Comments by "Tony Wilson" (@tonywilson4713) on "How Tyson Captured All The Pork You Eat (And Made Billions)" video.

AUSTRALIAN HERE: I'm an engineer but my mother's family are mostly farmers and mum and my grandparents kept me well informed on farming issues. What is amazing in this story is the parallel to Australia's farming industry. In my home state of Victoria, which has Australia's largest dairy industry, the number of dairy farmers has fall from just over 7,400 in the early 2000s to just under 2,800 now. Those numbers are from a recent ABC Australia story. Previously I saw a report that said Australia (in total) has gone from over 20,000 dairy farmers to under 8,000. Most bizarrely is that in total Australia produces 3 times as much food as it consumes, as in there's 26 million of us and we feed another 50 million in other countries. This also includes a significant milk product export trade. About 6 years ago I did a project at a milk processing plant and saw an article in that companies news letter that said Victoria was exporting over $1 Billion a month in milk products. When I asked I found that a lot of that was in milk powders (like baby formula) and from the plant I was at frozen cream for the Japanese market. DESPITE those facts we are now importing milk products DUE TO A DROUGHT and one of the biggest issues for dairy farmers (as well as other farmers) has been the cost of water. We now have a "world class" water trading scheme created by an Australian born economist who went to Harvard (yes that Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts). Its a brilliant system where the large corporate farms and corporate vultures simply outbid the smaller farmers at the water auctions. It works so well that many of our basic foods have gone up around 30% and in some cases 50%. I like chip-n-dip and corn chips have gone from $1.60 to $2.30 in less than 2 years and that's over 43%. Also, early in this story JBS is mentioned. JBS is a Brazilian company that has been involved in a massive scandal in Brasil where they bribed people to get the loans they used to buy farming and food production assets all over the world including in BOTH Australia and America. ABC Australia's program 4 Corners (our equivalent to to PBS Frontline) did a story on this that is here on YouTube and includes comments by American officials on this problem. That video is titled "The world's biggest meat company is built on corruption and it's growing in Australia | Four Corners" and its on the channel ABC NEWS In-depth and was posted 25 Apr 2022. FYI - I went to U. Illinois on a scholarship and one of my team mates was from Iowa and he used to mention that for every Iowan there were 10 hogs. So yes I do know where Iowa is and have been there. Other than the rivalry with the Hawkeye's I had a pretty good impression of Iowa (nice and decent people) and YES everyone in Australia loved Radar O'Reilly. So I find this sad to see that Iowa families are struggling like ours are and for the same sorts of reasons.
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