THEY INTERFERE WITH OUR MARKETS

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For obvious reasons, such corporate invaders operate under a cloak of secrecy. T. C. Kennedy of Newman Grove, Nebraska, was contacted by the agent of an insurance company asking if they could use his name to buy land in the area. He refused, a reaction now being shared by others.

The Rocky Mountain Farmers Union told its members in the December, 1967 issue of its newspaper: "Hang onto your land. Why do you think the big corporations are trying to buy?... Because there's a better day coming, that's why."

The buying continues. Some of it is direct, and some indirect. Adrian Craigmiles of Rich Hill, Missouri, came into Southern Iowa and bought some 10,000 acres of land. The Des Moines Sunday Register on April 28, 1968 reported that Craigmiles had transferred 2,750 acres of his Missouri land to the giant CBK, Inc., a diversified corporation that has announced it is in the process of acquiring 80,000 acres of land from Texas to the Canadian border. It is phasing out its garment-making and the asphalt business to finance its farming operation.

The New York Times on May 5, 1968 reported that Doane Landco, Inc. of St. Louis, an affiliate of the Doane Agricultural Service, had set up a $200,000 fund to acquire "suitable" farm properties.

CHAPTER III

THEY CAN'T BE TRUSTED WITH OUR NATURAL RESOURCES

The Great Plains is a land of violence. It begins above, as giant clouds are piled high, thrown up by inner turbulence into great mountains, and then torn apart in savage cleavages.

Two influences--soil and weather--dominate the people of the region, creating strong men and durable women, who fight back. But they cannot win. In the end, they only learn to live with it, adapting their farming practices and lives to the environment.

The Great Plains make up one-fifth of the land area of the United States, extending from the Eastern Slope of the Rocky Mountains to the 98th Meridian, a distance of 750 miles at the widest point, and from Canada to Mexico, more than 1,600 miles.

Three large masses of air sweep into the region--those from Canada and Hudson Bay, cold and dry; those crossing the Rockies from the Pacific, warm to cold, dry to moist; and those from the Gulf of Mexico, warm and moistureladen. These air masses collide above, doing violence to the land and people below. When all three air masses collide, the atmosphere tumbles and rolls and roars, resulting in heavy rains, and the blizzards of 1886 and 1949.

In "The Great Plains in Transition," Carl Frederick Kraenzel, Professor of Rural Sociology at Montana State College, describes the region:

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. . . the Plains are a semiarid land. They are not semiarid in that the climate is halfway between humid and arid. They are not half dry and half wet; rather, some years they are dry and even arid; other years they are very wet; and still other years they are wet and dry at the wrong times from the standpoint of agricultural production and yields. It is this undefinable aspect of semiaridity that gives the Plains their distinctiveness."

Climate, coupled with native plant life, has reacted on the parent material and the slope to make unique soil formations in the region. The top strata are laid down on a base of marine-rock sheets that incline upward to the West. In some areas, the debris mantle has a lesser depth than in other parts. Uplifts of marine rock and other parent materials form high elevations in some areas, such as the Black Hills of South Dakota and the Bear Paw Mountains of

THEY CAN'T BE TRUSTED WITH OUR NATURAL RESOURCES

29

Montana. But such elevations are the exception. Low moisture--rainfall is under 20 inches a year on the Plains--has prevented undue leaching of the soil. The soils include the black belt that extends eastward into the semi-humid regions. The soil types move westward through the very dark brown belt, the dark brown belt, to the brown belt on the western rim, up against the mountains. Generally speaking, the soils of the Great Plains are the most fertile to be found. Inadequate moisture is their only limiting factor. But this protects the soils too--tending to reduce erosion.

Now a new factor has been introduced. In Eastern Colorado, square fields lie side by side and end to end as far as the eye can see. The mile squares-sections of 640 acres of land each--are wounded by shallow gullies winding across the fields, healed over by green bushes that protect the farmland on either side. Occasionally meandering across the fields are the upside-down rivers--with sand beds underlain by water flowing sluggishly below the surface.

But recently a new geometry is discernible--giant green circles are inside each quarter of the sections of land. These are huge self-propelled irrigation systems, pivoting at the center of each quarter-section, throwing out torrents of water into the fields. A new pattern of farming is emerging on the Great Plains.

On Wednesday, September 27, 1967, the Gates Rubber Company announced in Denver that it had formed a subsidiary to be known as Gates Farms to be headquartered at Joes, Colorado. Charles C. Gates, Jr., the company president, said the new company had already obtained more than 5,000 acres of land in Northeastern and Eastern Colorado. It was, he said, "the first of several similar projects envisioned throughout the United States to help meet the critical world demand for food." He also said the operation would yield a 12- to 18.7-percent profit on investment.

The Rocky Mountain News revealed the plan to the public in its issue the following day, and thus did farmers in Yuma County in the Joes area learn to whom they had sold their property, although they had already decided the buyer was some big corporation because the price was high and so much secrecy had surrounded the plans.

A buyer had taken options on land in the area, with the proviso that only those would be exercised where tests revealed the irrigation well in each quarter-section would pump a thousand gallons a minute.

Gates was already farming. It first entered the agricultural field in 1962 when it bought the A-Bar- A Ranch, a dude and commercial cattle ranch near Encampment, Wyoming. Afterward, it added to its ranching operations by

30

THE CORPORATE INVASION OF AMERICAN AGRICULTURE

the purchase of other large ranches along the Colorado-Wyoming border. Its total holdings in the area are now reported to be 180,000 acres.

But Gates' most dramatic agricultural enterprise was Gates-Cyclo, a highly automated egg-producing operation near Brighton, north of Denver. Eight circular, windowless buildings house 100,000 laying hens, rotating the hens in rows seven cages high past water and food every hour, giving them two minutes to drink and two minutes to eat each time around. In the completely controlled environment, the temperature stays at 65 degrees and lights are on 14 hours a day, off 10 hours. Punch-card records keep track of every hen's production and when a hen begins to slip, she is removed.

The operation grew out of the merging of Gates' interest and that of the Cyclo Manufacturing Company, which developed the system. Several prominent Coloradoans backed the Cyclo experiment financially and became stockholders in Gates-Cyclo. Among them, said the Rocky Mountain News, were former Governor Dan Thornton, Congressman Peter Dominick, and Bob Six, the president of Continental Airlines.

The announcement by Gates that it was starting another farm venture brought mixed reaction. The day after the announcement in Denver, National Farmers Union President Tony Dechant issued a statement saying that the Board of Directors of the Farmers Union, when it had seen the announcement, had “decided to broaden this fight so non-farm interests trying to take over farming are challenged in every farm state.

"We will rally farm groups, co-op leaders, rural bankers, small-town businessmen and others in an attempt to get state legislatures to adopt statutes that restrict farming operations run by big non-farm corporations," Dechant promised. "We will put state legislators, governors and political party officials on the spot on this issue in the next few months. We intend to make corporation farming one of the major agricultural issues at the state level this coming election year. It certainly will be one of the highest priority projects for Farmers Union across the country."

Dechant's announcement must have surprised the Gates Company. It took the company several days to respond. But then, on October 3, 1967, The Denver Post quoted Louis E. Dequine, Jr., manager of Gates' agricultural division, as saying that the company would hire workers from Joes, Wray and the Yuma areas where it was buying the land. “It will be like a major new industry moving into an area," he said enthusiastically. The farmers who were being bought out would "move to town and live on their rocking chair income," he said.

Meanwhile, rumors were traveling at a great rate in Yuma County and

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throughout Colorado. But as is frequently the case, they often bore little resemblance to the facts. Slowly, the truth emerged.

In June, 1968, Gates had acquired 9,600 acres in Yuma County alone. There was feverish activity, installing irrigation equipment, planting. Gene Pugh, the resident farm manager, was turning out to be a very decent sort of man who was taking part in community affairs. He had joined the local Lions Club, the golf club, and had become the PTO president. PTO means in that area, Parent-Teachers Organization, which is not affiliated with the national PTA.

Only three farms had been sold to Gates in their entirety, and mostly their owners were already gone, retired, or just quit. One had gone to work for Gates. Seven of the sixteen farmers who had sold land to Gates were still farming. Two of the sellers were what might best be described as speculators. There was no mass dislocation of farm people as a result of Gates' purchases.

But something of fundamental importance was occurring. For one thing, Gates changed its goal from the one announced originally--to help solve the world's food problem and make money. Instead, according to Charles C. Gates, Jr., as quoted in the December 17, 1967 issue of the Rocky Mountain News, the huge "factory in the field" project was a "pilot research project in Eastern Colorado to develop information which we will supply to farmers to help them increase their profits by lowering production costs."

Gates said his "clarification" of the company's project was offered as there had been "some gross misunderstanding of our intentions into the agricultural economy.

"We recognize," he continued, "the economic security of the American farmer is of major concern to us, because we are providing many products for their operation--and anything we can do to underwrite the success of American agriculture helps both us and the farmer.

"We are not in competition with any of our neighbors. Our present land holdings are smaller than many Colorado farm operations, but we believe they are adequate to accomplish our current research objectives."

By June, 1968, more of the Gates' operation was evident. If it was to be a research project--and used to demonstrate profitable practices, if it could find profitable practices--it was bound to be a success. Every Sunday, the roads around the Gates' farms were full of cars, people driving by just wanting to see what was going on. Unfortunately, they weren't learning how to farm; perhaps how not to farm was closer. For one thing, Gates was having trouble getting stands of sugar beets. Some fields had been planted over three times.