Speakers Discuss Problems with Giant Feedlots

CLEAR LAKE

Sixty-five people heard speakers from Iowa and Colorado discuss the dangers of giant feedlots. The June 27 workshop in Clear Lake featured Chris Petersen, president of the Iowa Farmers Union, Kevin Miskell, Iowa Farmers Union vice president and Colorado rancher Sue Jarrett. Jarrett is the former co-chair of the USDA committee on small farms

Miskell said, "It hasn't come to South Dakota like it's come to Iowa. You might have your preconceptions but until you experience the aromatic devastation to the rural economy, you don't have a clue what's coming at you." He said the large feedlots have led to the death of small towns -- which is the opposite of what's promised. 

Miskell lives surrounded by the counties with the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th largest number of hogs in the nation. He told of a town 6 miles east of him. "No matter which way the wind comes from -- in the summer, that town stinks. The locals don't have to worry about it. Their noses are so used to it that they can't smell anymore."

He noted, "They've got to live there because they can't sell their houses. They either have to sell in the winter when the pits are frozen or they're stuck with it. And if someone does buy in the winter, you'll notice by the next summer, it's up for sale again. The property values are a third in that community compared to the one that's three miles south."

Miskell also warned of corporations taking over farming. "They took the chickens in the 60's, the hogs in the 90's. Get ready, cattle are next boys." He said, "Most call themselves barnyard janitors after they sign that contract." He told large feedlot owners to go home and check the fine print on their contracts.

He said, "They tell us the price of livestock will go up. It don't, it goes down. They tell you the price of corn goes up. They'll tell you all these things to get in. They say they'll bring jobs. But once they get in, they bring in their own labor and pay them like slaves."

"Economic development? Come on down to Iowa. We'll show you."

Petersen lives south of the Iowa town of Clear Lake. He said, "We have corporate hogs but everything else to do with economic development has left."

Petersen noted, the number of hogs produced in Iowa hasn't changed. It's about the same number of hogs, as in 1960. "Iowa had 60,000 independent pork producers twenty years ago. We have 10,000 or less today."

Jarrett warned that if you let large feedlots in, it stifles other kinds of economic develoment. She also said, "They only care about the bottom dollar. They will only follow regulations if you make them. They were supposed to save our schools, save our communities. But we were subsidizing them more than they are bringing in. Taxes didn't even cover the new roads."

Jarrett said, they "buy enough to start with so you can't sue them if they cause problems because you're receiving a benefit. If you take manure, you also lose the right to sue if there's a problem."

"A lot of times, those contracts put the burden on the person who's taking the manure not the person who's delivering it," she advised. "So you really need to read those contracts with fine print."

"Our community learned the hard way that this so called economic development isn't economic development."

Jarrett said, "It doesn't take a genius to figure out that if you got to get big or get out then the bigger you get, the less people are needed. So in rural America, when you get big as a farmer or as an animal breeder, then you're putting someone else out of business."

"The statistics say we raise the same number of pigs in Colorado today as we did back in the 1940's. The difference is they're owned by a few people in confinements causing huge environmental problems whereas in the 40's, they were scattered all over on every farm in the state."

Bill Du Bois of the I-29ers for Quality of Life, who organized the workshop, invited people to "hear from those who've been down that road."

Du Bois said that "If it can happen to one of us, it can happen to anyone. Our politicians tell us we fight wars on foreign shores so we don't have to fight them in our own backyards. When someone tries to move in a large feedlot next to one of us, we should all fight to stop it. Otherwise, tomorrow it could be in our own backyard."

He advised, "We need to remember the Golden Rule." 

Petersen noted, "I'm a firm believer in property rights." He said what a person does on their property is their own business "until what you do effects your neighbor's health, quality of life and water. That is the true good neighbor policy."