconsidering the use of biotech seeds as it becomes harder to justify their high prices amid the measly returns of the current farm economy" http://www.wsj.com/articles/behind-the-monsanto-deal-doubts-about-the-gmo-revolution-1473880429 http://www.wsj.com/articles/behind-the-monsanto-deal-doubts-... "The introduction of genetically engineered (GE) crops has corresponded with increasing monopolization of seed by biotechnology companies and higher seed costs. This has led to tragedies in some countries, while pushing out conventional, non-GE seeds and reducing farmer seed choices." http://www.fooddemocracynow.org/blog/2013/oct/4/the_gmo_seed_monopoly_fewer_choices_higher_prices http://www.fooddemocracynow.org/blog/2013/oct/4/the_gmo_seed... "Angelika Hilbeck, senior scientist at the Institute of Integrative Biology at ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology), and several other researchers analyzed seed catalogs in Spain, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. They found that in Spain—the largest European country to adopt GM corn—farmers’ seed choices declined overall and increasingly became a choice among GM varieties. “Non-GM cultivars of maize were replaced with fewer GM cultivars,” Hilbeck said. But, in three EU countries that ban plantings of GM corn—Germany, Austria, and Switzerland—farmers have either many more corn seed varieties available to them now than in the 1990s (Germany and Austria) or at least the same number (Switzerland). Hilbeck presented their findings at a conference on GM crop cultivation in Bremen, Germany in June 2012." http://non-gmoreport.com/articles/march2013/farmers-seed-options-GMO-producing-countries.php http://non-gmoreport.com/articles/march2013/farmers-seed-opt...
  - randomdata 10y ago
    I mean, I agree that we are backing away from GMOs to some extent. That $2.50/bu premium is worth it. On my farm, we haven't grown GMO soybeans in almost 10 years because of it. But the fact remains that it takes that additional $2.50+ to cover the costs of non-GMOs. If you took that away, it'd be pretty difficult to not return back to growing GMOs. The costs are lower, and the savings really are being passed on to the customer, in this case – to the tune of $2.50/bu. I'm still interested in your analysis of how it directly applies to our farms, rather than a bunch of random links. We don't need third-party media to have a discussion with each other. I'm sure you have some good points of your own.

randomdata 10y ago

There may be room, but you still need a market demand. The chickens were pushed into awful living conditions because those were the chickens that people were buying.