Pal-Item Takes Swing at CAFO Editorial, Misses Entirely
The Pal-Item put up an featured editorial today: A State Role for CAFOs. Not only does the title not make any sense, the opinion piece misses the point of much of the local outcry over CAFO’s. I would boil the errors down to 3 big ones:
Taking the 3rd point first, I have said again and again, when you meet the folks who are upset with a CAFO, you generally find out it is people who are closest to the big farms. These people tend to be rural folks who have lived out in the country for decades - if not generations. Many of them have farmed and farm themselves. The picture of CAFO opponents as uninformed city folks is used to to undercut the complaints: “You just don’t understand farming.” This is far from the case. I have worked with dozens of Indiana residents fighting factory farms and this picture is just not true.
The most offensive claim along these lines comes with this sentence: “Environmental activists have every right to imagine farming under a more romantic, 19th century ideal. But does that drive us any closer to actual policy?” So people who are concerned with ground water contamination, clean air and healthy streams and rivers are automatically Luddites?
The editorial argues for state level CAFO control and says that state policy makers should rely on science, specifically, research from Purdue, a predominant ag school. But why should local communities trust the state to protect the quality of life (and property values) of its citizens after the last 4 years of CAFO promotion by the state? Further, what advice would you expect to come from an Ag school about CAFO regulation? Why wouldn’t we want our state policy makers to hear from scientists who study ground water contamination? Watershed protection? Air quality and health?
What policy makers need to do is throw aside the “emotional” claims about the “right to farm” and face up to the full impacts of factory farming. Only once you consider the needs of all citizens and the environment they live in in relation to these mega farms can sensible policy be made.
April 20th, 2008 15:19
I have attended many of the meetings in Randolph Co. where the anti-CAFO people have talked and am amazed at how little these people understand about agriculture. I have a degree in agronomy and can’t believe many of the things these people say about agriculture. I agree some anti-CAFO people are from an agriculture background, but many are from a different era and are not current on today’s farming practices. Farming practices must change as technology advances.
Today’s hog farms are much more enviromentally friendly to the surface water than the hog farms of years past. Hog manure is handled as a fertilizer instead of a waste product, and the hog farms are on concrete capturing virtually all of the manure instead of letting the pigs leave their waste on the pasture ground. Today’s hog farm manure is applied scientifically and evenly to local fields. Hog farming practices of the past simply left manure standing in areas hogs occupied and was overapplied adjacent to hog lots. One can use global positioning satellite (GPS) soil samples and locate high phosphorous readings from 50 years ago where the older hog farms used to be located.
April 21st, 2008 13:01
With all due respect Mr. Warren, please tell people in Michigan & N. Carolina that hog farms of today are environmentally friendly. These CAFOs are an abomination and environmentally unfriendly. You need to talk to someone that lives by one and stay the day. You need to get a good stiff of one up close. Then you tell us that they are better today than they were in the past. I want to see evidence to that nature. It is sad when you see the statistics that 80 out of 92 counties in Indiana have these lovely farms. As of this year there were CAFOs polluting water. I don’t think anything has changed other than the people that run our government. They want this mess for our state. One of our representatives did want a moratorium, but it was shot down. That is the only thing that makes sense right now. They need to stop giving permits until more studies have been done on environmental impacts. They need to actually get out and talk to people that are near these mega farms.
April 21st, 2008 23:36
I think it is interesting that people who raise concerns about CAFOs are portrayed as being driven by “emotions,” while those who speak out in favor of them claim to have “science” on their side. Are there any *independent* scientists who think that CAFOs and CFOs are good for the environment?