Organized by We the People, Inc., a farmer-based organization of LaSalle county, and the Illinois Stewardship Alliance, an advocacy group for rural communities, the March 18 conference focused on the crisis caused by factory-style livestock production known as Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs).

Speakers at the conference were working farmers and academicians who discussed the negative impact of CAFOs on family farmers, community health, food safety, the environment, and society at large. Pam Hansen, a certified livestock manager and grassroots organizer of the Illinois Stewardship Alliance, moderated the lively discussion.

Jim Braun, a working hog farmer from Iowa, spoke of the economic ruin of family farms and the net job loss in the countryside. "Welcome to free market capitalism," he said. "We are being told that we have to get bigger to survive to take advantage of scale. Even if our farms grew to encompass the entire county, we would still have to deal with the same monopolies that drove our neighbors under."

Bill Weida, a professor, described how the mega-hog producers export the true costs of production and waste management onto the communities. Wastes produced by a 10,000-head hog farm is the equivalent of a town that size operating without a treated sewage system. "Then, after 10 or 12 years, they have to abandon the site because of disease and they move on, leaving the community with the mess," Weida said.

Grain farmer Karen Hudson, who is president of Families Against Rural Messes (F.A.R.M.), spoke about the hazards for the neighboring communities, and the fight to tell the truth about the impact of CAFOs on those "living downwind." They suffer from illnesses, including nausea, vomiting, and blackouts; erosion of property values; and contamination and depletion of local water sources.

"The Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Agriculture," she said, "have taken some steps to address water quality concerns, but they have failed to call for a moratorium on the construction of new factory farms or to make the corporations responsible for waste."

Kendall Thu, an anthropologist and author of Pigs, Profits and Rural Communities, referred to studies, including his own, that provide evidence showing that pathogens are migrating outside the lagoons that contain tons of pig manure. The contaminants hazardous to human health such as E coli, Enterococcus, Salmonella, and Cryptosporidium are entering the surrounding water tables.

The liquid environment of the lagoons is allowing the pathogens to survive, and because of the high level of antibiotics fed to the animals, there's been an emergence of "heartier" bacteria. "All is not well in large-scale pig land," he said.

John Ikerd, an agricultural economist from the University of Missouri in Columbia, said that his "number one concern is that large-scale, corporate hog operations are tomorrow's problem disguised as today's solution. They only make short-run economic sense for those investing in them, a few in the region who will profit, and those in town halls who welcome them. The future is in the people of these areas taking charge of the situation and determining what they want to do."

Cappy Kidd is a member of the United Auto Workers in Chicago.  
 
 
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