As Part of China’s Food Plan, Iowa Becomes Polluted Wasteland of Industrial Agriculture, By Chris Petersen
As Part of China’s Food Plan, Iowa Becomes Polluted Wasteland of Industrial Agriculture
By Chris Petersen
There is frustration in rural Iowa! How would you city folks like it if there was very little regulation of siting or oversight of any industry locating or operating in your neighborhoods? At a moment’s notice industry could swoop in unexpectedly and set up shop with little say what so ever, I assume a vast majority of people would immediately be up in arms and try to stop it!
In rural Iowa this is exactly what is happening with construction permitting of factory farms, everything you and your family care about is immediately at risk. Included would be your personal health, well water, air quality, quality of life, home equity and property salability. Ultimately, the reality of this new neighbor would be a huge nuisance in itself, starting with the industrial traffic and nauseous odor!
As a traditional family pig farmer all my life I am appalled at the results of “Modern Agriculture” as the industry calls it. Iowa livestock farming has been transformed over the last 25 years. As an example 91% of independent local family pig farmers have quit or been forced out. One resulting fact is Iowa’s water quality is now 49th nationally, which is due to bad farming practices and nutrient mismanagement. Because of no local oversight/control Iowa has 3 times the impaired waterways than it did 25 years ago!
With more hogs and egg layers than ever in Iowa, traditional local family farmers have been replaced by confinements owned or controlled by huge industrial integrators (vast majority of hogs and chickens), including 25% of all hogs in Iowa controlled by communist China through the acquisition of Smithfield!
In 1995 rural residents were stripped of local control of siting of facilities (thanks to Farm Bureau) when the takeover in livestock farming first started. Rural folks were even denied the right to sue over nuisance! After lots of rural and political turmoil, the Iowa legislature in 2002 came up with a dysfunctional matrix scoring system that is under state guidelines. This system gives lip service to what the county supervisors, residents, and cities in close proximity, deem as serious impacts.
We need local control back! All politics should start and function at the local township or county supervisor level, as they are elected by the local community. In today’s political world above the local level, with few exceptions, we have two types of politicians – buffaloed or bought! We need to advocate changing dysfunctional laws and politics that provide loopholes for the factory farm industry! An example is Dickinson County IA (IA Great Lakes) supervisors acquiring the political courage to send a survey letter to all 99 county supervisors asking if they support local control! Linn County and all surrounding county residents, please call your supervisors asking them to support local control!
We all hopefully want an inviting and healthy quality of life in Iowa that residents and visitors can be proud of, as a community we can make that happen!
Chris Petersen
Clear Lake, Iowa
(641) 425-8760
The history of Iowa’s fight against these CAFOs and their pollution is being repeated in Missouri. Because the Missouri General Assembly and Missouri DNR are both now captive to the CAFO industry, Missouri is becoming the least regulated, the most receptive to CAFOs in the country.
For nearly 20 years, the Big Ag CAFO associations have had their lawyer-lobbyists directing the regulatory environment and chipping away at all regulation. In the last three sessions of the General Assembly, numerous bills have passed that give away Missouri to the CAFOs. The removal of the requirement for construction permits in late 2013 was a big blow, and the industry shills managed to get Missouri DNR to “interpret” that removal to strip other regulatory requirements, so that now Missouri only permits CAFOs by a specific, state-only, no-discharge permitting system, which means that the manure and other waste produced is transferred to waste haulers at the manure pits and is land-applied in massive quantities without regulatory oversight. These giant CAFOs are moving into Missouri at a rapid rate from Iowa and Minnesota, especially since they do not have to own the land on which their barns are sited, provide proof of financial solvency, nor do they have to own the farmland to which it is applied. They locate on 20 acres for the buildings, then contract in secret with farmers to spread the manure. Some of Missouri farmers are so naive and trusting that they have signed 30-year easement contracts to allow this application of the wastes to their land, without reviewing the document with a lawyer or understanding what such application can do to the future production of the farmland. Missouri DNR is rubber-stamping these permit applications.
Missouri has already sold over 50,000 acres with a vast hog operation — Premium Standards Farms/Smithfield Farms — to WH Group of China. The current legislative session has seen bills passed that hide foreign ownership of Missouri land behind shell companies, making it impossible to track how much land is really being bought by foreign entities. Local control is being removed from counties, in the process attaching “special benefits” to CAFOs, in those counties who are CAFO-ready through priority considerations for state grants and loans through the Department of Agriculture.
With the Right to Farm amendment added to the Missouri Constitution last August by 50.5% of the vote, removable only by a 2/3rds vote, Missouri has been bought by the CAFO industry. Even our Missouri Supreme Court presumes that CAFO industrialized agriculture is real agriculture. A recent court decision stated, in denying a nuisance lawsuit, that promoting such agriculture by Missouri agencies is a legitimate public purpose, in essence throwing thousands of independent farmers in Missouri under the bus and allowing the takings of their operations by corporate industrialized agriculture.
Pay attention, whatever state you live in. Once they get Missouri totally CAFO’ed, your state will be next.
Shirley Kidwell