permaculture

[Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>]

https://marksbloggingexperiment.com/2019/10/13/the-least-resistant-personality-profile-and-factory-farms/?fbclid=IwAR3zYXBUlGInzE6XSspwBlVs6P69wcpF_nWnfQvDX58Mk5Y4j-wSjh3H86I

The “Least Resistant Personality Profile” and Factory Farms
October 13, 2019
<https://marksbloggingexperiment.com/2019/10/13/the-least-resistant-personality-profile-and-factory-farms/>
/ Mark Hulsether <https://marksbloggingexperiment.com/author/mhulseth/>

While studying rural communities that face significant poverty, shocking
rates of cancer, and poisoned fishing waters from industrial
pollution, sociologist
Arlie Hochschild learned
<https://thenewpress.com/books/strangers-their-own-land> about a disturbing
money making scheme.

A “waste-to-energy conversion” company wanted to build plants that burn
highly toxic and noxious smelling waste—representing “locally undesirable
land use.” So this corporation paid half a million dollars to a consultant
who promised to identify a “least resistant personality profile.” They
reasoned that it was not worth dealing with well-informed people who had
high skills and determination to learn about their plants and fight them.
Rather they would look for “less resistant” people.

Their highly-paid consultant advised them that such people were likely to
be (1) longtime residents of small towns in the Midwest or South, (2)
religious, (3) largely not educated beyond high school, (4) involved in
mining, farming, or ranching, and (5) relatively conservative. Hochschild
documents dozens of heartbreaking and enraging results from this sort of
approach, including one such community in Louisiana that eventually had 75
toxins in its drinking water.

One can hope that our Wisconsin DNR has better resources than Louisiana
does to enforce safety regulations and promises from developers—although I
definitely do not wish to roll the dice on that bet with my own health and
safety on the line.

In any case, Hochschild also found, in a broad comparative study, that
there was a strong correlation between communities that were impoverished
and those with weak environment and workplace regulations. Efforts to
promote jobs through weakening such enforcement typically backfired on
local people—the effect on prosperity has clearly trended negative.

(If you want to assess Hochschild’s extensive evidence for yourself, her
book is called *Strangers in Their Own Land*. I linked to it above and have
written about it on *MBE* a couple of times already, here
<https://marksbloggingexperiment.com/2019/06/24/empathy-walls-thinking-about-people-who-are-oppressed-but-love-trump/>
and here <https://marksbloggingexperiment.com/2019/08/28/remembering/>.
Please don’t imagine that she takes a tone of looking down on her “less
resistant.” She is listening carefully and trying to defend them against
destructive policies and misinformation.)

Thankfully our community seems to be deciding that it does not wish to fall
prey to a “least resistant” profile in relation to industrial hog factories
that are trying to move in
<https://marksbloggingexperiment.com/2019/06/22/hip-hop-music-24-hour-gun-ranges-and-hog-shit/>.
Although promoters are selling a hope of prosperity and some of their
promises sound fairly good, the key results would likely be lower property
values, a weaker tax base, and major threats to our air and water quality.

We can be glad that this has generated strong opposition. Still these
corporations are trying to claim that it is too late to stop them, with an
implicit threat to sue if there are efforts to block them. Since suits also
seem quite likely if they are *not *blocked, it seems obvious to me that we
should choose the path toward the common good.

I say this not because I am hostile to small farming—nor are any “CAFO
resistant” people I have met in this area, many of whom are farmers
themselves. I have uncles who were dairy and hog farmers on both sides of
my family. So I am well aware that small farmers work very hard, all too
often without making decent wages, and that we need ways to transition from
existing small farms to agriculture that works for upcoming generations. I
see this as an urgent challenge to solve, and I intend to be part of
solutions that come forward.

But I cannot see how getting bigger and bigger, with more and more
antibiotics and pollution, squeezing out more and more small farmers, is a
good solution—especially if this undermines other parts of our economy.
Doesn’t it *deepen *problems in the long run—whether or not a few people
profit in the short run by converting a few farms into industrial CAFOs? No
one should forget the challenges of small farmers, but we need better
solutions.

No doubt many people can say, in full sincerity, that they are considering
the promises of CAFO developers in a context of significant economic
challenges, and they *do not feel anything at all *like a giant corporation
stalking like a predator for “least resistant personalities.” Let’s assume
that everyone’s intentions are good, and everyone has been working in good
faith in relation to existing ordinances that may not necessarily block
CAFOs (although that may be because no one imagined the scale of these
plans before).

Still to my mind, this does not change the basic situation—a need for
community pressure and ordinances that firmly defend our air and water
quality—in any decisive way. It only creates new challenges going forward:
more information, new and better ordinances, far stronger assurances that
CAFO developers’ promises of safety and prosperity could prove true, and
alternative ways to transition existing agriculture toward a sustainable
future.

I wish I could believe the Iowa corporate promises and trust our DNR to
prevent all major problems—for the indefinite future!—so that this conflict
could fade away. But this is simply not credible to me. The evidence is
overwhelming <https://knowcafos.org/> that the balance between the definite
extreme risk and probable low reward for these plans is wildly skewed
against the CAFOs.

So I urge those who are still making up their minds to consider: what you
do not yet know may still hurt you, and meanwhile these plans risk great
danger to neighbors who are not so optimistic.

I urge the Iowa corporate people who fly in on their private helicopters to
leave us alone. I have lived in, and am glad to have escaped, a small town
in Iowa with a quality of life that was deeply undermined by the trends
toward industrial-scale agriculture. If the Iowa people like it there, they
can stay there.

And I urge everyone else to step up and continue to show that we are not
suitable targets for corporations searching for “least resistant
personalities.”