From Breitbart:
PITTSBURG, Texas (AP) – Pilgrim’s Pride Corp. said Friday it will cut 3,000 jobs, or about 7 percent of its U.S. work force, as it shuts operations at three of its 32 chicken processing plants.
The closures, which will reduce the company’s chicken production by roughly 10 percent, are designed to save the company $110 million a year as part of an ongoing restructuring. The company filed for Chapter 11 protection in December under a heavy debt load.
The company expects the closures to cost $35 million, not including asset write-downs it may take in the second quarter.
The plants are expected to close by mid-May. They are in Douglas, Ga.; El Dorado, Ark.; and Farmerville, La.
The move also affects 430 independent chicken farmers, the company said.
The company also said it would combine its protein salad production operation in Franconia, Pa., with its Moorefield, W. Va., facility.
From WRAL in May:
Pittsburg, Texas — The nation’s largest chicken-processing company is closing its plant in Siler City and laying off up to 1,100 employees.
Pilgrim’s Pride Corp. said Wednesday the closure of the Chatham County facility is a result of soaring feed-ingredient costs resulting from corn-based ethanol production.
The closing is part of a plan to curtail losses amid record-high costs for corn, soybean meal and other feed ingredients and an oversupply of chicken in the nation, the company said in a news release.
Pilgrim’s Pride is the second-largest employer in Chatham County.
“(It’s) devastating for our local economy,” Siler City Town Manager Joel Brower said.
From Martha Quillin at the N&O:
SILER CITY — On his commercial chicken farm a few miles outside town, Sam Talley has been spending less time with his pullets and more time in the pasture where he goes to be alone.
“I go up there and sit in my truck with my Bible, and I read and I think,” Talley said.
He’s thinking that if he doesn’t get a break, he’ll lose his 69 Chatham County acres, his four chicken houses, the home he shares with his wife and the life savings they invested to start Talley Farms eight years ago.
“I’m nearly 60 years old,” Talley said. “I could end up with nothing. Nothing.”
Talley is one of 44 farmers in six North Carolina counties who raised chickens on contract for Pilgrim’s Pride and were dropped by the company in October as the industry spiraled down. Of the 44, two farmers retired. Three picked up contracts to raise birds for other companies. At least two are headed into foreclosure and the rest, including Talley, worry they could be next…
First, a spike in fuel prices drove up operating costs and caused a surge in demand for grain crops to produce ethanol. Grain prices went up, causing the cost of chicken feed to soar. Then Russia, a major importer of U.S.-grown chicken, stopped buying, leaving a glut of meat on the market.
The GOP in-laws call occasionally to warn us the black folks are taking over. They also gave None Dare Call It Treason for Xmas. An impoverished West Virginian recently commented that the Russians are invading and are already in Georgia.
I don’t blame the Russians for not buying our chicken. Around here, we have it just about every other meal. We also eat eggs. I think they come from chikins, too.
Thankfully, the low price for oil will kick the ethanol industry in the nuts.
I’ve mentioned this before, but in my wanderings over this fair state, I had occasion to hear a WUNC program about a Chatham county farmer who trucks live chickens to ethnic markets in NYC and Miami. He fetches a good price.
Things are worse than I imagined:
Like many people who live in rural America, Upshaw finds it increasingly hard to run his business, stay informed or communicate with friends and relatives when his only access to the Internet comes over a dial-up connection. On a good day, e-mail headers take half an hour to download, and an attachment can freeze up the computer. Forget about watching a YouTube video—downloading one can take two hours.
Look away dear reader; this is too much to bare:
Adding to the Upshaws’ dissatisfaction is the awareness that other areas of the world, including parts of Africa, are better connected. Vaughn’s parents live in Eldoret, Kenya, where they have high-speed Internet access. When they visit the Upshaws once a year, they complain about the slow connection. “When my mother sends me YouTube links from Africa,” she says, “I know it’s bad.”
I know a couple of guys who have worn out themselves and several tractors putting up fence for horses all over Chatham and Lee. The onslaught of well-heeled foreigners is unreal. Almost everybody has sold high and left:
How are they going to eat and keep a roof over their heads? Many of them are 2nd, 3rd, 4th, even 5th generation Chathamites. They are losing family land that they were born and raised on. For those that have moved around most of their lives, it may be hard to understand. But, for those who have strong roots in one place, community and family means everything. For them, moving is NOT an option.
Trust me, honey, you too can leave Stenchville. Among the scariest things I’ve seen are chicken trucks on the road late at night:
“In Siler City,” Greene says, “we had two options: you either worked at the plant or you drove truck. … I knew I wasn’t geared to work in a plant, so I started driving truck and hauling chickens from Siler City all over the country.”
For some recent history:
A native of central North Carolina, Hayes moved to Siler City in 1982. “I came here to manage this radio station and just fell in love with the town…. It was a rural town, a blue collar town. Maybe 70 percent white, 30 percent black.”
Siler City was also “a dying industrial town” in the 1980s, Hayes says. He watched jobs go away by the hundreds. “We were seeing the textile industry downsizing, we were seeing our furniture industry downsizing, our cotton mill was downsizing, and they continued to downsize for the next 20 years.”
Meanwhile, the poultry industry, which had been a mainstay in Siler City for decades, was undergoing an enormous expansion throughout the southeast, just as the whites and blacks who had traditionally worked in the plants began turning up their noses at the chicken jobs. Work in poultry plants is notoriously dangerous, repetitive, and low-paying, not to mention smelly, wet, and, often, bloody.
“And so,” says Hayes, “they began attracting the Hispanics into this region.”
I went to school with the Darks and Silers:
Calvin Dark orders the quesadilla de pollo in effortless Spanish.
“With arroz,” Dark says.
Dark is 29, a graduate of Duke University and a fluent speaker of Spanish and Arabic. He lives in Washington, D.C. and works for the Moroccan government, but he grew up in Siler City and his ties to the town are deep and powerful. “Because my family is here. All of my family, on my mother’s side and father’s side.”
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