Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do, even if you know you aren't going to succeed--or at least, not right away. Not this year.
Jeff Harris (Democratic representative from Columbia, running for the Attorney General nomination) takes umbrage that Tyson, Smithfield and MOArk are turning the Missouri countryside into their personal fiefdoms. He resents the damage done by CAFOs (contained animal feeding operations) in our state so much that he's filing two bills this session to restrain CAFOs and big ag.
The first bill is a repeat performance, forbidding the construction of a CAFO within five miles of a state park or a national historic landmark (such as the village of Arrow Rock, which is about to be drenched in the stench of a hog CAFO). Better luck with it this year than last, Jeff.
The second bill, more important as far as reining in these nosesores and water table polluters, would grant local governments control over whether they could be built. Right now, the state's Department of Natural Resources (DNR) grants a license to any prospective CAFO owner who so much as winks in its direction.
A determined coalition is up against the big boys here in Missouri on the issue of factory farms. People near Arrow Rock, Roaring River, and Battle of Athens are pitting themselves against, for starters, the Missouri Farm Bureau, a powerful organization indeed. When it tells the governor and Republican legislative leaders to jump, don't look for them to be squatting in place. They know which side their campaign coffers are buttered on.
The Farm Bureau basically sells insurance to 100,000 Missourians, the majority of them farmers. It holds itself out as an advocate for family farms and claims to limit itself to agricultural issues. Neither is true. It speaks on many issues, and on none of them more adamantly than on CAFOs. There, it employs the stick--fear that if we overregulate CAFOs, Missouri's hog and chicken raising industry will "move to Brazil"--and the carrot--CAFOs bring jobs to economically depressed areas. That jobs claim is hokum. A few people get to be hog janitors, others get to work in a processing factory, and everything about the industry is so integrated vertically by big ag that the peons are no better off than they ever were.
In defiance of the DNR's constitutional mandate to protect the health and well being of Missourians, to protect the quality and quantity of water in the state, and to protect our state parks and historic sites, the Missouri Department of Natural Resources (DNR) is determined to license CAFOs.
As I reported in my last posting, the DNR just last Friday licensed a chicken CAFO on the uplands above Roaring River State Park, less than a mile from the park boundary, and it is set soon to do the same for a hog CAFO less than two miles from Arrow Rock State Park, close to the village of Arrow Rock, a picturesque historic site, known for its historic Lyceum Theater.
All right, you city folk, buckle up, because I'm about to take you on a ride out into the country to find out about a battle that's brewing. A group of Missourians is girding to fight more than City Hall. Citizens near the state parks in Arrow Rock, Roaring River and Battle of Athens are about to sue the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and the state of Missouri over CAFOs (contained animal feeding operations).
The dispute began when landowners applied for CAFO licenses near those three state parks, and the DNR supported them at every turn against the objections of other locals. After all, a farm with 4800 hogs or 65,000 chickens stinks to high heaven. And aside from their own preferences about not having to live with that stench, many local landowners get their livelihood from the tourist industry in and around the state parks. ("Hey, Joe, what say we go down to Roaring River this weekend for some trout fishing?" "Sure. Sounds good." "It is good, long as you don't mind smelling chicken shit while you're casting." "Um, no thanks.")
Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do, even if you know you aren't going to succeed--or at least, not right away. Not this year.
A determined coalition is up against the big boys here in Missouri on the issue of factory farms. People near Arrow Rock, Roaring River, and Battle of Athens are pitting themselves against, for starters, the Missouri Farm Bureau, a powerful organization indeed. When it tells the governor and Republican legislative leaders to jump, don't look for them to be squatting in place. They know which side their campaign coffers are buttered on.
All right, you city folk, buckle up, because I'm about to take you on a ride out into the country to find out about a battle that's brewing. A group of Missourians is girding to fight more than City Hall. Citizens near the state parks in Arrow Rock, Roaring River and Battle of Athens are about to sue the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and the state of Missouri over CAFOs (contained animal feeding operations).