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Birdsong Peanuts accused in lawsuit of keeping prices paid to farmers low
By Kimberly Pierceall
George Birdsong, head of Birdsong Peanuts, walks past a truck unloading harvested peanuts Thursday, Jan. 24, 2013. (Stephen M. Katz)
SUFFOLK — Birdsong Peanuts of Suffolk is being accused of working with another peanut shelling giant to suppress prices paid to farmers and giving overinflated data to the USDA to justify the low amounts.
Two Florida peanut farmers filed a federal antitrust lawsuit in Norfolk on Thursday, claiming the Birdsong Corp. and the Golden Peanut Co. of Georgia have worked together to keep prices artificially and consistently low since 2014, despite weather events affecting peanut supply, including a hurricane in 2018 that affected the crop in the southeastern United States.
The lawsuit claims the companies reported to the U.S. Department of Agriculture handling larger numbers of peanuts than they actually did "to create the false impression of an over-supplied market," and lower prices than they actually paid.
The two companies together control more than 80 percent of the peanut shelling market, giving farmers few options to shop around, according to the lawsuit.
CEO George Birdsong said the company was aware that a lawsuit had been filed.
"We have not had an opportunity to review it in detail but we do not believe Birdsong Peanuts has violated any law, anti-trust or otherwise," he replied in an email.
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Golden Peanut is a subsidiary of the much larger, publicly traded Archer Daniels Midland Company. Asked about the lawsuit, a spokesperson said the company doesn't comment on pending litigation.
Peanut price data collected by the USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service comes from the first buyers of the peanuts, in many cases the shelling companies. Peanut stock data is also collected from the processors, not the farmers. Peanuts aren't traded on a commodity exchange.
In 2009, the USDA's Office of the Inspector General concluded that peanut prices were "not based on reliable market data," because there's no public commodity market for the crop and because the data was coming, voluntarily and confidentially, from peanut shellers, for example. It wasn't immediately clear if the practice has changed since.
The Minneapolis law firm that filed the lawsuit on the farmers' behalf, Lockridge Grindal Nauen P.L.L.P. is also seeking other farmers who have sold peanuts to the two businesses since 2014.
The lawsuit claims the alleged actions have been devastating to smaller farmers since "there are no longer good price years to balance out the now-common bad years."
birdsong peanuts
golden peanut company