Let's Explore the Solution to Milk Production and CAFO's

Well said, Mouthpiece!
While the people who object to living near a cafo are portrayed as anti agriculture, that is not true. Many of us who object are people involved in farming. These places are not farms; they are industries. The last cafo proposed would have put out more waste every day than the city of Sioux Falls and there is no wastewater treatment. There are some studies that show crops fertilized by this waste show signs of antibiotics in the plant. The best situation would be to have true local control, every township could make their own rules. If the places south of town are truly so wonderful, the P&Z board need have no fear, townships would be clamoring to have at tleast one in their area. Dr, Weida is well known for his expertise in the area of economics, as is John Ikerd. Both of them can prove that cafos spell econmic disaster for a community.

The competing interest in Grant County is no different than across the country. The cheese plant needs milk and the county needs to weigh and balance the negative effects vs. the benefit obtained.

The study cited above continues to point out many negative complaints:

A CAFO is structured to view local residents as nuisances instead of assets. CAFOs crave isolation, and they are carefully designed to facilitate an isolated existence. They select areas close to good roads and railroads so they can import those things they need to build their facilities and local, county, state, and national laws and policies on the environment and on zoning are important determinants of the location of CAFO facilities (Hennessy and Lawrence, 1999, p. 53). In a USDA report published in 2000, Sullivan et al. found that


"animal industries tend to move to areas with a lax environmental regulatory structure....[T]he more a state spends on environmental enforcement, the less likely a given firm will locate in that state. Differences in level of enforcement among nearby states, especially if competitors already operate in the area, may also affect location decisions...Location decisions, while important at the state level, also have an international context, with concerns about large production companies shifting investment outside the U.S. (Sullivan, Vasavada, and Smith, 2000, pp.22, 23).

This is really true of Grant County. The CAFO have attempted to claim that Grant County Concerned Citizens are nuisances and only superficially listened.

It is also true that this area until now showed little concern to environmental issues and has low population so as to not be able to influence Pierre or Washington, D.C.

The study continues:

In the last five years, CAFO owners have responded to the growth of county-level regulation by attempting to remove the ability to regulate air and water pollution from the counties and to locate it in state or provincial governments where political influence could be more easily exerted.

In Minnesota the state government has begun the takeover of regulation. This study is extremely accurate.

The study further states:
As a capital intensive company, a CAFO is designed to minimize the number of workers and hence, minimize the economic impact on the region. A 1998 Colorado State University study found that only 3-4 direct jobs (jobs with the hog producer) are created for every 1000 sows in a CAFO sow farrowing operation (Park, Lee and Seidl, 1988). Ikerd calculated that a farrow-to-finish contact hog operation would employ about 4.25 people to generate over $1.3 million in revenue. His figures showed that an independently operated hog farm would employ about 12.6 people to generate the same amount of hog sales (Ikerd, 1998, pp. 281-283). Further, a number of studies have found that compared with small farms with an equivalent composite production value, a large farm tends to buy a smaller share of consumption and production inputs in nearby small towns (Chism and Levins. 1994; Henderson, Tweeten, and Schreiner. 1989, p. 31–35).
This is important because each farm job adds another job in local communities and another in the state outside the local communities. Similarly, each $1,000 of farm income adds another $1,000 to local communities and another $1,000 to the state outside the local communities (Sporleder, 1997, p. 9). Either of these figures probably overstate the economic impact on rural counties. For the employment multiplier to operate at these levels all employees must both live and

work inside the region. Given the ability to commute, it is likely that many workers will live well outside the region and that the resulting employment multiplier will be further depressed. The size of the employment multiplier further depends on amount of purchases a CAFO makes in the region. Large scale animal production facilities are more likely to purchase their inputs from a great distance away, bypassing local providers in the process (Lawrence et al. 1994). A 1994 study by the University of Minnesota Extension Service found that the percentage of local farm expenditures made by livestock farms fell sharply as size increased. Farms with a gross income of $100,000 made nearly 95% of their expenditures locally while farms with gross incomes in excess of $900,000 spent less than 20% locally (Chism and Levins, 1994).

Confined animal production can occasionally benefit local grain sellers, but only when it consumes all the grain produced in the county. If the county has to export even one bushel of grain, all the grain in the county will have to be priced at a lower level that will enable the grain to compete in the export market (Hayes, 1998).


This is exactly the argument made by CAFO's, but we need the milk.

In fact, I would encourage all to read this study. The study claims that economic development is hurt by CAFO's.

http://www.sustainabletable.org/issues/docs/YaleEconOnly_ND1.pdf

As studies above from the University of Missouri indicate that we as people around CAFO's continue to think of us as nuisances the proof of the enormous harms that can be caused from CAFO's not properly regulated can clearly be seen as the disaster waiting to happen. Just look at the Gulf Coast.

Imagine the Veblon plant leaking manure directly into Big Stone Lake. The damage done to thousands of lake property owners.

The damage to the loss of tourism to the businesses in Ortonville. We need to be conscious of our neighbors.

I do not oppose CAFO"S. I oppose misinformation given in an attempt to claim that CAFO's are the answer. This is a misrepresentation of the the truth.

Please carefully read the study above that clearly shows that the loss of the family farm will in the end be a cause of the degradation of our rural communities.

Would anyone be intersted in hearing William Weida speak? He will speak to groups.

I most certainly would be interested in hearing him speak.