A thing is right when it tends to enhance the quality and integrity of both human and non-human life on earth by means that honor our uniquely human responsibilities and rewards, as members and caretakers of the earth’s integral community. A thing is wrong when it tends otherwise – Dr. John Ikerd
The three years since discovering that a 6500-head factory hog farm had been stealthily permitted and secretly constructed on a hilltop in Mount Judea have been a time of intense learning for a number of us who are involved in the fight to ensure that the Buffalo River is protected and preserved.
Obviously, all controversies have two sides. I have friends who farm and ranch and I know many people in our county who make their living on their land. They are good folks, good neighbors who love their community. Farming is not an easy life, as anyone who’s tried to grow a garden knows. It takes skill, dedication and luck. Perhaps it is a calling, for certainly not everyone who tries it succeeds.
There has been a rapid evolution in the way our food is being grown having a major impact on people who want to farm as well as on the environment we all depend upon for life. Where once farmers were independent and free to decide how best to operate their farms, particularly if they wanted to raise poultry, hogs and, increasingly cattle, the playing field is altered as corporations step in.
Integrated marketing is what they call it, but what it looks like in practice is the closing off of markets, the monopolizing of food production. If you want to grow poultry, you must build metal houses to the specifications of the corporation who dominates your area. They will supply the birds, the feed and the rules. You will supply the labor and pay the utilities and mortgage. Your contract will be from flock to flock, and you will have no say in how long there may be between flocks. Oh, and you must deal with all the litter that’s produced.
The same goes for swine. Independent hog farmers were squeezed out of the marketplace by the “big boys” who flooded the market with pork and ran small operations out of business, then went out looking for former hog farmers willing to be contract growers instead. The only difference is that the waste is more problematic since there is exponentially more of it.
We’ve all heard the corporate justification for the takeover of agriculture: “They are just trying to feed a hungry world!” But in the 30 years it has taken to see results of these mega-sized factory farms, including dairies and cattle feedlots, it has become abundantly clear that “bigger is not better,” not for contract growers who now often make less than minimum wage for their labor, not for animals that never feel sunshine on their bodies or grass beneath their feet, and not for the environment that simply can’t assimilate the mountains of waste produced by crowding animals into metal sheds for their short lifetimes. And it is certainly not better for the environment. The EPA now cites nonpoint source pollution from agriculture as the Number 1 cause of impaired waterways in the US.
Yes, it’s true contract farmers have a more dependable income, but not at the same level when averaged out, as they could make as independent farmers if the marketplace had not been closed to them. Rural communities are not flourishing. Income inequality is a growing problem in our country.
Those who own stock in corporations are the real beneficiaries. In effect, we are turning farmers into sharecroppers on their own land.
The real cost of cheap food goes up when you factor in damage to the environment that we will all pay for either in lowered quality of life or in the cost of clean up. But there is a cost to the fabric of our society when we allow those who grow our food to be subjugated. And where, oh where are our politicians in all this?
Lin Wellford