Chicken Big

September 30, 2020·29 min·2 clips

A North Carolina farmer describes the three biggest lies he ever heard from the poultry company that recruited him.

Craig Watts cannot quite summarize himself. The episode gives him room to come at it sideways: a North Carolina farmer who once raised chickens for meat, then looked back at the business with bruised clarity. He returned to his family's farm in 1992, when poultry companies were advertising. Craig signed on to a system built around contracts, required upgrades, and processors with much more leverage than the growers. Some years, hardly anything came home. One year, Craig remembers $3,000, small enough that another business was basically propping up his chicken habit. Other years looked better on paper, which was part of the problem. The swing itself became the trap, with growers described as making anywhere from $18,000 to $100,000. Competition did not help much. In Craig's region, consolidation meant there were years when no other company was taking contracts. Even switching later could feel like picking between two bad endings. Debt tightened the screws. Farmers borrowed heavily for buildings and upgrades, then needed the same contracts to keep paying for improvements the companies required. The guest calls it learned helplessness, and the phrase lands because the episode has already shown the feeling in ledgers, barns, and choices that barely count as choices. Then the story widens. On an Iowa family farm during Barack Obama's 2007 campaign, rural voters tell a future president how much power large companies have over their lives. Obama says he wants to learn from the farmers. The episode lets that promise sit beside Craig's account of a market with too few buyers. The chickens keep coming back. By the end, a child's lesson about eggs, fried chicken, and farmers feels less cute than it did at first. Dependence is what the story has been measuring all along. If everyone depends on the people who raise food, why do so many of them have so little room to say no?

As heard by us

A clear, human look at how poultry contracts can make farming feel less independent than it looks.

Chicken Big uses Craig Watts's story to turn poultry farming into a study of power, debt, and contracts. Watts, a North Carolina farmer who returned to his family's farm and signed on to raise chickens, becomes the human center of a system where pay can swing from year to year…

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Need a chicken-farm story where debt and leverage hit fast?

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Future Perfect