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Reading this made my blood boil up a little > In labor circles, “chickenization” refers to exploitative working arrangements that resemble the plight of the Am

Reading this made my blood boil up a little > In labor circles, “chickenization” refers to exploitative working arrangements that resemble the plight of the American poultry farmer. The U.S. poultry industry has been taken over by three monopolistic packers, who have divided the nation up into exclusive territories, so that each chicken farmer has only one buyer for their birds. > Farmers are “independent small businesspeople” who nominally run their own operations, but because all their products must be sold through a single poultry processor, that processor is able to exercise enormous control over the operation. The processor tells the farmer which birds to raise, as well as what the birds are to be fed, how much, and on what schedule. The processor tells the farmer how to build their coops and when the lights are to go on and off. The processor tells the farmer which vets to use, and tells the vets which medicines to prescribe. > The processor tells the farmer everything…except how much they’ll be able to sell their birds for. That is determined unilaterally when the farmer brings their birds to market, and the payout is titrated to the cent, to represent exactly enough money for the farmer to buy birds and feed and vet services through the processor’s preferred suppliers, and to service the debts on the coops and light and land, but not one penny more. This amount of scumminess is mind boggling.

Lu2025 1y ago
Where is FTC in all this? It's a pure monopoly.
morkalork 1y ago
I've seen this referred to as a treadmill before. They get the farmers on a treadmill (loans for co-ops, equipment inputs) and once they're waking, they don't let them stop. The craziest thing is this is well known trick, historically. In the 1800s there was a company run by a man that was both wholesale buyer of fish from fishermen and also supplied the mortgages for fishing boats. He was the only one for both in many small fishing communities and was universally hated for it.
- pragmatic 1y ago
  [flagged]
nemomarx 1y ago
This is monopsony, right? Effectively?
- GuB-42 1y ago
  Yes, for some reason the term "monopsony" is little known, so much that the autocorrect tried to turn it into "monopoly". Maybe for not having a famous board game named after it. But here it looks even worse as workers have to invest into equipment from the company that is of little use besides working for that company, making it borderline slavery.
theturtle32 1y ago
> This amount of scumminess is mind boggling. It is, unfortunately, the natural result of insufficiently regulated capitalism.
- banannaise 1y ago
  [nitpick] I think it's more the natural result of capitalism that is well-regulated only on the consumer side. There are very few poultry processors largely because it is difficult and expensive to comply with consumer regulations and maintain food safety standards. That, in itself, is fine. But once you have very few (or only one) processor(s), there needs to be regulation on how they pay and treat both their workers and their suppliers. For the most part, there is neither.
- mystraline 1y ago
  Even regulated capitalism exploits. Surplus labor theory easily shows that even in the best of intentions, businesses absolutely must exploit the worker. Even the local artisan bread-baker must pay workers less than their economic output. This isn't to say that the owner is exploitive and treating people with subsistence. But the pay/surplus split is still there as exploitation. Reforming capitalism also doesn't work either. Hell, people can't get past page 30 of Adam Smith's treatise that discusses all the 'reforms needed' to instill capitalism. Turns out monied interests has always wanted to strip controls from the get-go. No, its time to relegate capitalism to the dustbin of history. It was tried. As it lifted some up, more and more were ground into a gritty paste to feed the machine. I don't know what to replace it with either. But whatever it is has to not have weird effects of infinite or 0 cost breakdowns (like copying software and data), and also aware of how to handle algorimthic labor (LLMs), amongst other concerns.
  - dml2135 1y ago
    I’m all for critiques of capitalism, but it’s extremely unconvincing to say capitalism must go, but at the same time, you don’t know what to replace it with. How are you so convinced that there is a better solution than capitalism if you can’t even articulate what that solution would be? How do you know that capitalism, for all it’s flaws, is not still the least-worst among an array of bad options?
roenxi 1y ago
The obvious thing to do is for the farmer to learn how to package their own chickens, then sell it themselves. The hard part of this should be the however-long-it-takes a chicken to grow + feed for the bird. Since that isn't happening I'd assume that doing so has been made illegal by the regulators for some reason. Or that "chicken packaging" is wildly misnamed, because it sounds like something you can ... just do. People ate chickens for millennia without relying on 3 chicken packers. I've had neighbours who keep their own chickens (curse them for the mice). It didn't look so hard a quasi-monopoly could form naturally.
- bcoates 1y ago
  The only winning move is not to play. My grandfather tried his hand at chicken farming about 100 years ago (didn't go well). It was a bad business then and it’s a bad one now.
  - hermitcrab 1y ago
    If it is bad for humans, imagine what it must be like for the chickens.
    - 4bpp 1y ago
      Well, if you or one of your loved ones is considering going into the being-a-chicken business, I would hope that HN would likewise dissuade you.
- gostsamo 1y ago
  > Since that isn't happening I'd assume that doing so has been made illegal by the regulators for some reason. the lack of antitrust action and the price of entry in the market are a market failure modes that could bring in the same final result. Especially, if the packagers are forming exclusive deals with the distributors to prevent new entrants from achieving market share.
  - roenxi 1y ago
grigri907 1y ago
In my experience, the processor is actually the one who owns the chickens (broilers). The farmer is essentially a baby-sitter for 6-7 weeks. The processor also owns the feed and the farmer gets paid on a feed-to-poultry conversion efficiency. Variables like temperatures, lighting, ventilation rates, chicken house construction, and access/ density have well-established bounds to maximize pounds of poultry. The farmers have leeway to deviate from the recommendations, but they take on all of the risk in doing so. From the outside, it looks like a pretty oppressive relationship.
- chicken467 1y ago
  > The farmer is essentially a baby-sitter for 6-7 weeks. Actually, there are stages, e.g. some farmers just do chicks, someone then may pick them up and go to the next stage.
chicken465 1y ago
It both sounds and is exploitive and bad, but to add color to this: - poultry farming dictated by the big guys like this has been going on for decades. - it’s provided structure for entrepreneurs in rural areas that had land, some money, and a willingness to work. You could similarly say some fast food franchises or businesses can result in some form of exploitation, because not all result in good conditions and opportunities for growth of their workers. Some may then extrapolate to say “all business is bad”, but it’s a spectrum; it may be providing work and income where there was none before, and that could be seen as a good thing. Or maybe the risks are too high and/or conditions are terrible, and that’s a bad thing. I’d argue that finding that balance in business is why religion and capitalism spread together. Hundreds of years ago, slaves kept spirits up through their religion and those exploiting them were more likely to keep working conditions better than they would’ve been because of their beliefs; slavery was pure evil, and religion didn’t enable that. It did improve a terrible situation, though I know the Marxists may say the opposite. Today, religion is waning. If the people exploiting others do so without morals, we risk evil beyond what’s discussed in this article. We feel like technology must be there to save workers from being exploited, but it’s an uphill battle, and money/power may win.
doener 1y ago
Maybe this question is naive and/or influenced by decades of classic neoliberal propaganda: But why don’t do the farmers something else then?
- dfxm12 1y ago
  There's not much else around. They don't know what else to do. Education/job training expensive. They've got loans to pay back, so they can't stop working to look for another job. They're on some government assistance program they can't afford to lose, but it comes with work requirements, so they can't retrain. The pay (including government subsidies) make it just bearable enough to keep from revolting. Etc.
- AngryData 1y ago
  Like what? Farm another product that has the similar problems? Row crop farm where generating a 2% return on investment over a decade span is considered a success? The response has been farmers dropping out of the business entirely, which ends up with some few people doubling down into larger operations, which only makes the problem worse as it is harder to pivot and makes processing and distribution even harder to divert away from the big controlling players.
actionfromafar 1y ago
Might just have called it Uberization. Or called Uber a Chicken Processor.
doener 1y ago
Reminds me of the 1947 "Sixteen Tons" song. From German Wikipedia, translated by DeepL: "According to Archie Green, the lyrics contain several key passages that Travis took from quotes from his family members. When asked about his health, his father reportedly replied that he couldn't afford to die because he owed his soul to the grocery store[7] where he had debts. Sixteen Tons is a socially critical song about the sometimes inhumane conditions that American miners and their families had to live under in the past. This included wage slavery: US miners were mostly paid not in cash but with tokens (scrips), some of which could only be redeemed in company-owned stores, as there were no other shops in the area; local food supplies could only be obtained in these stores (company stores), which had a virtual monopoly and could therefore charge excessive prices; The income and expenditure situation in the company stores, which was deliberately controlled exclusively in favor of the mine owners, resulted in unavoidable debts for the workers (Another day older and deeper in debt), which created a relationship of dependency similar to serfdom ("I owe my soul to the company store"). By the time the song was written, the miners' living and working conditions had already improved significantly, partly as a result of numerous strikes. Payment with tokens had been banned in 1938 by a federal law, the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. However, working conditions remained harsh and the memory of exploitative practices was still fresh in the minds of the families and communities affected." https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixteen_Tons_(Lied) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixteen_Tons_(Lied)
- riffraff 1y ago
  I'm not sure why you transllated the german entry for an american song, but FYI, there's an english wikipedia version. "I owe my soul to the company store" is one of the greatest lyrics ever. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixteen_Tons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixteen_Tons
  - kragen 1y ago
    Many German Wikipedia articles are better than the English versions. Maybe this is one of them.
    - 1y ago

Lu2025 1y ago

Where is FTC in all this? It's a pure monopoly.

morkalork 1y ago

I've seen this referred to as a treadmill before. They get the farmers on a treadmill (loans for co-ops, equipment inputs) and once they're waking, they don't let them stop. The craziest thing is this is well known trick, historically. In the 1800s there was a company run by a man that was both wholesale buyer of fish from fishermen and also supplied the mortgages for fishing boats. He was the only one for both in many small fishing communities and was universally hated for it.

pragmatic 1y ago
[flagged]

nemomarx 1y ago

This is monopsony, right? Effectively?

GuB-42 1y ago
Yes, for some reason the term "monopsony" is little known, so much that the autocorrect tried to turn it into "monopoly". Maybe for not having a famous board game named after it. But here it looks even worse as workers have to invest into equipment from the company that is of little use besides working for that company, making it borderline slavery.

theturtle32 1y ago

> This amount of scumminess is mind boggling. It is, unfortunately, the natural result of insufficiently regulated capitalism.

banannaise 1y ago
[nitpick] I think it's more the natural result of capitalism that is well-regulated only on the consumer side. There are very few poultry processors largely because it is difficult and expensive to comply with consumer regulations and maintain food safety standards. That, in itself, is fine. But once you have very few (or only one) processor(s), there needs to be regulation on how they pay and treat both their workers and their suppliers. For the most part, there is neither.
mystraline 1y ago
Even regulated capitalism exploits. Surplus labor theory easily shows that even in the best of intentions, businesses absolutely must exploit the worker. Even the local artisan bread-baker must pay workers less than their economic output. This isn't to say that the owner is exploitive and treating people with subsistence. But the pay/surplus split is still there as exploitation. Reforming capitalism also doesn't work either. Hell, people can't get past page 30 of Adam Smith's treatise that discusses all the 'reforms needed' to instill capitalism. Turns out monied interests has always wanted to strip controls from the get-go. No, its time to relegate capitalism to the dustbin of history. It was tried. As it lifted some up, more and more were ground into a gritty paste to feed the machine. I don't know what to replace it with either. But whatever it is has to not have weird effects of infinite or 0 cost breakdowns (like copying software and data), and also aware of how to handle algorimthic labor (LLMs), amongst other concerns.
- dml2135 1y ago
  I’m all for critiques of capitalism, but it’s extremely unconvincing to say capitalism must go, but at the same time, you don’t know what to replace it with. How are you so convinced that there is a better solution than capitalism if you can’t even articulate what that solution would be? How do you know that capitalism, for all it’s flaws, is not still the least-worst among an array of bad options?

roenxi 1y ago

The obvious thing to do is for the farmer to learn how to package their own chickens, then sell it themselves. The hard part of this should be the however-long-it-takes a chicken to grow + feed for the bird. Since that isn't happening I'd assume that doing so has been made illegal by the regulators for some reason. Or that "chicken packaging" is wildly misnamed, because it sounds like something you can ... just do. People ate chickens for millennia without relying on 3 chicken packers. I've had neighbours who keep their own chickens (curse them for the mice). It didn't look so hard a quasi-monopoly could form naturally.

bcoates 1y ago
The only winning move is not to play. My grandfather tried his hand at chicken farming about 100 years ago (didn't go well). It was a bad business then and it’s a bad one now.
- hermitcrab 1y ago
  If it is bad for humans, imagine what it must be like for the chickens.
  - 4bpp 1y ago
    Well, if you or one of your loved ones is considering going into the being-a-chicken business, I would hope that HN would likewise dissuade you.
gostsamo 1y ago
> Since that isn't happening I'd assume that doing so has been made illegal by the regulators for some reason. the lack of antitrust action and the price of entry in the market are a market failure modes that could bring in the same final result. Especially, if the packagers are forming exclusive deals with the distributors to prevent new entrants from achieving market share.
- roenxi 1y ago

grigri907 1y ago

In my experience, the processor is actually the one who owns the chickens (broilers). The farmer is essentially a baby-sitter for 6-7 weeks. The processor also owns the feed and the farmer gets paid on a feed-to-poultry conversion efficiency. Variables like temperatures, lighting, ventilation rates, chicken house construction, and access/ density have well-established bounds to maximize pounds of poultry. The farmers have leeway to deviate from the recommendations, but they take on all of the risk in doing so. From the outside, it looks like a pretty oppressive relationship.

chicken467 1y ago
> The farmer is essentially a baby-sitter for 6-7 weeks. Actually, there are stages, e.g. some farmers just do chicks, someone then may pick them up and go to the next stage.

chicken465 1y ago

It both sounds and is exploitive and bad, but to add color to this: - poultry farming dictated by the big guys like this has been going on for decades. - it’s provided structure for entrepreneurs in rural areas that had land, some money, and a willingness to work. You could similarly say some fast food franchises or businesses can result in some form of exploitation, because not all result in good conditions and opportunities for growth of their workers. Some may then extrapolate to say “all business is bad”, but it’s a spectrum; it may be providing work and income where there was none before, and that could be seen as a good thing. Or maybe the risks are too high and/or conditions are terrible, and that’s a bad thing. I’d argue that finding that balance in business is why religion and capitalism spread together. Hundreds of years ago, slaves kept spirits up through their religion and those exploiting them were more likely to keep working conditions better than they would’ve been because of their beliefs; slavery was pure evil, and religion didn’t enable that. It did improve a terrible situation, though I know the Marxists may say the opposite. Today, religion is waning. If the people exploiting others do so without morals, we risk evil beyond what’s discussed in this article. We feel like technology must be there to save workers from being exploited, but it’s an uphill battle, and money/power may win.

doener 1y ago

Maybe this question is naive and/or influenced by decades of classic neoliberal propaganda: But why don’t do the farmers something else then?

dfxm12 1y ago
There's not much else around. They don't know what else to do. Education/job training expensive. They've got loans to pay back, so they can't stop working to look for another job. They're on some government assistance program they can't afford to lose, but it comes with work requirements, so they can't retrain. The pay (including government subsidies) make it just bearable enough to keep from revolting. Etc.
AngryData 1y ago
Like what? Farm another product that has the similar problems? Row crop farm where generating a 2% return on investment over a decade span is considered a success? The response has been farmers dropping out of the business entirely, which ends up with some few people doubling down into larger operations, which only makes the problem worse as it is harder to pivot and makes processing and distribution even harder to divert away from the big controlling players.

actionfromafar 1y ago

Might just have called it Uberization. Or called Uber a Chicken Processor.

doener 1y ago

Reminds me of the 1947 "Sixteen Tons" song. From German Wikipedia, translated by DeepL: "According to Archie Green, the lyrics contain several key passages that Travis took from quotes from his family members. When asked about his health, his father reportedly replied that he couldn't afford to die because he owed his soul to the grocery store[7] where he had debts. Sixteen Tons is a socially critical song about the sometimes inhumane conditions that American miners and their families had to live under in the past. This included wage slavery: US miners were mostly paid not in cash but with tokens (scrips), some of which could only be redeemed in company-owned stores, as there were no other shops in the area; local food supplies could only be obtained in these stores (company stores), which had a virtual monopoly and could therefore charge excessive prices; The income and expenditure situation in the company stores, which was deliberately controlled exclusively in favor of the mine owners, resulted in unavoidable debts for the workers (Another day older and deeper in debt), which created a relationship of dependency similar to serfdom ("I owe my soul to the company store"). By the time the song was written, the miners' living and working conditions had already improved significantly, partly as a result of numerous strikes. Payment with tokens had been banned in 1938 by a federal law, the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. However, working conditions remained harsh and the memory of exploitative practices was still fresh in the minds of the families and communities affected." https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixteen_Tons_(Lied) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixteen_Tons_(Lied)

riffraff 1y ago
I'm not sure why you transllated the german entry for an american song, but FYI, there's an english wikipedia version. "I owe my soul to the company store" is one of the greatest lyrics ever. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixteen_Tons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixteen_Tons
- kragen 1y ago
  Many German Wikipedia articles are better than the English versions. Maybe this is one of them.
  - 1y ago