Eddie Todd has raised turkeys for a major processing company for two decades. He’s still confused about how the company calculates his pay.
The company provides the birds, and Todd, the president of the Arkansas Farmers Union, raises them. Sometimes, sick turkey chicks have been delivered to him, he said, which affects his ability to make a living because of the tournament system.
“You never know exactly what you’re going to get,” he said. “I (have) had to compete against some healthy birds, and my check was near nothing.”
In this “tournament system,” neighboring farms are pitted against each other, and growers have little information about how their payments are calculated. The federal government recently vowed reform but the changes will apply only to the chicken industry. Turkey growers such as Todd will continue to deal with the same pitfalls.
“It’s devastating,” Todd said. “(The reforms were) a big piece of the puzzle to make things more fair for the family farmers.”
The USDA’s final ruling states that the turkey industry was left out because of differences between the animals’ biology, the amount of time it takes to grow a flock of turkeys compared to a broiler chicken flock, and a lack of uniformity in all turkey production contracts, as some turkey grower compensation is based on square-footage of a barn versus a tournament system.
“Much of the disclosed information would not be applicable or of significant value to turkey growers,” the ruling states.
“Just because turkeys and chickens are both birds does not mean a regulatory scheme can be 100 percent identical between the two species any more than regulations can be 100 percent identical between cows and pigs,” said Joel Brandenburger, president of the National Turkey Federation, a turkey industry advocacy group, in an emailed statement.
An analysis of USDA data by Investigate Midwest shows that nearly every chicken raised in the country is raised under contract and has been since the early 2000s. The total number of turkeys raised under contract increased 5% in the same time frame. And as of 2017, 70% of all turkey raised in the country now are raised under contract.
In the tournament system, large poultry companies like Tyson, Butterball, Jennie-O and Cargill rank growers’ performance against each other whenever they collect a flock of birds. Contract growers own the land, barns and machinery to raise birds to plump, harvestable sizes. They take on the investment in property and capital to raise livestock they do not own.
