Toward this end, employers go to great lengths to unlawfully exclude qualified US workers in favor of H-2A workers, many of whom have themselves migrated to the United States during prior seasons. For example, employers schedule interviews at inconvenient times or locations; hire too early in the season, lead workers to arrive for work when there is none; limit their hours in order to discourage them from continuing to work; use employment contracts that demand that workers forfeit their right to sue a grower for lost wages and/or other illegalities; and impose productivity quotas and other unrealistic work demands on employees. These practices greatly discourage US workers from applying to these jobs, which then allows employers to “legally” hire H-2A workers. Additionally, the profits reaped by large agricultural employers and by corporations at all levels of the food system not only come at the expense of the food system worker’s livelihoods and US job loss, but are also subsidized by taxpayers themselves. For example, Walmart, which sells 25% of all the groceries in the United States and is the largest employer in the US and world, has among the lowest wages across the retail industry. Walmart workers cost US taxpayers an estimated $6.2 billion in public assistance that would counteract the consequences of their low wages, including SNAP, Medicaid and subsidized housing. Because 58% of food system workers surveyed reported having no health care coverage, more than one-third of workers surveyed have used the emergency room for primary care, which taxpayers help cover. Finally, corporations like Walmart are able to determine wages and benefits for workers throughout their entire supply chain, given their massive procurement power and ability to dictate purchasing prices to its suppliers. This pressure and influence forces suppliers to lower their worker’s wages, drain trays for plants multiplying the number of workers robbed of fair and livable wages and taxpayer subsidization of corporate profits.
In short, when food system workers require public assistance, the onus rests on taxpayers and the federal government, rather than on those that are responsible for creating these unhealthy outcomes—corporations. After over thirty years of liberal trade policies beginning in the late 1970s and early 1980s, many developing countries have been left with a great dependence on the global market for basic food and grains. Developing countries had yearly agricultural trade surpluses of $1 billion in the early 1970s. Yet by 2000, the food deficit in such countries had grown to $11 billion per year. At the height of the 2007–2008 global food price crisis, Low-Income Food Deficit Countries import bills reached over $38 billion for basic cereal grains. Such systemic vulnerability is, in part, a result of international finance institutions, structural adjustment, free trade agreements, and a broader divestment of the state from agricultural development. Furthermore, not only are overproduction and US food aid to blame, but also corporate actors use such international crises as oppor-tunities to make additional calls for emergency aid coupled with further trade liberalization and increased investment in agricultural productivity. The Farm Bill in particular has been instrumental in establishing and maintaining such systemic vulnerability. For example, although the 2014 Farm Bill authorizes $80 million annually for the Local and Regional Procurement Program, which encourages greater use of food that is locally or regionally grown for food aid, it pales in comparison to the $1.75 billion Food for Peace Title II through which United States Agency for International Development provides food assistance. Furthermore, foreign economies are undermined not only by such efforts that directly shuttle surplus and heavily subsidized commodities—produced for the benefit of corporate entities—to developing countries, but also by production support programs themselves, such as commodity payments or crop insurance.
For example, a 2012 International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development report found that the shift from direct payments to crop insurance support for farmers is likely to have far reaching effects on global trade and prices because of the anticipated change to cropping patterns. Specifically, the likelihood that the new programs will influence planting decisions is greatly enhanced because payments in all the new programs are calculated using actual planted acreage. Ultimately, if planting decisions are influenced enough, then program-induced changes in US crop acreage will be reflected in trade flows that have the potential to harm farmers in developing countries and cause fluctuations in global food prices. One major way corporations profit and exert their control with regard to education, research, and development is their influence over academic research and development. Agricultural research in the United States is carried out primarily by three entities: the federal government, largely through the US Department of Agriculture; academia, primarily through land-grant universities; and the private sector. Over the past several decades, corporate interests have co-opted publicly-oriented agricultural research and land-grant university research efforts in particular. The federal government created land-grant universities in 1862 by deeding tracts of land to every state to pursue agricultural research to support agricultural production in the United States. Although public investments have maintained agricultural research since the creation of these universities, over recent decades public funding has stalled, prompting land-grant universities to appeal to agribusiness to remedy such financial shortcomings. Significantly, the landmark 1980 Bayh-Dole Act pushed universities to take this particularly entrepreneurial role, generating revenue through producing patents from which the private sector could profit. The Bayh-Dole Act, as part of the neoliberalization of science and academic research itself, prompted greater industry influence over land-grant research, as university research agendas became oriented toward the needs of corporate partners.
Major agribusiness donors to land-grant universities across the United States, including Syngenta, Monsanto, PepsiCo, Nestle, Dow Agroscience, Chevron, DuPont and others, now push research carried out by faculty and students toward developments in bio-fuels, commodity crops research, genetically engineered foods, and other areas of interest. Land-grant universities today not only carry out corporate-directed research but also depend on agribusinesses to underwrite research grants, endow faculty chairs, sponsor departments, and finance the construction of new buildings. Even USDA research and USDA-funded research itself reflects corporate interests. The USDA spends roughly $2 billion per year on agricultural research, which goes toward funding USDA researchers and researchers at land-grant universities. This money, however, is largely directed toward a corporate-friendly industrial agriculture research agenda: the National Academy of Sciences found that USDA research prioritizes commodity crops, industrialized livestock production, technologies geared toward large-scale operations, and capital-intensive practices. The Farm Bill does not prioritize funding for more sustainable farming programs, with programs such as the Organic Agriculture Research and Education Initiative and Specialty Crop Research Initiative accounting for only 2% of the USDA’s research budget. Most research funding is directed toward commodity crops research. In 2010, for example, the USDA funded $204 million to research all varieties of fruits and vegetables, and spent $212 million to research just four commodity crops: corn, soybeans, wheat, and cotton. Another major way private industry continues to profit and exert their influence vis-à-vis relations of education, research, and development, is seed research and patents. Since the early 1980s, the global seed industry has grown substantially and is now worth an estimated $44 billion and is expected to grow to an estimated $85 billion by 2018. The cumulative effect of seed legislation has facilitated the massive consolidation of corporate power, thus securing corporate control of one of the most crucial agricultural inputs. This history of seed legislation began shortly before the New Deal, beginning with the US Plant Patent Act of 1930 and continued with the 1970 Plant Variety Protection Act. Significantly, seed legislation did not move into the judicial system until the 1980 Supreme Court decision Diamond v. Chakrabarty, which laid the legal groundwork for the privatization and commodification of the genetics of seeds. In 1985, Ex Parte Hibberd, an administration decision by the US Patent and Trademarks Office, extended property rights to the individual components of organisms, 4 x 8 grow tray including genetic information, thus anticipating some of today’s contentious Genetically Modified Organism debates. Ten years later, Asgrow Seed v. Winterboer denied the rights of farmers to save and resell patented seed products, marking the continuation of a series of legislation that progressively placed power in corporate hands. In 2001, J.E.M. AG Supply v. Pioneer Hi-Bred International, a legal dispute between a large seed company and small seed supply center, affirmed that newly developed plant breeds are covered by expansive utility patents. In 2013, furthermore, Bowman v. Monsanto held that patent “exhaustion doctrine” does not cover farmers’ reproduction of patented seeds through planting and harvesting without the patent owner’s permission, further reflecting and securing corporate profit and influence. Although inadequate disclosure laws make it difficult to determine the exact amount expended on the Farm Bill and on other pieces of legislation, during the two years preceding the passage of the Farm Bill on February 7, 2014, at least 600 companies spent over $500 million in lobbying. The largest spenders ranged from Fortune 500 leaders in banking, trade, transportation and energy to non-profit organizations. A joint investigation by Harvest Public Media and the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting found that the top 18 corporations and groups spent at least $5 million each in total lobbying from 2012 to the First Quarter of 2014.
These corporations and groups include: the US Chamber of Commerce, Exxon Mobil, Du Pont, the American Bankers Association, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, Grocery Manufacturers Association, Wells Fargo, AARP, Monsanto, Independent Community Bankers of America, Coca-Cola, Association of American Railroads, Nestle, Nextera Energy, BNSF Railway Company, PMI Global Services Inc., Bayer Corporation, and American Forest & Paper Association. The commodities support programs outlined above make up one major set of Farm Bill issues influenced by such lobbying efforts. These direct payments have long received the attention of growers groups and other interest groups that are beholden to corporate interests. Specifically, alongside the Farm Bureau, the Farmers Union, and other general farm organizations, all major agricultural commodities are represented by a lobbying organization that aims to keep the Farm Bill’s commodity programs intact as per the supposed interest of the producers of such commodities. These organizations include: the National Cotton Council, the Sugar Association, and the National Corn Growers, among others. While indeed all industries are represented by lobbying organizations, the relative political and economic strength of actors within the US food system that are already oriented toward large-scale production, processing, distribution, and service—such as those above—highlights their significance, particularly concerning contemporary campaign finance reform efforts. With the change to crop insurance as the safety net centerpiece, banks and insurance companies spent at least $52.6 million in lobbying the 2014 Farm Bill and other issues in the two years prior to its passage. For example, Wells Fargo, the fourth-largest US bank, spent approximately $11.3 million in lobbying efforts, signaling the potential gain to be had by the company’s Rural Community Insurance Services, the largest crop insurance provider in the country. The American Bankers Association, another group that will benefit most from the boost to crop insurance, reported spending $14 million on lobbying, including advocacy for crop insurance and other rural lending plans. Other lobbyists for crop insurance included Independent Community Bankers of America, ACE INA Holdings and Zurich , the National Association of Professional Insurance Agents, and Deere & Co., the large equipment manufacturer that also has a crop insurance arm. Private sector spending on agricultural research has risen steeply since the 1970s and 1980s, exceeding public sector spending on agricultural research. From 1970 to 2006, private agricultural research expenditures—both in-house research and donations to land-grant universities—rose from $2.8 billion to over $8 billion, in inflation-adjusted 2014 dollars. Yet total public funding—directed toward land-grant universities and the USDA—rose from $3.1 billion to $6.1 billion in that same period. Federal funding of land-grant universities in particular reflect such trends: by the early 1990s, industry funding had already surpassed USDA funding of agricultural research at land-grant universities and by 2009, private sector funding had soared to $822 million, compared to $645 million from the USDA. Significantly, the economic recession substantially restricted research funding. Yet USDA land-grant university funding dropped twice as fast as private funding between 2009 and 2010, from 39.3% and 20.5%, respectively, reflecting the increasing dependence of university research on corporate funds, particularly during economic downturns.