The Takeover: Chicken Farming and the Roots of American Agribusiness by Monica R. Gisolfi (review)

In this brief examination of the modern chicken industry in Georgia, Monica R. Gisolfi outlines the historical transition from unprofitable cotton to the equally challenging poultry business. The major players in Georgia include cotton farmers barely surviving while doing irreparable damage to the soil, extension service agents, land grant schools, and developers of the agribusiness model for chicken farming such as Jesse Dixon Jewell.

Gisolfi traces the rise of poultry production in the region to the dismal failings of cotton. When the opportunity to farm chickens looked like a financial windfall during World War II, farmers who had not already left the land for better jobs saw poultry as a new, more profitable option. They were furnished with feed and chicks in exchange for keeping their buildings and equipment up to modern standards. The expense of the farm upgrades pushed out thousands of farmers. Those who stayed, according to Gisolfi, became trapped in a cycle of debt not unlike that involved in cotton production, but they owed larger amounts; families put up entire farms as collateral. Buttressing this change were New Deal policies such as the Agricultural Adjustment Act and rural electrification, which privileged white farm owners over renters, tenants, and African American farmers. The extension service also played a role, encouraging poultry over cotton with research, data, and training that it then made available only to white farmers, further alienating anyone who was not a white landowner.

The cost of this change was not just environmental, as the placement of the book in the Environmental History and the American South series might indicate. It also robbed women of "pin money" and on-farm earning opportunities, since women often handled poultry production for additional income. Chicken farming also did not save farm men from having to pursue off-farm employment. Because production costs often exceeded the income from chickens, many farmers found themselves working two jobs. Because they owned only the land and the buildings, producers resembled sharecroppers or tenants more than independent farmers.

Agribusiness was the significant driver of change in Georgia. Chicken middlemen, like Jewell, enticed farmers with what appeared to be low-risk arrangements on the finished birds. Price fluctuations were absorbed by the furnishing company, but the debt accrued by farmers could be exacerbated if they rejected any aspect of the arrangement. Readers will find these themes overlap in familiar ways with Steve Striffler's Chicken: The Dangerous Transformation of America's Favorite Food(New Haven, 2005), which offers a similar explanation of the furnishing contracts and more detailed descriptions of wartime rationing and the roles that processing played in the growth of the chicken industry.

Gisolfi's book ends with a brief discussion of the environmental effects of chicken farming and processing on communities. The fumes, water pollution, resource draining, and other pitfalls are similar to those involved in large-scale pork and beef production. The information here holds value and is strongest in the analysis of the federal government as a participant in the changes, but the environmental discussion feels stunted. Gisolfi does not make it entirely clear how or if Georgia is unique compared with other parts of the South that have experienced similar transitions, such as Arkansas and North Carolina.