Politico: Contract poultry farmers may not qualify for small business loans
Posted in Daily
POLITICO’s Morning Agriculture
By Sabrina Rodriguez | 03/09/2018 10:00 AM EDT
Contract poultry farmers may not qualify for small business loans: Large poultry companies like Tyson Foods and Pilgrim’s Pride exert so much control over their contract farmers’ operations that these growers don’t appear to meet the regulatory definition of a small business required to be financed by the Small Business Administration, according to a report by the agency’s Office of Inspector General. Between fiscal 2012 and 2016, SBA guaranteed about $1.8 billion in loans to poultry farmers – accounting for more than three-quarters of its agricultural portfolio.
This should have been done a long time ago. All of the farmers who have this much control exerted over them should be counted as employees and the poultry companies exerting this control should have to back pay all of their employee benefits.