It got me thinking about the arguments posed in favor by the giant farm proponents. I have attempted to take a few of them and see if I can find support for the claims and then write a letter to the editor of the local papers explaining the facts as I researched them, with sources.
I grew up on a farm, own a farm now, but have no animals here. Our farming activity is an orchard, maple syrup production, some truck gardening and rental of about 50 acres of cropland on a total of about 140 acres, shrunk from about 200 acres a few years ago. My ancestors for as many generations as one can find have been small farmers. I generally have thought of farms with pleasant and happy memories, but farming is changing into mass production and massive numbers of animals in concentrated locations, generally becoming dreaded neighbors.
Letters to the editor of the local newspapers.
CAFOs Bring Water Pollution (Aug 12, 2019)
At the Sterling township meeting last month, here in NW Polk County, an impassioned speaker told us that we must not prohibit giant hog farms in Sterling Township. He gave the usual freedom-to-farm argument, but added a personal note that I summarize here:
"My brother has a large hog farm in Martin County, MN. It is heavily regulated, a very clean operation and is a good neighbor. You should visit a modern hog farm to see that they are not the problem you think they are. Go to Martin County, MN and look around."
Although I didn't visit Martin County, MN, I did spend some time on the internet reading about it.
Martin County MN is on the border with Iowa, with Fairmont as its largest city. It is the self-proclaimed hog capital of MN, and an almost completely farmed area in that flat and rich soil of southern MN. It is home to hundreds of huge feedlots for cattle, turkeys and pigs; the Concentrated Animal Feed Operations (CAFO).
According to the website https://www.farmprogress.com/marketing/martin-county-claims-bacon-capital-usa-title Martin county claims the "Bacon Capital of the USA." Martin county has more than 150 pig farms and markets 1.7 million market pigs (2016 data). Of course there are many more pigs than that counting the sows and boars and new and larger operations since 2016.
The county is almost all farmland It is laced with farmer's drainage tiles and ditches, emptying into the water rich county with many streams, lakes and ponds according to the local Martin County Soil and Water Conservation District (SWCD) https://martinswcd.net/. The massive amount of manure generated is spread on the fields and percolates directly into the drainage system, creating massive water pollution that destroys lakes, streams, rivers wells and even city water.
Reading information from the Martin County SWCD, we find that the primary direction is working with farmers to decrease the water pollution in the county, which is very bad. Fairmont, a city of 10,000 people, had to issue a "don't let children drink city water" alert a few years ago when their water supply was polluted with nitrates on top of the fecal bacterial load. Chlorine kills the bacteria so it is safe to drink,although water with dead fecal bacteria would seem to be unappealing. However the treatment was not setup to remove farm fertilizer nitrate runoff after big rains. The cost of the additional treatment is high. It is common to Iowa cities too and in both states cities have tried to sue farmer's to recover some of the cost.
Another Martin County project underway is setting up rural water systems. Few wells are usable due to farm pollution from fields where the manure from millions of hogs, massive turkey operations and large cattle feed lots are prevalent as well as giant irrigation wells pump dry local aquifers. Personal water treatment is expensive, extreme depth wells expensive and so folks in the country plan to get their water from wells with treatment facilities and underground pipes running miles across the scattered farms.
Of course the funding for the cleanup projects are funded by the State of MN as the cleanup is not happening by farmers doing it without free funding to do better practices -- regulations are set and then money is paid to bribe the farmer into doing what should be done to be a decent neighbor
My own SE MN second home has a 400 foot well, attempting to get below the nitrate polluted 100 foot water table that folks had before large farming came to the area. We have 3 CAFO dairy operations within 5 miles.
The headline last month for SW Wisconsin was 91% of local wells are polluted. Do we want that to come to our area too?
I had planned to sell out in MN, get away from the CAFOs and permanently move to Polk County, Stering Township, but I wonder if it will be any better here if factory farms move in?
The next letter is in response to a staff writer's glowing report of the CAFO regulations in Wisconsin and leaving the impression that all is well with them, as regulations will keep everything fine.
CAFOs Story is Fluff (June 28, 2019)
Much of the article by Becky Strabel "Four CAFO's already exist in four county area" seems to have been lifted from the website https://www.wiscontext.org/what-does-cafo-oversight-look-wisconsin-and-who-pays-itHowever in lifting the information, the writer failed to give a balanced view of the original article. The original article says there are rules to follow and permits to gain and inspections to pass, but, and this is a huge but, in truth, the CAFO's do their own inspection and reports and the regulators ignore them.
"A 2016 review by the state's Legislative Audit Bureau found significant problems with the program's ability to keep up with its workload. One illustration of this issue: In 2017, one-third of CAFOs were operating under expired permits because of a permitting backlog. Two years later, the DNR has closed the gap somewhat but remains unable to keep up with oversight. Nearly a quarter of CAFOs were operating with expired permits in June 2019."
Two years later, the DNR has closed the gap somewhat but remains unable to keep up with oversight. Nearly a quarter of CAFOs were operating with expired permits in June 2019. "
"Whatever the responsibilities and availability of its regulators, the DNR outsources much of the job of ensuring permit compliance onto the CAFOs themselves. CAFOs are required to conduct daily, weekly and quarterly inspections of various parts of their operations and submit annual records of those inspections to the agency. The 2016 audit of the DNR's water pollution program found that the vast majority of these records, which had been recorded on paper calendars, were not being entered electronically by DNR staff, making for a major compliance blindspot."
The Leader article was a "feel-good" "all is well" view of CAFOs Ms Strabel should have copied both sides of the issue to present an unbiased look at what is really happening.
Russ Hanson Cushing, WI
The third letter is in response to a local township meeting where proponents claimed CAFOs bring good jobs to the area.
CAFO Job Claims a lot of Hog Manure! (June 21, 2019)
I recently attended two different township meetings, Sterling and Laketown, where the issue of giant hog factories coming into Polk County was discussed. The proponents pushed the idea that they should be judged by the creation of good jobs.
If one examines the facts of agriculture jobs, we see they are low paying, dangerous, dirty as well as being primarily done by foreign born workers, of which the majority of those are here illegally.
Some proponents state that the “average wage” is good. That may be true – a full time veterinary gets $200,000 per year and 10 workers $20,000 per year giving an average wage of $36,363. The median agriculture job in the US pays $12/hour.
The most recent National Agricultural Workers Survey reports 78% of all agricultural employees are foreign born. Estimates are that 50-70% of the foreign born workers are here without legal documents. Another six percent of hired farm labor are children 14-18 years old and mostly paid minimum wage.
Are farmers and farm organizations in favor of foreign workers? YES!
"The U.S. pork industry needs access to a legal and productive workforce,” said National Pork Producers Council President Jim Heimerl. “And skilled and unskilled foreign workers have been crucial to maintaining and growing the workforce... We need more of them, not less.”
Will clamping down on immigration create more jobs for Americans? NO!
U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service: “a reduction in the foreign-born workforce – prompted by a change in immigration policy – would not be offset by native-born workers and permanent residents. Instead, the tighter supply of foreign-born workers would reduce overall demand for workers as production costs increase and would decrease agricultural output as farmers abandon labor-intensive operations.” We see that in the move to robotic and automated agriculture over human workers.
Should farmers follow the rules against hiring undocumented workers? NO! if you listen to their organizations. "The Farm Bureau, as one of the largest voices for agriculture, understands that hiring immigrants is essential to fill the critical workforce demands of agriculture. The official Farm Bureau policy opposes using E-Verify.”
Can we believe promises by the proponents of local hires and high paying jobs? NO! as in all agribusiness, labor is a cost line item to be minimized. Owners who are states away are concerned with maximizing profits. They see the somewhat unregulated NW Wisconsin area as an opportunity to move in with a minimum of regulations to follow, and possibly hope they can get cheap local labor, but we can be sure they will look for the lowest cost workers available.
There are jobs that fit into a community, good jobs, safe jobs, high paying jobs; jobs that hire local folks. But, sadly folks, big animal operations, as we already know from the few in our area, look for cheap foreign labor that bring a whole new set of challenges and changes.
Russell B Hanson
Cushing, WI
As part of trying to understand the issue, I have attended two Sterling township meetings. 1 Laketown meeting and plan to attend a county meeting too. The meetings are to persuade local governments to put in place an 18 month moratorium on CAFOs while the issue is researched and any new development can be carefully planned for minimal disruption of the neighbors.
As a farmer now, although mostly retired, I can understand the gradual expansion of farm neighbors to try to improve their financial status, but the operations we are seeing proposed are from distant conglomerates with no local ties, nor any local presence; just hired managers and workers brought in for their experience or willingness to work for low wages in stench filled working conditions.
