This crucially important book shows ways in which today’s chicken farming in North Georgia is essentially an extension of the means of production (or should be say “oppression”) found in cotton agribusiness during Reconstruction. It shows how agribusiness retains control and profits while their contract farmers absorb most of the risk. Furthermore, this book illuminates ways that the federal government, through the USDA, has not only enabled this exploitative system, but also subsidized it. “The Takeover . . . reveals the matrix of contract growing, government subsidy, and rural impoverishment that enriched agribusiness integrators and freed these firms from financial and environmental risk.” – Sarah T. Phillips. “The Takeover . . . has put a human face on . . . how independent landowners became, in essence, sharecroppers and shows the impact of that metamorphosis on them and their families.” – Melissa Walker.
Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2017. 104 pages with an Index, Notes, and a Foreword by Paul S. Sutter. Trade paperback