What a year it has been! OCM has been instrumenta in the filing of three key pieces of legislation that if passed will go a long way toward furthering our mission to reclaiming competitive markets in agriculture for farmers, ranchers and rural communities. The flip side of the coin though is that mergers between goliath size agriculture firms are on the increase.

In February, OCM praised a bi-partisan group of Senators led by Chairman Harkin when they introduced a competition bill in the Senate. The Competition Bill modernizes the legal rules governing fairness in marketing and contracting.

Early this spring, after he and Senator Harkin held agriculture competition hearings, Congressman Leonard Boswell filed a competition bill in the House of Representatives. Once again, co-sponsors included members from both sides of the isle indicating competition, or lack of, is a problem that everyone acknowledges in today’s environment.

Just last month, after watching the largest hog producer in the world acquire the second largest, Senators Grassley, Thune and Kohl filed the Agriculture Competition Enhancement Act of 2007 as a first step in reining in the Department of Justice misguided antitrust laxity.

That’s the good news. As Paul Harvey says, now the rest of the story. This May the antitrust division of the Department of Justice approved Smithfield Foods purchase of Premium Standard Farms production and processing capabilities creating a monopoly in the Southeastern portion of the United States for the purchase of live hogs and severally restricting competition in the balance of the country.

Then in May, the Department of Justice gave Monsanto their blessing to create a biotech trait monopoly in cotton seed production by allowing their purchase of Delta & Pine Land Company. This acquisition gives Big M over ninety five percent control of herbicide and insect resistant cotton seed in the marketplace.

Lastly, within the last several weeks, Justice has given the approval for the Chicago Mercantile Exchange to purchase the Chicago Board of Trade. Consolidating these two trading platforms has the potential to lead to increased manipulation of agricultural markets around the world.
What this all means is we have had some success, but much remains to be done.

Our annual meeting is August 3rd in Omaha, Nebraska. Higher prices for most commodities would seem to imply that competition issues have been fixed. Good times are surely here. I don’t believe that and neither do you. Merger mania is back with a vengeance and time is running short to turn these disturbing trends around.

Please come and join me for a highly informative meeting featuring both state and federal elected officials and an update on the farm bill progress along with an exciting report from the Coalition for a Prosperous America and Alan Guebert’s always entertaining view on the Agricultural Media’s view of where agriculture is at. This is one meeting you need to attend!KM