Arkansas lawmakers oppose a rule that would hurt Big Poultry. They all receive campaign contributions from the companies affected.

“The government putting up $1.8 billion to finance the production buildings [chicken houses] for the Tysons, the Perdues, the Pilgrims, is vital to their business model. Otherwise they have to pay a fair market value and that comes out of their pockets, not the taxpayers’ pocket,” says Joe Maxwell, executive director of the Organization for Competitive Markets, a group that has advocated for contract farming reform.

So why do legislators want SBA to reverse its decision? Money may play a role. Since 2014, all six Arkansas lawmakers have received campaign contributions from Tyson. In total, they’ve collected at least $580,000 in campaign contributions from the poultry industry (this includes individual integrators as well as industry groups) in that time.

“I think that Tyson and the other vertical integrators will put extreme political pressure on every one of those members of Congress and the Senate that they believe are their friends to kill this rule,” Maxwell says, “because it is core to their business model.”

In March, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) released an audit showing that, because integrators exercise such a high degree of control over their growers, the agency should no longer consider contract farmers eligible for small business loans. The agency agreed, and in late September, it released a proposed rule that would classify many contract growers as “affiliates” of their integrators.

As I wrote at the time, it’s kind of like the government deciding that Uber drivers aren’t actually independent contractors. Think of it this way: Uber controls the price of the ride, the quality of the app, the route, and the number of passengers on a given route. There’s an argument to be made—and it’s been made in court—that drivers should be classified as employees or affiliates because they don’t really operate independent businesses. If Uber drivers were employees instead of contractors, the financial equation would change for everyone involved. Uber would have a higher tax burden, drivers would shoulder a lot less risk, and Uber would likely be very unhappy about it. The same is basically true with contract growers.

From the auditors’ perspective, SBA furnishing taxpayer-guaranteed loans to contract growers is essentially the same thing as providing loans directly to big corporations like Tyson and Cargill, because under the contract system a contract farmer is not likely to achieve the American dream the SBA is designed to support.

A 2014 report from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) found that contract growers earn about $11.50 an hour after expenses, and the OIG audit found that, if the integrator declines to renew a grower’s contract, the grower is as good as bankrupt. All signs point to a dependent contractor-integrator relationship, the audit concluded. Why not use government-backed loans to support independent, aspiring farmers instead?

Jonathan Buttram, president of the Alabama Contract Poultry Growers Association, says SBA loans can do more harm than good. In his opinion, the government-backed loans are a little too easy to come by. “These farmers that [SBA was] making loans to could not go and buy a pickup truck—one of the Dodge dealerships came to me and wanted to know what was going on. One of these farmers was down there and couldn’t buy a truck, but he was loaned $2 million through SBA.”

It’s all well and good until a farmer defaults on the loan. “The taxpayer loses the money—that’s me and you losing their tax money at a crooked scheme that’s going on.” The “crooked scheme” Buttram is referring to is one in which integrators emerge from foreclosures unscathed. The only losers are farmers and taxpayers.

Banks like SBA loans, too, because they’re guaranteed by the government. American Banker reported last week that lenders are “up in arms” over SBA’s decision. Without the government guarantee, chicken farms aren’t a solid bet at all. “Ag lenders said they’re frequently unable to close poultry deals without government backing, largely due to high loan-to-value ratios and the substantial amount of capital required,” the magazine wrote. Translation: poultry farms don’t make that much money. And neither the banks nor the integrators have any real incentive to avoid foreclosures.