Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

paul tradingpost@lobo.net
------------------------------------------

A rural economy built on family farmers sustains itself
http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/epa.html
The most important issue in agriculture today
is the industrialization of agriculture

by Roger Allison
Columbia, Missouri

The following speech by Roger Allison, executive director of the Missouri
Rural Crisis Center, was delivered to the Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA), Region 7, February 24, 1998.

My name is Roger Allison. I'm a grain and livestock farmer from Howard
County, Missouri and executive director of the Missouri Rural Crisis Center
which is comprised of over 3600 farm and rural families. I am here today
representing the consensus points that have been developed by the Campaign
for Family Farms and the Environment, a multi-state coalition of
environmental and farm groups, the Clean Water Network and the MRCC ag
(agriculture) policy task force which is made up of rural community groups
from throughout Missouri who have been working to protect their families,
communities and the environment from corporate hog factories.

Many of our members have first-hand experience with livestock factories in
their midst - manure spills, fish kills, contaminated ground water and
toxic gases like hydrogen sulfide and ammonia. Because corporations have
attempted to pre-empt local control on the state level, we have had to be
vigilant in protecting the ability of county governments to control their
destinies by passing health ordinances.

It's important to make a distinction here between family farmers like our
members and the new-style factory farms. Traditional agriculture, with its
diversity of crops and animals, spreads waste over a much larger area in
much smaller amounts. Real family farmers, unlike corporations, see our
land as a place to grow crops and pasture their livestock, not just as a
place to spray manure. We have a vested interest in not overapplying
nutrients and not introducing toxic concentrations of heavy metals like
copper, zinc and arsenic which are in the manure. We are in it for the long
haul, unlike boom-and-bust, slash-and-burn companies. Far from being
efficient, these corporations rely on heavy infusions of capital to control
the market.

The awful truth is: Family farmers, communities and the environment lose
when we let these companies have an unfair competitive advantage through
lax environmental enforcement, tax advantages, taxpayer-funded research and
other corporate welfare. It has been shown that 28 jobs get lost whenever
nine jobs are created at factory farms. In contrast, a rural economy built
on family farmers sustains itself as farmers' business expenditures get
recirculated through feed and seed stores, machinery dealers and hardware
stores.

Our work as a family farm organization close to the ground confirms: the
most important issue in agriculture today is the industrialization of
agriculture. The growth of corporate industrialized agriculture has far
out-paced our ability to protect our water. We have a good law in the Clean
Water Act but as our state environmental regulator admitted, it has no
authority to prevent fish kills, only the ability to fine companies that
pollute. Our experience with factory farms is that they follow the old
adage of "it's better to apologize than to ask permission.''

While we have been encouraged that the federal government has finally
recognized the problem of factory farm water pollution by releasing a Clean
Water Action Plan, it remains quite a few hay bales short of a truckload.
With a crisis spiraling out of control, with watersheds endangered from
Maryland to Utah, we desperately need an emergency convoy of trucks sent
immediately. Last year's pfiesteria outbreak from factory farm runoff that
caused the death of millions of fish should have stood as a shrill wake-up
call.

We recognize that the nature of the federal government has not been to
spring into fast action. But the federal Action Plan confirms that notion
so well it should be renamed the Federal Foot-dragging Plan. We simply
can't wait until 2005 for the EPA to finally issue discharge permits for
CAFOs. We can't wait until 2002 for land application standards. We can't
wait to protect our waterways and ground water from corporate bandits that
have no stake in protecting water.

It is clear that the EPA must declare an immediate moratorium. It needs to
stop construction and permitting of these facilities until there are
regulations in place to prevent spills, ground water and air contamination.
This moratorium is absolutely necessary until adequate testing is completed
on the waters surrounding already existing factory farms, and to develop
alternatives to the cesspool storage system that most factory farms employ.

Federal laws must include required permits for all CAFOs (concentrated
animal feeding operations) at an animal unit level that reflects when their
environmental impacts become a problem. The animal unit threshold should be
500 animal units to reflect the enormous amount and toxicity of the waste
generated in these facilities. This would include the massive growth in
corporate contract operations that are blanketing the country in the
500-999 animal unit category. All permits should be individual rather than
general permits to reflect site-specific conditions. We need to eliminate
the 24-hour, 25-year loophole that allows too many facilities to go
unpermitted.

Permits must include detailed designs for waste storage and land
application based on the most limiting factors whether it's nitrogen,
phosphorus or heavy metals. Permits should also require facilities to be
sited away from floodplains, drinking water wells, public lands, and other
ecologically sensitive watershed areas.

The use of lagoons by CAFOs for waste storage should be phased out because
it is outmoded and should be determined not to be "the best available
technology'' as defined by the Clean Water Act. This is one point pushed
for in legislation introduced by Rep. George Miller (D-CA). Miller's
timetable for the phase-out is also slow - 10 years - but it recognizes
that these larger-than football-field-sized cesspools are a menace that
should no longer be allowed. We can no longer tolerate the nitrate
contamination of our ground water which harms livestock and humans.

In addition, livestock factory owners also must be held responsible for
their operation's waste including how it's applied to land. A no-discharge
permit should mean no discharges into the waters of this state, including
runoff from over-application. Corporations should also be held accountable
for the pollution caused by their contract producers. A national minimum
standard should be established with an explicit understanding that states
and local governments have the authority to pass "stricter than federal''
environmental regs (regulations) based on the needs of their communities.

Local governments need this latitude because frankly these companies that
masquerade as agriculture are quite a different animal. In Missouri they
were responsible for more fish kills in one month's time than what had been
caused by all of agriculture in the previous 10 years. At the same time
they foul our air with poisonous gases that make neighbors ill. One test in
Renville Co., Minnesota found that one-quarter of 32 tests taken near
manure cesspools exceeded Minnesota air quality standards for hydrogen
sulfide. More than half of the people living within two miles of mega-hog
sites reported an increase in allergies, sinus infection, nasal blockage
and a lack of energy, according to a survey done in Putnam County,
Missouri. Under the federal Emergency Planning Right to Know Act, livestock
factories should have to notify state and local emergency planning
committees that they are releasing excessive amounts of ammonia and
hydrogen sulfide or face hefty fines.

The crafters of the Clean Water Act and the Congress that passed it could
not foresee this intensive move to industrialized livestock production 25
years ago. We need to enforce this law to its fullest extent. This requires
an EPA that recognizes our health and our environment depend on them. We
must regulate these industrial-sized livestock factories that create
industrial-sized waste like the industry they are. It's high time that
corporations stop hiding behind family farmers to avoid regulation. They
must be held accountable. We must be assured that human health, the
environment and animal welfare do not get lost in the race for corporate
profits.

I am here to tell the the EPA that family farmers are not afraid of a
strengthened and enforced Clean Water Act. We welcome these laws that
protect the environment and rural communities. We are afraid though of
companies that have no connection to our land who feel that they can
degrade the land that has been passed on by our families for generations.
An expedited action plan if refined to reflect our above concerns will help
ensure that our generation has something to pass on to the next generation.