| CAFOs
– Economics, emotion and passion (14:20)
February
4, 2009
This is Ken
Midkiff – speaking for family farms and opposed to corporate
agribusiness.
First, let’s
take a look at the money or economic side of Concentrated Animal
Feeding Operations – known as CAFOs.
Several state
governors promote CAFOs as a rural economic development tool. But
are they?
I set out to
find an answer to a simple question. That simple question is:
“Are CAFOs
economically beneficial?”
The answer,
I learned, is equally simple: “NO”.
Realizing that
I am entering an area that has traditionally been the stomping grounds
of rural economists, I relied heavily on the studies of Dr. Bill
Weida of Colorado College and Dr. John Ikerd of the University of
Missouri. Both are rural economists and both are retired. Retirement
has certain benefits. For one thing, it frees retirees from the
dictates of the hierarchy at whatever institution employed them.
The second benefit is that the retiree is freed up to work on the
issues deemed important.
Both Dr. Weida
and Dr. Ikerd have studied rural development and both have concluded
that CAFOs do more harm than good to the rural economy.
For indicators,
they cite:
- The increase
in child abuse in communities where this was previously unknown
- The increase
in spouse abuse - primarily directed toward women by men who have
been under stress all day
- The increase
in rural crime (burglaries, drive-by shootings, drug deals) –
again, this sort of thing was almost unheard of until recently
- The decrease
in property values on lands near to CAFOs. While tax assessors
commonly decrease land near CAFOs by 30%, the reality is that
in many cases the value of residential shrinks to zero –
it becomes almost impossible to sell houses where the stink of
CAFOs permeates.
- The necessity
(and increased cost) for local school districts to teach English
as a Second Language. Many children of migrant workers do not
comprehend, speak or write basic English.
- The necessity
for local Convenience Stores to hire bi-lingual clerks –
increasingly the patrons of these convenience outlets need to
be addressed in their own language (usually Spanish).
- The closure
of local retail outlets. While independent farmers relied upon
local stores, as agribusinesses replace farmers – and agribusiness
enterprises don’t shop locally – downtown businesses
of small rural communities are emptied.
- That local
banks and savings and loan institutions are purchased by larger
entities or close altogether for the same reason that local retail
outlets are closed. Cargill, Tysons, and Smithfield do their banking
at large conglomerates.
- That independent
farmers go out of hog-rearing, dairy or chicken operations and
this has a “domino” effect – Where once independent
farmers depended upon “mortgage lifters” (hogs, cows,
and chickens), those opportunities are gone and both farmers and
local outlets (stores, banks, savings and loan operations) suffer
- The amount
of direct and indirect subsidies to CAFOs. There is no “free
market” here, without government subsidies, CAFOs couldn’t
make it economically.
- The few local
workers hired by CAFOs. Farmers don’t make very good factory
workers – which is what CAFOs employ.
- The growing
numbers of a documented and undocumented immigrants as the work
force, and, finally,
- The burden
on the local community to provide social services for a foreign
population.
These last two
issues are most important to communities where an agribusiness’
slaughterhouse/packing plant is present. Smithfield, PSF, Seaboard,
Tysons, Perdue and all of the multi-national agribusinesses rely
on employees from Mexico and Central American to work at their slaughterhouses.
Since very few benefits are provided to such employees – and
the skimpy benefits are granted only after six months of employment
(and the turnover can exceed 120% per year – which means no
one who was employed last year is employed this year), the companies
place a tremendous burden on local communities to provide basic
human services. Even providing such essentials as warm clothing
and bedding supplies falls upon local churches and service organizations.
Any one of these
indicators would be problematic, but when all of them are added
together, it becomes readily apparent that CAFOs are an economic
disaster for rural communities.
No doubt, a
few fat-cats on the boards of Tysons, Smithfield, and Seaboard benefit.
No doubt, that CEOs of ConAgra and Cargill do well. But the folks
on corporate agribusiness boards and the CEOs don’t live in
rural communities. Indeed, Joe Luter, the CEO of Smithfield –
a self-described “family farmer” – lives in a
condo on Park Avenue in New York City.
So, while a
few of the already-rich get richer, rural communities get poorer.
While a few bigwigs vacation for months in Bermuda or a tropical
island in the Pacific, rural residents can hardly afford to take
a vacation at all.
Economic benefit?
No. Economic development? No.
If this is,
as some say, “The future of agriculture”, rural residents
had better hang on to their pocketbooks and hope that the invasion
of the CAFOs goes away. The economists state that CAFOs will eventually
be proven so uneconomical and so much of a drain on the agribusiness
bottom line, that contracts won’t be renewed and the large
corporations that own the animals in CAFOs or that contract for
milk, will abandon such pursuits and abandon rural communities –
leaving only a mess.
Such messes
are not economic boosters.
So what are
the Governors thinking in promoting CAFOs as a way to benefit rural
communities? While my first impulse is to state “They aren’t
thinking”, the old adage of “follow the money applies”.
Take a look at which business organizations bankroll gubernatorial
campaigns. Take a look at the donations flowing in from advocacy
groups such as the Farm Bureau, the Pork Producers Association,
the Poultry Federation, or the American Dairy Federation.
Who are the
Governors listening to? Those with the most money for them.
That’s
economics. Next, then, let’s look at what’s left.By
today’s standards, my FFA – Future Farmers of America
- project wasn’t much: 12 hogs (or 4.2 “animal units”
by the reckoning of the federal government). Even with that small
number, my mother insisted that the hog pen be situated downwind
from the clothesline.
No one needed
to do scientific studies to tell us that hogs didn’t smell
like roses. But the scientific studies have now been done that confirm
what our noses – and stinky clothes - told us on that Illinois
farm about 50 years ago. The only difference is that now some of
the compounds causing the unpleasant aroma have been identified
and some of those compounds, according to public health studies,
cause human health problems, from flu-like symptoms to severe asthmatic
attacks.
The sound-science
research studies done by institutions as diverse as Johns Hopkins
School of Medicine to Iowa State University to the Minnesota Department
of Public Health have clearly documented that the preponderance
of evidence is that emissions from Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations
(CAFOs) cause human health harms. These emissions can be measured
– either by instruments measuring stink or by scientific analysis
of the compounds.
Likewise, there
are all sorts of scientific studies documenting the ill effects
of CAFOs on water quality – everything from heavy algal blooms
from excess “nutrients” contained in the manure and
feces of farm animals confined in small quarters to problems with
bacteria (primarily E Coli) contained in the innards of mammals.
There are reams
and reams of sound science studies conducted on CAFOs that demonstrate
negative impacts. Likewise, there are economic studies, as we have
seen, and social services data showing harm to the rural economy
and to the residents of rural areas and rural communities. From
what I have just relayed, it is apparent that CAFOs are an economic
liability, not a benefit.
But, thanks
to support from the US House, Senate and Chief Executive, the US
Department of Agriculture, and Land-Grant Universities, CAFOs continue
to enjoy taxpayer largesse. In several states, counties’ tax
assessors, not removed from on-the-ground reality, have reduced
the assessed value of land adjacent to CAFOs by up to 30% and consequently
reduced counties’ budgets.
The American
Public Health Association, reviewing the many documents, called
for a halt – a moratorium on permitting of CAFOs. Several
recent reports – the most notable being the Pew Commission
– found CAFOs culpable on health matters.
But, some folks
are gullible and believe the hype put out by agribusinesses and
activist organizations – Farm Bureau, Pork Producers Association,
and the Poultry Federation, to name but a few - that are shills
for CAFOs. Having no, or very scanty, scientific documentation or
any studies that cite the benefits of CAFOs, the advocates are reduced
to such sayings as “we need to feed a hungry world”
and “this is the future of agriculture”.
This is all
based, of course, on emotion and passion fueled by a quest for the
almighty dollar.
There is absolutely
NO evidence that the meat, milk, and eggs produced by CAFOs have
resulted in more food for hungry mouths of starving peasants in
Southeast Asia, Africa, or South America. To the contrary, world
hunger has increased.
Likewise, the
arguments about “…the future of agriculture” ring
hollow. At present, CAFOs represent less than 1⁄2 of 1% of
Missouri agriculture. Those who equate agriculture with agribusiness
are hopelessly confused and cries of “You’re trying
to end agriculture in this state” are the result of such confusion.
CAFOs are little more than factories, with a legal definition of
“agriculture” for tax purposes. “Ending agriculture”
only applies to the type of “agriculture” practiced
by agribusiness corporations and their contract growers.
As for those
misguided folks who claim that organizations representing real farmers
and conservation and environmental groups are trying to return farming
practices to the mid-20th Century, that is just part of the “future
of agriculture” nonsense. CAFOs are passé – part
of the industrial era that devastated the American economy. We should
have learned from the rusting factories in US cities.
It does not
take a rocket scientist to recognize that some modern practices
should be adopted and others discarded. Confining thousands of animals
in small spaces, injecting them with antibiotics, stuffing hormones
into their feeds, and spreading the manure onto the same fields
year after year have been shown to be harmful practices and should
be rejected or abandoned. We now have over 20 years of experience
with CAFOs and what we now know was not known (but suspected) initially:
CAFOs pollute the air and water, and cause economic and human health
problems. The sound-science studies are in and a re-assessment is
in order.
But, those who
advocate for CAFOs are not deterred by scientific studies or facts.
CAFOs have been documented to be harmful to human health and the
rural economy.
Emotion and
passion are poor substitutes for research reports, scientific studies,
data and facts, but that’s what CAFO supporters are reduced
to relying on.
-This is Ken
Midkiff, speaking for family farmers and opposed to corporate agribusiness-
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