College basketball fans saw some of the most exciting, unpredictable hoops in the history of both the men’s and women’s championship tournaments. Perhaps never has the “March Madness” description been more apt.

On the men’s side, for the first time in the tournament’s history, the final eight teams (Elite Eight) did not include a single No. 1 seed, and for only the second time (the first in 2018), a No. 16 seed beat a No. 1 seed. On the women’s side, Iowa and South Carolina’s matchup in the semifinal shattered TV viewership records for their sport, and a trash-talking rivalry between Iowa’s Caitlin Clark and LSU’s Angel Reese raised its public profile to a new level.

UConn and LSU, ultimately, cut down the nets and hoisted the respective trophies, but the unique brand that is college basketball won because of the historic parity and level of competition. That supposes you’re a fan, like the USDA currently is, of an underdog.

Not quite a fan of the broiler industry’s “tournament” system — by which large poultry processors (integrators) reward the best growers based on performance — the USDA is rewriting the rules of the game to even the playing field for farmers who have long argued that it is unfair, and seek to even the score.

Be it March Madness or the poultry tournament, there’s a certain fairness to both; you don’t do well enough, you lose, and you’re out. In both, the dominant players and programs reflect success achieved over decades of practice, development of skill and quality, investment in facilities, operational efficiencies and, of course, the financial wherewithal that breeds continued success.

And in both, the question of fairness comes in how the money generated by the work is paid out. For years, college athletes fought for a return on their investment of time and talent. Those especially included football and basketball players, whose products generate billions of dollars for their schools. Likewise, some poultry farmers have long fought for at least enough information from integrators to know what their return on investment will be. Both these young athletes and farmers have invoked federal antitrust law in their battles.

There are differences, of course. Integrators shoulder 80% of the financial risk in their contracting with independent growers, including covering feed, the highest input cost; but the increased consolidation in the industry limits the contractor’s choices of where to play. Talented-enough college athletes, meanwhile, have no shortage of “employers” over multiple divisions to choose from. They can transfer if that relationship doesn’t work, a process made easier through an online transfer portal that publicizes their availability and no longer requires them to sit out a year after transferring.

And then, there’s the matter of who is officiating these games. Producers have long fought for what they’ve wanted with the USDA, regulator of both producers and processors, and gotten nowhere. College athletes long got nowhere with their own governing body, the NCAA; they won in their efforts to be paid from their name, image and likeness (NIL), only after going to the Supreme Court.

Both sports and agriculture include competition; there are rewards for performing at the highest levels, and consequences for falling short. They perhaps have different types of competition, and varying levels of parity, though. And ultimately, consumers buying both have different priorities: Where it involves entertainment, they value the underdog; where it involves affordable chicken, they don’t.

We’ll see if USDA’s pick (producers) wins, and changes that.

Editor's note: This article ran as the Editorial in the May print issue of Meatingplace.

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