Successful Farming just printed its annual Pork Powerhouses report.   The packers owning sows are: Smithfield Foods, Triumph Foods, Seaboard Foods, Cargill, Tyson, and Hormel. 

The American Meat Institute is the parent corporation for the meat packer lobby.  Subsidiaries are the National Cattlemen's Beef Association and the National Pork Producers Council.

AMI has new board members and officers.  They are worth noting:

New officers:

• Chairman: David Miniat, president of Ed Miniat, Inc. 
• Vice Chairman: Rod Brenneman, president and chief executive officer of Seaboard Foods
• Treasurer: Jeffrey Ettinger, chairman of the board, president and chief executive officer of Hormel Foods Corporation
• Secretary: Dennis Vignieri, president and chief executive officer of Kenosha Beef International, Ltd.
• Immediate Past Chairman: Richard L. Bond, president and chief executive officer of Tyson Foods, Inc. 

New board members are:

• Wesley Batista, president and CEO, JBS Swift & Company
• Brian Nilsson, Co-CEO, XL Foods Inc.
• Larry Pope, president and CEO, Smithfield Foods, Inc.
• Bill Rupp, president, Cargill Meat Solutions Corporation
• Mike Townsley, executive vice president, Food Products Division, Bob Evans Farms, Inc.

I know you all were waiting, with baited breath, for daily TradeReform emails this past week.  I took off for a fun-filled Washington trip, battling the forces of darkness... the meat packer lobby.  In the farm bill debate. 

The Senate Ag Committee approved their version of the farm bill.  The Senate version of the bill includes pro-competition provisions in livestock. They are good.  I know some complain about the subsidies. I am agnostic on those.  Blame Senator Richard Lugar and Cargill who had the big idea for the 1996 Farm Bill, and now Lugar says the subsidies are too much after he created them.  There was a price support program before, which was very cheap.  But Lugar wanted taxpayer subsidies so Cargill would not have to pay so much for corn, and now Lugar has changed his mind. 

Oh, by the way, one year of farm subsidies would basically pay for a couple months of the Iraq war. And they don't even touch the level of oil company subsidies.

Back to livestock market competition improvements in the Farm Bill.  The Russell Senate Office Building was a twisted, kaleidoscopic microcosm of advocacy.  On October 24th and 25th the overflow room for the hearings was thick with packer lobbyists. (Read more).

The New York Time editorial board actually had a pretty good editorial on China today.

The board acknowledged the currency manipulation problem.

Perhaps most important, Beijing must also change the way it pegs the value of the yuan to the value of the dollar.

They also pointed out, accurately, the inherent future risks of China's export-only pursuit.

The strains generated by China’s huge investments in export industries are assuming shocking proportions. Unbreathable air and noxious rivers compete for attention with the global damage caused by the enormous consumption of energy and growing carbon emissions. In return, the investments are producing meager job gains. The spending power of Chinese families is lagging far behind economic growth. The no-holds barred development of export industries along the coast, at the expense of the interior, is boosting income inequality to levels rarely seen outside of Africa.

But they have no idea that we can neutralize much of the problem right now with the Ryan-Hunter bill, to countervail the currency manipulation.  The board is the the Henry Paulson mode of talking and persuading in a Strategic Economic Dialogue, which is ultimately fruitless.  They dismiss action in favor of talk, undercutting any solutions:

Chest-thumping in Washington makes things worse.