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Industry” is well worth reading, as is the rest of the book in which it appears: From Columbus to ConAgra: The Globalization of Agriculture and Food, edited by Alessandro Bonanno, Lawrence Busch, William H. Friedland, Lourdes Gouveia, and Enzo Mingione (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1994). For a government report that belatedly confirms many of the findings made by Stull, Grey, Davidson, Gouveia, and others, see “Community Development: Changes in Nebraska’s and Iowa’s Counties With Large Meatpacking Plant Workforces,” Report to Congressional Requesters, United States General Accounting Office, February 1998. Milo Muungard, the executive director of Nebraska’s Appleseed Center, gave me useful material on the social and environmental effects of a migrant industrial workforce. Greg Lauby, an attorney whose family has lived in Lexington, Nebraska, for generations, graciously shared his knowledge of the town’s history, its residents, its recent changes — and the reasons for its smell. I am particularly grateful to the many IBP workers who invited me into their homes and told me their stories.

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150 earns more money every year from livestock products: 1997 Census of Agriculture (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Commerce), p. 36.

150 the largest private employer in Weld County: Indeed, a recent study by two Colorado State University economists found that ConAgra’s facilities are “practically synonymous with Greeley and Weld County.” Andrew Seidl and Stephan Weiler, “The Estimated Value of ConAgra Packing Plants in Weld County, CO,” Agricultural and Resource Policy Report, Colorado State University Cooperative Extension, Fort Collins, February 2000, p. 3.

A typical steer will consume: Interview with Mike Callicrate, Kansas feedlot operator.

deposits about fifty pounds of manure: The figure was determined by researchers at Colorado State University. Cited in Mark Obmascik, “As Greeley Ponders Tax, Cows Keep On Doing Their Thing,” Denver Post, July 29, 1995.

produce more excrement than the cities: According to O. W. Charles, of the Extension Poultry Science Department of the University of Georgia, one head of cattle generates the same amount of waste as 16.4 people. Cited in Eric R. Haapapuro, Neal D. Barnard, and Michele Simon, “Animal Waste Used as Livestock Feed: Dangers to Human Health,” Preventive Medicine, September/October 1997. Using that ratio, the roughly 200,000 cattle in Monfort’s two Weld County feedlots produce an amount of waste equivalent to that of about 3.2 million people. The combined populations of Denver (about 500,000), Boston (about 550,000), Atlanta (about 400,000), and St. Louis (about 375,00) produce much less execrement than Greeley’s cattle.

it was a utopian community: My account of early Greeley is based on Mike Peters, “Meeker Killed on Western Slope,” Greeley Tribune, 1998; Mike Peters, “Controversy over Cattle Ranches Leads to ‘The Fence,’” Greeley Tribune, 1998; and Carl Ubbelohde, Maxine Benson, Duane A. Smith, A Colorado History (Boulder, Colo.: Pruett Publishing Company, 1995), pp. 123–32.

151 started his business in the 1930s with eighteen head: See Curt Olsen, “Monforts: Changing the Way the World Is Fed,” National Cattlemen, August 1997.

a place on President Nixon’s “enemies list”: See “Beef Baron,” Rocky Mountain News Sunday Magazine, May 3, 1987.

“If I can ever be of help”: Quoted in Andreas, Meatpackers and Beef Barons, p. 37.

152 “the greatest aggregation”: Sinclair, Jungle, p. 40.

“cogs in the great packing machine”: Ibid., p. 78.

“conditions that are entirely unnecessary”: Quoted in Yeager, Competition and Regulation, p. 200.

153 “I aimed for the public’s heart”: Quoted in Skaggs, Prime Cut, p. 118.

paid the industry’s highest wages: See Stromquist and Bergman, Unionizing the Jungles, pp. 25–33.

154 “We’ve tried to take the skill out”: Quoted in Stull et al., Any Way You Cut It, p. 19.

as though it were waging war: Holman is quoted in Christopher Drew, “A Chain of Setbacks for Meat Workers,” Chicago Tribune, October 25, 1988.

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