Letter Writers Raise Factory
Farming Concerns10/99
Dear Editor,
Having been raised on a farm, I have for years championed the cause of farmers. I've written letters to the editor, urged people moving into our rural community to work with and get to know the people that are here-there is a culture in rural America that is worth preserving.
But, when I see greedy farmers getting bigger and bigger, who don't seem to care about the environment or their neighbors, I sense that they do not respect rural culture. I don't buy that we have to keep getting bigger and bigger to survive, cancer does that. We have to curb our appetites to live on what we make.
I wonder why I should support the denigration of our environment, so that industrial agriculture can produce genetically engineered crops that are not needed, cram more and more livestock onto smaller and smaller lots, and take advantage of regulatory allowances and tax breaks meant for smaller family farms while it crowds out family farms.
I want family farmers to make a living-those who have been at it for generations and have truly been stewards of the land-to stay on their farms and keep on doing what they do best. I am not in favor of supporting people who produce what we do not need, and what is not healthy.
We are told that we are being nostalgic and unreasonable when we expect that farming be done in harmony with nature. We're told it is ridiculous to question the environmental impact of spreading manure from 1000-2000 cows on a concentrated area of land. We are told that farmers should not be expected to be farming the way they were twenty years ago. I agree.
Twenty years ago farming took a very unhealthy turn. Farmers were told that they had to get bigger in order to survive. As I recall, there was a farm crisis in the eighties as a result of that.
The most modern and resourceful farmers I know are those who think for themselves instead of the way the bigger-is-better pundits, big business, and the chemical companies want them to think. Farmers are coming up with ways that are truly creative to market their products: directly to the public, avoiding the middle-man, with products the public wants-farm raised, not industrialized, food. Many of us non-farmers are eager to support these efforts, to work with farmers, if the farmers will work with us. It is being done right now, by people who are getting good prices for their products, right now.
I feel a deep sadness and reluctance to give up my belief in the intelligence and good sense of rural people. These are the people I come from, the people who have produced my dearest friends.
I hope that the bigger-is-better mentality is a rarity among farmers. I want to see family farms thrive. I cannot support industrial agriculture. In my bones I know it is wrong.
Nora Koch
Spring Valley, Wisconsin
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James Senft26 September 1999
N8379 County Road Y
Spring Valley WI 54767
Dear Editor,
At this time, outside businessmen are poised to set up industrialized livestock operations in Pierce County and profit at the expense of our long-standing family farmers. The Pierce County Board should act to protect its family farmers and our rural community from this very real and imminent threat.
Richard Levins, a professor of applied economics and an extension farm management specialist at the University of Minnesota just completed an in-depth study in an effort to develop a plan to strengthen farming in the rural community of Swift County, Minn.
He and his team of researchers found that the process of creating fewer bigger farms does not benefit the county. The county ends up with fewer people, more money flows to non-resident landlords, and more money is spent for products and services not manufactured in the county. They found that over the period of their study, which began in 1983 , the landlords made more profit than the farmer.
Agribusiness and farming are two distinct entities. Agribusiness benefits a few, but farming benefits all of us. Agribusiness produces food only at the cost of losing family farming and farm communities. Levins concludes that "this is simply too high a price to pay". Pierce County should not have to pay this price.
James Senft
Spring Valley
