{"id":5160,"date":"2004-03-18T11:53:56","date_gmt":"2004-03-18T19:53:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/blog\/2004\/03\/18\/5160\/"},"modified":"2004-03-18T11:53:56","modified_gmt":"2004-03-18T19:53:56","slug":"chicken-micro-lending","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/?p=5160","title":{"rendered":"Chicken Micro-lending"},"content":{"rendered":"

While reading
\nFast Food Nation<\/a> I came up with an idea, which I am seriously considering putting together.<\/p>\n

\n

There are abandoned poulty houses in Arkansas. Like a lot of them. Tyson Foods<\/a>, a huge chicken processor, shrewdly owns chickens but no chicken farms- they pass on all the capital risk and labor to independent contractors, usually small farmers. These contractors generally have to take out a huge loan, spend $150k on a poultry house, and about half of them go bankrupt. That’s a lot of abandoned poultry houses.<\/p>\n

\n

Soo… remember Banker to the Poor<\/a> and the Grameen Bank<\/a>? They have a fisheries project- there was a giant abandoned fishery and they took it over, staffed by small businesspeople loaned money by the bank. So why couldn’t we do that in Arkansas?<\/p>\n

\nOf course, as with all of my projects, I am always looking for guidance or volunteers. If you know anything about finance, nonprofit organizations, chickens, or the business of poultry production, drop me a line!<\/p>\n

\nSteps to accomplish this project:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Contact Eric Schlosser
    \n(author of Fast Food Nation) for a quick pointer to his sources for the actual locations of these bankrupt farms<\/lI><\/p>\n
  2. Contact local AR banks and see who has the best deal on abandoned poultry farm foreclosures… preferably near unemployed people<\/li>\n
  3. Research the legal structure of the Grameen fisheries project-\n
      \n
    • How is it connected to Grameen Bank?<\/lI>
      \n
    • How much do the debtors own of the fisheries?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
    • Contact the micro-lending programs in AR and get their involvement<\/li>\n
    • Market & Logistical concerns:\n
        \n
      • Who would the resulting chickens be sold to? Maybe a side loan involving small restaurants?<\/lI><\/p>\n
      • How does one transport chickens and chicken products economically on a small scale?<\/li>\n

      • Is the chicken market as a whole improving or degrading?<\/lI><\/p>\n
      • Is the organic chicken market improving share?<\/li>\n
      • What are the tradeoffs in making a chicken operation organic? Free range?<\/li>\n
      • Could we alternatively combine this effort with agricultural research? Companion farming? Alternately, GM chickens?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
      • Environmental concerns:\n
          \n
        • How do we minimize \/ reuse the waste generated by a chicken farm?<\/lI><\/p>\n
        • How do we guard the local water supply from pollution?<\/lI>\n
        • Can we grow the chicken feed on the lot? How about a crop which improves the soil?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

          <\/lI><\/p>\n

        • Write some grants!<\/li>\n

        • research recruitment methods of Grameen to get people to run this thing<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

          While reading Fast Food Nation I came up with an idea, which I am seriously considering putting together. There are abandoned poulty houses in Arkansas. Like a lot of them. Tyson Foods, a huge chicken processor, shrewdly owns chickens but no chicken farms- they pass on all the capital risk and labor to independent contractors, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-looky"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5160\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}