CAFOS

‘Unacceptable’: Family Farms, Ag Advocates Hit Back After Sec Perdue Says Small Dairy Farms Destined To Die

  By Eoin Higgins Common Dreams (10/2/19) Furious family farmers flamed Department of Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue Wednesday after comments he made on the future of the dairy business that cast doubt on the future of small farms during a stop in Wisconsin Tuesday. “In America, the big get bigger and the small go out,” said Perdue. “I don’t think in America we, for any small business, we have a guaranteed income or guaranteed profitability.” The secretary added that in his view the industry was leaving smaller producers behind. “It’s very difficult on an economy of scale with the capital…

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Instead Of Calling For Humane Laws, Politicians Protect Ag Industry By Making Activists Criminals

What does the corporate ag industry have to hide? The Intercept (10/12/19) This video includes graphic images some readers may find disturbing. The meat industry depends, more than anything else, on walls. The walls of farms and slaughterhouses prevent consumers from seeing what the production of their food really looks like. They prevent journalists and activists from exposing unethical, even criminal acts within. They enable corporations to paint happy, bucolic pictures of their operations that bear no resemblance to the reality of modern-day factory farming. To get inside those walls, over the last two decades, dozens of activists have gone…


African Swine Fever Leaping Past Borders & Devastating Herds

BBC (7/12/19) A deadly and highly contagious disease is spreading across Europe’s pig farms. African Swine Fever Virus doesn’t harm humans, but once it infects domestic and wild pigs almost all of them die through internal bleeding within days. More than a million pigs are thought to have died as a result of the latest outbreak, devastating hundreds of farms and damaging exports. It’s the first time the virus has ever hit Europe’s pig farming heartland. With a vaccine still years off, and amid fears the disease could reach as far as China, we ask if the virus can be…


The Rural Vote: Factory Farms Are Polluting Our Drinking Water With Hog Manure. Democrats Should Take Note

Corporate agriculture is often an overlooked issue for those appealing to the Democratic party base. [Editor’s Note: When you link to the full article you will find specifics about the growing industrial farming threat in Wisconsin. — Mark L. Taylor] By George Goehl The Guardian (4/26/19) Donald Trump is banking on riding his hardline stance on immigration to re-election in 2020. Tough talk of a wall makes headlines, but it’s a less discussed issue that could play a deciding role for voters in swing states and early primary states: the influx of factory farms and the devastating impact they have on…


Europe’s Right Wing Populist Curtain

  By Yascha Mounk BBC (5/1/19) In 1946, Winston Churchill coined a memorable phrase: “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the continent,” he said. Today the Soviet Union has gone, but populist parties are in government in every country along the route of the Iron Curtain, as defined by Churchill. In this series, political scientist Yascha Mounk travels that route, and finds out what is changing under these new governments in smaller cities, far away from the capitals. He speaks to supporters and opponents of the populist parties and builds up…


On The Death Of My Family’s Dairy Farm

The consolidation of dairy and the continual shrinking of profit margins have led to drastic changes to the industry over the years. By Abe Voelker abevolker.com (3/6/19) This Christmas, like every other, I traveled to northern Wisconsin to stay with my parents on the dairy farm I grew up on. As usual I took the opportunity to help my dad and younger brother with barn chores and milk cows. The cows need to be milked twice a day, every day, roughly around 4AM and 4PM. I didn’t help out every shift but I worked more than enough to once again be…


In Iowa, Sanders Addresses ‘Rural Community Issues We Almost Never Hear About’: Factory Farms & Big Ag

Consolidation and incorporation of the farming industry have had major effects on the health and economic well being of Iowans. Sanders noted that change in his speech Thursday. By Eoin Higgins Common Dreams (3/8/19) Bernie Sanders took aim at factory farms and agribusiness in a speech kicking off his Iowa presidential campaign Thursday. “We need policies in Washington for rural America that represent the needs of working people and family farmers,” the Independent senator from Vermont told a crowd of around 2,000 at the Mid-America Center in Council Bluffs, “not agribusiness and large, multinational corporations.” That Sanders would focus on agriculture in his first…


Gulf Shrimpers Meet Wisconsin & Minnesota Farmers Trying To Save Their Downstream Catch

  By Kirsti Marohn MPR (8/28/18) August is the busy season for shrimpers along the Gulf Coast, and fishermen like Randy Skinner and Lance Nacio should be heading out in their trawlers to try to haul in a day’s catch. But instead, last week Skinner and Nacio traveled more than 1,000 miles north to central Minnesota to share stories about how what happens along the Mississippi River is affecting their livelihood. Every year, a dead zone about the size of Connecticut forms in the Gulf of Mexico. It’s caused by excess nutrients washing down the Mississippi River — and it has…


Declining Property Values Highlight Need For Industrial Agriculture Reform

  By Kara O’Conner Morning Ad Clips (12/5/17) CHIPPEWA FALLS, Wis. — In November, the Wisconsin Department of Revenue lowered a Kewaunee County landowner’s property taxes because of proximity to a large Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO). The Department of Revenue reviewed three years of data from home sales in the county, and found that on average, homes within a quarter mile of a large CAFO sold for 13 percent less than their assessed value, and homes between a quarter of a mile and one mile from a large CAFO sold for 8 percent less than their assessed value. The…


Ag-Gag Laws Target Reformers While Coddling & Protecting Industrial Animal Abusers

By Janine Jackson Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (9/22/17) Simply put, if an industry goes after people who seek to investigate it, it’s a pretty good indication that they’re doing something they don’t want you to know. This is certainly the case with the animal agriculture industry. The term “ag-gag,” introduced by New York Times food writer Mark Bittman, describes the slew of laws introduced to target undercover investigations and whistleblowing about the industry. Because, it turns out, when people don’t just hear about but see piglets having their heads bashed against cement floors, or cows too sick to walk being picked up by…