How Tyson Foods Kills Small Rural Towns

1 / 6
Empty storefronts line the main street of Green Forest, AR, one of many Tyson towns.
Empty storefronts line the main street of Green Forest, AR, one of many Tyson towns.
2 / 6
Large commercial chicken farms, such as those contracted with Tyson Foods, often have acres devoted to the grower houses, which may house as many as 20,000 chickens each.
Large commercial chicken farms, such as those contracted with Tyson Foods, often have acres devoted to the grower houses, which may house as many as 20,000 chickens each.
3 / 6
In
In "Tyson towns," street names and buildings are marked with the company name and logo.
4 / 6
The Tyson processing plant in Berryville, AR.
The Tyson processing plant in Berryville, AR.
5 / 6
Industrial growers give chickens as little as 130 square inches each — about the size of a manila mailing envelope.
Industrial growers give chickens as little as 130 square inches each — about the size of a manila mailing envelope.
6 / 6
Just a few companies control the vast majority of all U.S. meat and feed processing.
Just a few companies control the vast majority of all U.S. meat and feed processing.

One of the biggest myths about U.S. farming is that there’s no money in it. Small farming towns, the thinking goes, have died over the last 50 years because there’s no profit to be made in this largely backward-looking business. This would be a sad reality if it were true, but it’s not. Farming is immensely profitable. The agriculture sector is one of the richest, most productive machines of modern business. The critical question isn’t whether there’s money in agriculture, but, rather, where does the money go?

Visiting a town like Waldron, Ark., which is home to a massive poultry plant operated by Tyson Foods, supports the misperception. About a million chickens a week may be killed at such a Tyson plant, and the giant slaughterhouse is an impressive industrial machine. Waldron’s residents refer to it simply as “The Complex,” because the plant isn’t just a factory — it’s more like an entire small-town economy consolidated onto one property. The several-acre compound contains its own trucking line, feed mill and hatchery, and a slaughterhouse. This complex alone churns out chickens from their beginnings as eggs to finished food products that are worth millions of dollars each year.

Yet Waldron itself seems to be suffocating economically. Many of the businesses along the small downtown strip are boarded up. On Saturday night, Waldron’s Main Street is quiet to the point of abandonment. The new strip mall downtown is vacant, with black garbage bags peppering its empty parking lot. The sole locus of activity, before it closed in April, was the renovated Scott County Movie Theater, which drew a crowd for its single screening of the night. A young woman named Frankie Watson took tickets, chatting with the clientele. People are so poor in Waldron, Watson says, that the Great Recession of 2007 and 2008 largely passed them over, unnoticed.

The perpetual hard times in small towns such as Waldron stand in stark contrast to the fortunes being made by Tyson Foods and other big food companies that operate on the fringes of rural landscapes. In 2013 alone, Tyson cleared a record $778 million in pure profit. And that was during a tough year in which consumers were dining out less and buying fewer precooked meals, which are Tyson’s real cash cow. Other industrial agriculture companies were just as successful.

This article is based on reporting from my book, The Meat Racket: The Secret Takeover of America’s Food Business, which explores how Tyson Foods pioneered the industrial system that now dominates the food market. Today, many companies have adopted the Tyson business model, including Hormel, Swift, Cargill, Smithfield Foods and Foster Farms. Tyson’s operations reflect the broader realities of a centralized, highly concentrated meat industry, as well as the effects this system has on small-town economies.

  • Published on Nov 7, 2014
Comments (0) Join others in the discussion!
    Online Store Logo
    Need Help? Call 1-800-234-3368