CAFOs: Not in My Backyard

In May of 2005, I attended a local Sierra Club meeting that was focused on the problem of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations or CAFOs--basically factory farms--and their environmental impacts. The meeting was packed with local people and USDA officials and lawyers. Since there was a lawsuit pending against Willet Dairy, an upstate CAFO, there was someone present from their lawyer's office taping the meeting to make sure nothing libelous was said against the CAFO. It was a tense, but informative meeting. I sat in the back and tapped out notes on my lap-top. I was asked several times "whose side I was on," if I was a reporter, and "who I worked for." When I said I was an academic, everyone left me alone. I guess if you're an academic writing a book about the public debates over agriculture, then you are not a threat.

I learned that there are about 700 CAFOs in New York state, and many of them are dairy farms in upstate NY. I heard eloquent testimony from Connie and Scott Mather from Locke, NY about the problems they have experienced due to a dairy CAFO near their home. Some of Connie's testimony is below, which she posted on the website of the organization Rural Friends of New York, which wages battles against the environmental destruction of upstate NY.

Like most of us, when I think of dairy farming, I always picture the small-scale dairy operations that we're all used to driving by here in upstate NY. I'm used to seeing a cluster of Holsteins standing outside the barn or picking their way through the mud toward the pasture. I also have dairy farmers in my family: Wiard and Jean Groeneveld, my maternal uncle and aunt from Sultan, Washington and their farmer son Christian Groeneveld, so the small-scale dairy operation is a cherished part of my mom's side of the family.

But small-scale operations are being replaced by industrialized operations. Read Connie Mather's testimony and read the report the Sierra Club and the Citizens' Environmental Coalition entitled "The Wasting of Rural New York State: Factory Farms and Public Health," 2005, available for PDF download at http://www.newyork.sierraclub.org/conservation/agriculture/index.html.

This is our backyard, folks!

Soil and Water Conservation Society
Connie Mather 5H Route 3, Locke, NY 13092
February 26, 2004

"Neighbors Perspective and Action Appeal
My name is Connie Mather. I am part of a growing group of citizens looking for ways to protect our families, our properties and our natural resources from the effects of CAFO’s (also known as factory farms), in rural upstate New York. I’d like to share with you the words of a famous politician on agricultural policy:

“... To put an end to our backwardness in agriculture and to provide the country with the largest possible amount of market grain, cotton, and so forth, it was necessary to pass to large-scale farming, for only large-scale farming can employ modem machinery, utilize all the achievements of agricultural science and provide the largest possible quantity of market produce. [we] took the path of organizing large farms because it enabled us, in the course of several years, to cover the entire country with large farms and provide the country with the largest possible quantity of market produce. “

This is a pretty good description of the course of agriculture in this country and in New York State over the last few decades. This comes from a speech of Joseph Stalin in 1946, in Moscow, as presented to a meeting of voters of the Stalin Electoral District. History tells us that the collective farms, so similar to the government subsidized corporate factory farms of the USA today, were a devastating failure. In the 70’s the USDA asked our successful USA farmers to make trips to Soviet Russia to help them. After studying the situation there, our agriculturalists recommended that the workers be given small plots of land that they could grow their own product on. The smaller plots out-produced the larger collective farms by such incredible numbers that it offered a whole new perspective on smaller farms as sustainable to the Soviets. I have to wonder why the USA, at great expense to the taxpayers, is now subsidizing and promoting the same kind of “advanced farming” that failed so miserably in the U.S.S.R, while doing little to support the sustainable smaller farms so integral to the health of our rural society.

Now I would like to address factory farming on a more personal note, from a neighbor’s perspective.

I live in a small hamlet called East Genoa, by what has become one of the largest dairy CAFO’s in the Northeastern United States. It is one of about 23 dairy CAFO’s that reside in the once beautiful Finger Lakes Region of the Empire State. My husband and I moved to this agricultural district and bought 10 acres in hopes of raising our son in a clean, safe environment. I was going to try to teach school and fulfill a lifelong goal of having a successful organic strawberry u-pick farm, with a possible second high-profit low yield crop to allow for back-up diversity if needed. I was raised on a farm in Pennsylvania and knew that I wanted to farm as a second profession after teaching for 10 years in Philadelphia. None of that was to happen. Staying outdoors, getting healthy enough, or affording water filtering systems and sources has made that impossible here.
First of all, most days of the year, the stench on my property and in my house is so bad that it makes us sick. I mean it makes us literally SICK. I didn’t need to see the research results of latest studies of ammonia and hydrogen sulfide emissions to believe that the CAFO next door is emitting noxious gases. I didn’t need more research studies that showed the particulate matter and the ascetic acid from the silage bunkers are making it very near impossible to work outside or sleep inside in my house many nights.

Year-round spraying of liquid manure has made most of the fields around my home simply dumping grounds for seas of waste. In our community, upwards of 7500 bovine creatures contribute to huge cesspools that are uncovered and “geo” lined. For those of you who are wondering about “geo’ lined pits, that means no cement or synthetic linings, just holes dug into the ground. The detergents and any bad milk that can’t be sold is also dumped or piped into those open lakes of manure, along with the hormones and antibiotics tbat might be in the milk and manure. After that waste ferments for an undetermined amount of time, it is sprayed from the backs of huge tankards the size of tractor-trailers, onto the land or the snow. Summer, fall, winter, spring, it doesn’t matter. The waste is thrown on the fields. I am not a soil specialist, but somehow I can’t see whcre soil is benefiting from that kind of dumping. I see the runoff going into road ditches and small tributaries as I drive along the road. Those waterways feed the lakes of Cayuga and Owasco.

Huge trucks and large farm machinery barrel down the highways (Route 34 is yards away from my front door), The roads get wet with liquid manure, it dries and with the heavy traffic, becomes a fine dust that enters our home, our barn, our cars, and our lungs. Mowing the lawn, tending to our few animals or trying to garden is usually a “noxious affair”, after which we are sometimes sick with respiratory illnesses, headaches and even dizziness and nausea. This year, we couldn’t put up Christmas lights or decorations for the winter holidays because we couldn’t stay outside in the smell long enough to put up the lights.

In my opinion, the unnatural environment that the dairy creates has created an unnatural number of mosquitoes and flies.

Mosquito swarms seem to be a growing problem in our fields, yard and gardens. Could it be that the swarms of mosquitoes are coming from the thousands of tires that cover the silage bunkers kitty-cornered from our property? For the rest of the residents in Cayuga County, a fine of $35.00 per tire is levied if we have tires on our properties. That is because the County Health Department believes that tires lying around are breeding grounds for mosquitoes that carry West Nile Virus! Maybe those farm-exempt tires are marked somehow so the mosquitoes won’t breed there.

Swarming flies are also in abundance where we live. Even if the smell doesn’t get us if we try to BB-Q, the flies will swarm our food and us on a really busy spreading day. This type of swarming in excess is being sighted all around rural America where CAFOs proliferate.

One of the most disappointing aspects of living here is seeing the creeks, brooks and wetlands disappear.

Expanding numbers of livestock means expanded amounts of water consumed by my corporate neighbors. According to one management plan, each cow needs about 30 to 60 gallons of water a day. What that has meant for our communities is that wetlands are drained into large holding ponds, and small, once pristine brooks and creeks now are intermittently flowing, or diverted into holding ponds, or they are so contaminated with runoff that you can’t recognize them. Runoff of liquid wastes into our tributaries and sometimes directly into the Finger Lakes is common. I believe this runoff is inevitable because of the year round spreading and the volume of waste that needs to be gotten rid of by ever-expanding dairies. The marine life has suffered significantly with this violation and mismanagement of our precious natural resources. Currently, there is no mandatory testing of the waste from the CAFO’s in NY State before it is applied, so we have no idea what is ending up in our soil and water resources.

As a former educator, I believe that if you as professionals, educators and scientists alike, truly understand what is happening in the name of “advanced farming” in New York, you will take ethical and appropriate actions to rectify the policies and the lack of enforcement that allows these factory farms to assault every aspect of the lives of the rural peoples of New York State. The people of this region of New York have a strong heritage of political and social courage. This area was the center of the Women’s Rights Movement, an integral part of the Underground Railroad, and was the seed of strong religious movements. This heritage is reflected in the spirit of the real farmers and residents who are now mobilized and taking whatever actions they can to save our rural society and defend our Constitutional rights to protect our properties. Sustainable agriculture has a long, proud history of economic success, environmental stewardship,
conservation of natural resources and quality food production. We need your support.

The American Public Health Association has already asked for a moratorium on the building of all new CAFO’s until the empirical and anecdotal evidence can be considered. They have concluded, based on the research already reported, that there seem to be health risks to the workers on CAFO’s and to the residents of rural communities surrounding the CAFO’s.

I am here today to implore you, as Water and Soil Conservationists, to support that moratorium, and based on the very credible research already established, to take this a step further, and

CALL FOR A MORATORIUM ON ALL EXPANSION OF EXISTING FACTORY FARMS UNTIL THE EPA, DEC AND STATE AND COUNTY HEALTH DEPARTMENTS CAN MAN THEMSELVES WITH ENOUGH PERSONNEL AND ENFORCEABLE REGULATIONS TO ENSURE THE HALT TO THE DESECRATION OF NEW YORK’S NATURAL RESOURCES AND THE HEALTH OF ITS RURAL SOCIETY."
--Connie Mather