Food and Agriculture Minister E.O. Pervukhina
NATIONALIZING POULTRY?
Kronkirchen, August 11, 4839: Citizen Evrosinia O. Pervukhina, Minister of Food and Agriculture, today attended a conference at Kronkirchen Automotive Headquaters in Kronkirchen of agricultural transportation and grocery chain executives together with Food and Agriculture Ministry managers located in Brakav Federal Socialist Republic. When asked about poultry nationalization rumors, she responded:
The rumors are pretty much exaggerated. In the first place the actual discussions have not been about nationalizing the entire poultry and egg business but rather whether to expand our state farm or sovkhoz operations into chickens. The discussions occurred because the packaged chicken market is not doing well and certain economic theorists have been wanting state farms to simply get into the market and replace a failing industry.
Let me be clear. The Krasnyy Trigunskiy Soyuz coalition government is not against nationalizing industries. We do not however regard nationalizing as the solution to every economic problem. In point of fact, the depressed market is caused quite simply and understandably by overproduction by large poultry producers. The prices naturally are down and will be there for a while. We considered the effect of getting into poultry production, but producing more of an overproduced product will simply depress prices farther and aggravate the problem.
Even just producing poultry for consumption by state farm employees would reduce the demand and hence the prices would continue to fall. What we are going to do is have state farms begin to keep Trigunian Orlov chicken fowl for the purpose of egg production for state farm use. Our expectation is that egg prices will not be more than minutely effected. This will have two main purposes.
First, we will see whether having light brown eggs encounters any serious prejudice by consumers who grocery concerns keep telling us consumers will never buy them when white eggs are available. Second, should the large poultry producer executives make a miscalculation in the other direction and we find ourselves with a shortage, we will be in a position to shift to using Trigunian Orlovs to fill the gap.
It would be nice if the overproduction mistake meant large poultry production management would lose their bonuses and stock options but we fully expect instead that workers will bear the brunt of the losses. And small farmers and farm labor will see less income. This will be a problem for the safety net. But not one that nationalizing will solve.