Friends of Rural New York

The zealous diatribe, Viewpoint...In Defense of the American Farmer, printed in
the Ithaca Times, dated 04/23/2008, little more than Rush Limbaugh-esque cant, bilious with the patriotic mom and pop-ism dogma championed by agribusiness talking heads, routinely disregards facts about the negative environmental and health impacts of factory farms and the enormous subsidies (taxpayer dollars) they receive.  The CAFO industry would have us believe that the concept of local small-scale sustainable family farms is passé, old-fashioned, obsolete, even a sentimental childish fairytale.  This self-serving claptrap, along with the inciting adjectives concocted to discredit those who dare bring to light personal experiences with factory farm-generated pollution impacts to their properties and health, are Big-Ag fabrications shrewdly wrought to control public opinion.  Agri-business’ mind-control experts routinely utilize specific buzz-words to incite distrust and prejudice against anyone daring to question the motives and practices of the industry, branding them “city dwellers”, “move-ins”, “agitators”, “terrorists”, “fanatical vegetarians”, “rebel rousers”, etc.  These expressions, paired with the accusatorial jargon, “left-wing animal-rights activists or further-left command economists”, execute Big-Ag’s brand of subterfuge by employing a well-roasted propagandic feast to combat those niggling “bêtes noires”.

Command economy is an economy that is planned and controlled by a central administration, as in the former Soviet Union.  Indeed, Joseph Stalin created and implemented his very own command economy concept, the factory farm.  So who’s a “further-left command economist”, eh?

A Washington Post’s reporting team identified more than $15 billion in waste, fraud and abuse in the nation’s farm subsidy programs.  Dan Morgan, Gilbert M. Gaul and Sarah Cohen spent more than a year examining federal agriculture subsidies for their “Harvesting Cash” series, generating more than a dozen stories and several interactive maps.  This series became a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2007.

US Dairy CAFOs (factory farms) are half subsidized with taxpayer dollars.
They enjoy low cost labor by undocumented farm workers and generous welfare handouts.  Then, CAFOs are again rewarded taxpayer dollars to contain or clean up the pollution inevitably resulting from this model that was destined to fail from its inception.  “All the king’s horses and all the king’s men…”.

From the “Harvesting Cash” series: “The multibillion-dollar farm subsidy system often is touted by Congress as a way to save small family farms.  Instead, those policies are helping to accelerate their demise, because owners of large farms receive the most subsidies.  In 2005 alone, when pretax farm profits were at a near-record $72 billion, the federal government handed out more than $25 billion in aid, almost 50 percent more than the amount it pays to families receiving welfare.”
For the entire Washington Post article, go to this link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp srv/nation/interactives/farmaid/

CAFO industry spokespersons imply that the citizens of the United States and people throughout the world have no right to question the origins and quality of the food they eat and serve to their children, and harshly rebuke those who dare question, report or oppose factory farm negative impacts to air, water and food quality, while commanding us to allow food industry “Big Brothers” to take good care of us.  Consumers should ask Big Ag, “How much does this gallon of CAFO milk really cost, including all subsidy dollars and negative environmental and health-impact costs?”

Willy Nelson states, …“Sustainable family farms are the alternative to the large-scale industrial farms that erode our soil and pollute our waterways.  Excessive chemicals, soil erosion, runoff from factory farms laced with hormones and antibiotics and the growing threats of widespread genetic contamination from genetically engineered crops threaten our capacity to grow the food we need to feed our country.” Worldwide, local sustainable family farms are our only viable long-term solution for feeding the world while restoring the health of the environment.”

We entreat New York state and world-wide farming communities and consumers to become empowered, do their own homework on these issues and refuse to allow the Big-Ag industry to dictate what’s best for us, our children, environment and future generations.

Mark C. Trout

FOR FULL REPORT SEE:

http://ncifap.org

See also:
http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_environment/sustainable_food/cafos-uncovered.html

Report Targets Costs Of Factory Farming

By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 30, 2008; A02

Factory farming takes a big, hidden toll on human health and the environment, is undermining rural America’s economic stability and fails to provide the humane treatment of livestock increasingly demanded by American consumers, concludes an independent, 2 1/2 -year analysis that calls for major changes in the way corporate agriculture produces meat, milk and eggs.

The report released yesterday, sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trusts and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, finds that the “economies of scale” used to justify factory farming practices are largely an illusion, perpetuated by a failure to account for associated costs.

Among those costs are human illnesses caused by drug-resistant bacteria associated with the rampant use of antibiotics on feedlots and the degradation of land, water and air quality caused by animal waste too intensely concentrated to be neutralized by natural processes.

Several observers said the report, by experts with varying backgrounds and allegiances, is remarkable for the number of tough recommendations that survived the grueling research and review process, which participants said was politically charged and under constant pressure from powerful agricultural interests.

In the end, however, even industry representatives on the panel agreed to such controversial recommendations as a ban on the nontherapeutic use of antibiotics in farm animals—a huge hit against veterinary pharmaceutical companies—a phaseout of all intensive confinement systems that prevent the free movement of farm animals, and more vigorous enforcement of antitrust laws in the increasingly consolidated agricultural arena.

“At the end of his second term, President Dwight Eisenhower warned the nation about the dangers of the military-industrial complex—an unhealthy alliance between the defense industry, the Pentagon, and their friends on Capitol Hill,” wrote Robert P. Martin, executive director of the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production, which wrote the report. “Now the agro-industrial complex—an alliance of agricultural commodity groups, scientists at academic institutions who are paid by the industry, and their friends on Capitol Hill—is a concern in animal food production in the 21st century.”

The report, “Putting Meat on the Table: Industrial Farm Production in America,” comes at a time when food, agriculture and animal welfare issues are prominent in the American psyche.

Food prices are rising faster than they have for decades. Concerns about global climate change have brought new attention to the fact that modern agriculture is responsible for about 20 percent of the nation’s greenhouse-gas production. And recent meat recalls, punctuated by the release of undercover footage of cows being abused at a California slaughterhouse, have struck a chord with consumers.

The report acknowledges that the decades-long trend toward reliance on “concentrated animal feeding operations,” or CAFOs, has brought some benefits, including cheaper food. In 1970, the average American spent 4.2 percent of his or her income to buy 194 pounds of red meat and poultry annually. By 2005, typical Americans were spending 2.1 percent of their income for 221 pounds per year.

But the system has brought unintended consequences. With thousands of animals kept in close quarters, diseases spread quickly. To prevent some of those outbreaks—and to spur faster growth—factory farms routinely treat animals with antibiotics, speeding the development of drug-resistant bacteria and in some cases rendering important medications less effective in people.

It appears that the vast majority of U.S. antibiotic use is for animals, the commission noted, adding that because of the lack of oversight by the Food and Drug Administration and other agencies, even regulators can only estimate how many drugs are being given to animals.

The commission urges stronger reporting requirements for companies and a phaseout and then ban on antibiotics in farm animals except as treatments for disease, a policy already initiated in some European countries.

“That’s a good recommendation. A strong recommendation,” said Margaret Mellon of the Union of Concerned Scientists, which released its own report last week documenting billions of dollars in farm subsidies to factory farming operations and annual federal expenditures of $100 million to clean up their ongoing environmental damage.

The Pew report also calls for tighter regulation of factory farm waste, finding that toxic gases and dust from animal waste are making CAFO workers and neighbors ill.

In calling for a 10-year phaseout of intensive confinement systems such as gestation crates for pigs and so-called battery cages for chickens, the commission adds impetus to recent commitments from some corporate operators to drop, gradually, those controversial practices.

“These animals can’t engage in normal behavior at all,” said commission member Michael Blackwell, a veterinarian and former assistant U.S. surgeon general.

Calls for comments from industry representatives were not returned.

The report also calls for implementation of a long-delayed national tracking system that would allow trace-back of diseased animals within 48 hours after a human outbreak of food-borne disease. And it calls for an end to forced feeding of poultry to produce foie gras, a delicacy that Blackwell described unpalatably as “diseased liver.”

Activists said it will be up to Congress and agency officials, under public pressure, to implement some of the commission’s recommendations. Congress is now considering a bill, the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act, that would accomplish some of the Pew recommendations.

Farm bill: making America fat and polluted, one subsidy at a time
Let’s support sustainable farming, instead.
By Christopher D. Cook

from the April 23, 2008 edition

San Francisco - At a time of soaring food prices, America’s grocery bill is about to balloon. Congress is staggering toward completion of a nearly $300 billion farm bill that upholds subsidies for big farmers and food corporations – undermining vital efforts to make our food supply more healthful and sustainable, both environmentally and economically.

It’s time to overhaul the government’s approach to food and farming.

If the current measure passes (as it’s slated to this Friday) Americans will shell out billions of dollars for farm subsidies that wreak havoc on our land and diets. These payments irresponsibly promote the consumption of cheap fatty foods, the depletion of soil and air through overuse of pesticides, and destructive farming practices.

Like farm bills past, this one also advances the removal of small farms, eroding the spirit and finances of rural communities across the US.

There is funding for conservation and nutrition programs, even allotments for innovative community food security projects that expand markets for small farmers while making food accessible to poor inner-city residents. But the subsidies for agribusiness – sometimes exceeding $15 billion a year – deepen the very problems these programs seek to remedy.

The core issue lies in the Commodity Title, which subsidizes large growers’ production of corn, wheat, and other raw ingredients used in everything from food sweeteners to livestock feed to auto fuel. Supporting farmers to produce basic foodstuffs is a laudable policy, but today’s subsidy system instead props up unsustainable growing practices and undermines the nation’s health and its farming and food future.

Consider that 75 percent of subsidies go to a handful of commodities (mostly wheat, corn, and oilseeds) used as food additives, making highly processed junk food cheap – while fruits and vegetables and whole foods currently get no aid. Nearly 70 percent of farm subsidies go to the top 10 percent of the country’s biggest growers – while America loses one farm every half an hour.

This form of corporate welfare encourages the ongoing consolidation of farming and food production into fewer hands. It removes small and mid-sized farmers who can no longer compete in the unlevel playing field. Meanwhile, by skewing payments toward large-scale farming, these subsidies promote ecologically damaging intensive pesticide use and severe depletion of precious topsoils. Organic foods, often exorbitantly expensive, get no financial support.

As a result, the US dumps nearly half a million tons of toxic pesticides on the land, polluting the air, often sickening nearby residents, and tainting rivers and streams.

Instead of upholding these mega-farm subsidies, let’s invest the public’s money in sustainable growing practices, organic foods, and small and mid-sized farms that form the bedrock – both economically and socially – of communities throughout America’s heartland.

Hardly a romantic nod to the past, such an overhaul is a practical investment in the future. As global warming heats up, we can’t afford a system that guzzles 100 billion gallons of oil each year in pesticides and the long-distance transit of packaged foods.

As obesity hits 30 percent of the population – harming lives and costing the public more than $100 billion in related health costs – we cannot afford to finance cheap junk food and excessive meat consumption. And we cannot afford to continue paying large-scale commodity growers to plunder our fast-eroding soils while making it near impossible for smaller diversified growers to compete and survive.

Programs that revive local foods and small farms – via farmers’ markets, community-supported agriculture, and school purchasing programs – are gaining ground across the country. Consumers are clamoring for organic foods, and for more farmer’s markets where growers can increase profits while keeping food prices the same or lower than in supermarkets.

The public’s money ought to finance sustainability in its truest sense – supporting farms and food programs that sustain local economies, our health, and the future of farmlands, instead of agribusiness and food corporations that plumb the land and these communities for short-term profit.

As Congress lurches toward destructive old policies, now is the time to cast our vote for a new path.

Christopher D. Cook, a prize-winning journalist, is the author of “Diet for a Dead Planet: Big Business and the Coming Food Crisis.”



Find this article at:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0423/p09s02-coop.html

04/02/2008
Toxic fumes, blisters & brain damage : The cost of doing business?
By: Rebecca Lerner - An investigative report
Ithaca Times

Willet Dairy’s cows are lined up together, eating feed, in one of
the
farm’s barns. (Photo by Rachel Philipson)

Karen Strecker is bracing. She’s about to turn on the faucet, and
there’s a chance liquid manure is going to stream from the spout.
“I’ve been taking a bath and actually had cow shit pour into the tub,’’

Strecker says, matter-of-factly. She uses well water. “It’s nasty.”
Yet the threat of a sewage bath pales in comparison to a more dangerous

problem: Breathing poisonous fumes. After years living next to Willet
Dairy, the largest industrial farm in the state, Strecker and her
neighbors in Genoa are reporting the kinds of health problems
eco-watchdogs lose sleep over, from blistering eyelids to brain damage.

Manure is known to release gases that, in high concentrations, are
linked to those scary symptoms.
Strecker’s plight takes on national relevance as the EPA prepares to
roll back air-pollution-reporting requirements for industrial animal
farms like Willet in October - even as environmentalists warn that
regulation is already too lax in New York.

The Road to Industrial Farming

Located next to Lansing in Cayuga County, Genoa is a rural town with
sprawling hills and a population of 1,914. Its main street is spare but

quaint, with an antiques shop, a fire hall advertising a NASCAR event,
and a church with the motto, “Exercise Daily: Walk With God.”
The roadsides here are dotted with farms. Willet Dairy’s giant white
barns sit close to Route 34, the main thoroughfare. Pickup trucks and
heavy machinery sit in dusty lots.
With 7,800 cattle, Willet is a relative behemoth. The other two major
livestock operations in town are Osterhoudt Farm, with 470 cattle, and
Ridgecrest Dairy L.L.C., with 1,090, according to the state Department
of Environmental Conservation, the agency charged with regulating
agricultural pollution.
Willet began in 1974 as a small, family-owned operation that grew
steadily over the years, acquiring its neighbors’ property and
expanding
as American agricultural practices became increasingly mechanized and
efficient. Today, Willet spans approximately 6,300 acres over four
sites, including a facility on Route 34 near Lansing, one on Lane Road
in Locke, Belltown Dairy in King Ferry and W.D. Corey Dairy. “Why
larger
dairies?” said David M. Galton, a dairy management professor at Cornell

University. “Well, why Wegmans? Target and Circuit City and Home Depot
and Lowe’s - they’re doing it to dilute out cost and to maintain or
improve standard of living. It’s like every other segment of our
economy. Larger dairies are trying to address the ever-rising cost of
producing milk and standard of living.”
In 1993, farms with 200 or more cattle made up 3.6 percent of the
state’s dairies, according to USDA statistics. By 2002, they made up 9
percent.
“The larger the dairy farm, the lower the costs are. And so, as the
costs keep rising - fuel costs, feed costs, taxes - it puts more
economic pressure on the individual farms to produce more milk,’’
Galton
said. “If you take the milk price of 1980 and adjust it for inflation,
the milk price would be $38.92 per 100 pounds. The milk price today is
approximately $20 per 100 pounds.”
Galton is director of PRO-DAIRY, a government-funded outreach arm of
Cornell University that works to increase profitability in the dairy
industry and educate farmers on the latest manure-management
techniques.
Willet Dairy is a privately held business headed by Dennis Eldred, a
Genoa resident. The company is listed as Willet Dairy L.P.; Willet
Dairy
L.L.C.; and Willet Dairy Inc., in legal documents. Eldred did not
return
phone calls to his home and office and declined to be interviewed
through his attorney, David Cook of Nixon Peabody L.L.P.
Scott, Todd, Susan and Peter Eldred are also listed as co-owners of
Willet, according to 2005 USDA records as compiled by the nonprofit
Environmental Working Group. Todd, Susan and Peter Eldred are “all
family members, members of the LLC,” according to Cook. Neighbors
identified them as Dennis Eldred’s adult children. Scott Eldred is
Dennis Eldred’s brother, and his status with the company is not clear
at
this time because Scott Eldred is in the Carribbean working as a
missionary, Cook said. Town Supervisor Stuart Underwood has known
Dennis
Eldred and his family for decades and described them as “good people.’’
Willet Operations Officer Lyn Odell, who spoke to the Ithaca Times,
declined to discuss the company’s annual profits. Public records show
Willet received $1,114,807.88 in USDA subsidies from 1995 to 2005,
according to a database maintained by the nonprofit Environmental
Working Group.
Property tax records show Willet paid more than a third of the locally
funded portion of Genoa’s 2007 town budget.
Large-scale dairies like Willet are known colloquially as factory
farms,
a term that refers to the industrialized nature of their daily
operations. The state Department of Environmental Conservation refers
to
large dairies as “concentrated animal feeding operations,” or CAFOs,
because they confine their animals in warehouse-like facilities for
more
than 45 days each year. If you peer into Willet’s barns, some of which
are open-air and visible from the roads, you will observe bovine faces
neatly aligned, as far back as the eye can see.
At dairy farms in general, cows are impregnated once every 13 to 14
months in order to keep milk production at a profitable level, Galton
said. But whereas small farms may house cows and calves together, it is

standard practice for CAFOs to isolate calves in individual crates for
the six weeks immediately following birth, Galton said, in order to
avoid compromising their fragile immune systems.
This is a practice assailed by animal welfare groups, including Farm
Sanctuary in Watkins Glen, as cruel. It irks Strecker as well. Down the

street from her house, small evergreens do little to block the view of
the crates, arranged in orderly rows along a grassy plain that
stretches
several football fields in length. At night, floodlights illuminate the

scene.
“We do what we have to do to improve standard of living and dilute out
cost,” Galton said of the industry.
To address the ecological impact of thousands of cows relieving
themselves in one area, large dairies like Willet are required by law
to
manage the excrement using techniques developed in large part by
Cornell
University.
Willet cows produced 157,126 tons of manure in 2006, according to the
DEC.
Willet liquifies the untreated waste and pumps it into manure lagoons,
as is standard practice among large-scale dairies. There it sits - some

hundreds of feet from Strecker’s home - uncovered and decomposing,
releasing hydrogen sulfide, a poisonous, acidic gas known to burn the
eyes and respiratory tract, until some of Willet’s laborers spray it
onto farm fields with tanker trucks.

Toxic Gases

The stench in Strecker’s yard makes you cough at first, then your eyes
water and nausea sets in. Dizziness knocks you over if you stick around

for more than five minutes, and if the wind is blowing the right way,
you might find yourself nursing a headache. Of course, that’s just if
you’re visiting on a mild day. The effect is more severe if you
actually
live there.
“No matter which way the wind blows, we’re screwed,’’ Strecker says.
Strecker has been on a constant dose of antibiotics for years to treat
chronic respiratory problems caused by exposure to her surroundings,
according to a series of letters written by her doctor, Ahmad Mehdi of
Groton Family Practice. The letters span from Aug. 15, 2000 to Jan. 22,

2007.
“Do people get sick when manure gets spread? Yes, it’s a fact,” Mehdi
told the Ithaca Times. “It’s the huge, mass production. When you have
10,000 cows in one place, that’s a lot of manure. Everybody knows that.

But it’s the way of life around here.”
Cayuga County is home to 28 industrial farms, and Tompkins has 10,
according to the DEC. There are more than 600 such facilities in the
state. Detailed information about each is available online at
http://www.factoryfarmmap.org, a website compiled by the research and advocacy

group Food & Water Watch.
You can’t see manure lagoons from the roadsides, but you can smell
them,
and the dangers of their fumes have been documented. A 2002 study by
the
University of Iowa and Iowa State University examined the impact of
aerial ammonia and hydrogen sulfide on residents living near industrial

hog farms after former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack requested information on
their public health impact. The researchers noted that aerial ammonia
and hydrogen sulfide gas - both routine CAFO emissions - are poisonous
in high concentrations, causing sinusitis, asthma, chronic bronchitis,
inflamed mucous membranes of the nose and throat, headaches, muscle
aches and pains in those who live or work nearby.
The National Association of Clean Air Agencies - which represents
local,
state, federal and agencies - cites manure-pit emissions containing
hydrogen sulfide and ammonia for the deaths of at least two dozen
people
working or living near the operations in the Midwest over the past 30
years.
“The release of toxic substances from manure in amounts dangerous to
human health is not a theoretical exercise - people have been killed,’’

said the NACAA’s Catharine Fitzsimmons, in testimony before the U.S.
Senate on Sept. 6, 2007.
A June 2006 fact sheet put out by PRO-DAIRY on health and safety issues

describes hydrogen sulfide as “a poisonous, acidic gas that can kill in

a matter of seconds,” “accumulates in low, confined spaces” and
dissolves “rapidly in eye moisture and in the respiratory tract.”
Yet the DEC does not closely monitor toxic emissions from livestock
farms. DEC spokesperson Lori O’Connell said the fumes are regarded “as
either ‘trivial activities’ ... or as ‘fugitive emissions’ in the case
of outdoor manure piles and waste lagoons. Both of these designations
have the effect of relieving farms in New York from needing an air
permit or minor source registration.”

Brain Damage and Poisoned Eyes

If you ask Fred Coon, Strecker’s 82-year-old father, why he’s missing
his lower eyelids, he will tell you about the time he “got my eyes
poisoned.”
“It was a terrible process,’’ Coon said. “I was raking leaves by the
barn, and my eyes started stinging. I came inside and looked in the
mirror, and there were a million little tiny blisters over here, and
here,’’ he says, pointing to the magenta tissue his lower eyelids used
to cover. The blisters burst and became infected, prompting doctors to
amputate the thin flaps of skin containing them.
Neighbor Connie Mather, a perky former schoolteacher from Philadelphia
who owns a property around the corner, also had a run-in with the
blisters. In her case, they converged on the inside of her throat and
nasal passages.
But Mather had another cause for alarm. In 2004, a medical expert
diagnosed her teenage son, Samuel, with irreversible brain damage
caused
by exposure to hydrogen sulfide gas.
The physician was Dr. Kaye Kilburn, a professor at the University of
Southern California who has published 61 peer-reviewed papers on
neurobehavioral toxicology. Kilburn is president and director of
Neuro-Test Inc., a company that evaluates chemical exposure for
lawsuits
and disability claims. Kilburn also diagnosed Connie Mather and Coon
with neurological damage from the fumes.
During the evaluations, Kilburn reviewed a 15-page questionnaire on
each
patient’s medical history and administered 43 different tests,
according
to legal documents.
“Each patient’s brain impairment has been caused by exposure to
hydrogen
sulfide,” Kilburn wrote. “None of the patients have been exposed [to]
other significant chemical exposures, and none of the patients have
[sic] suffered spontaneous or associated neurological or psychiatric
disease. After analyzing of other possible causes for brain impairment
[sic], I found that for each patient the clinical signs of all possible

alternative causes are absent.”
Kilburn told the Mathers to vacate their property immediately. The
family is renting elsewhere.
Angered into action, Mather became a founding member of Neighbors
United
for the Finger Lakes, an anti-CAFO organization with membership in a
national coalition called the Dairy Education Alliance. She worries
about plans for an 84,000-head cattle CAFO in St. Lawrence County - an
operation that would be more than 10 times the size of Willet.

A Losing Lawsuit, A Bitter Fight

Strecker spends her days taking care of her father, Fred Coon. Both
retired carpenters, they live on a 7-acre property with a main house, a

trailer, a garage decorated with Coon’s artwork and a muddy stream in
the backyard. The land has been in the family since the 1800s. Coon
still sleeps in the house he built in the 1940s. His late wife, and
Strecker’s mother, Pearl Coon, spent her last days here.
In the good old days, the air here smelled like lilac trees, flowers
grew in the garden and marathon barbecues brought the town together,
Coon said. They even had neighbors. But that was before Willet
expanded.
Now they’re surrounded by Willet on three sides.
“I’m just angry they took our lives away,’’ Strecker says. “I can’t
even
get a friggin’ clean glass of water.”
To no avail, Strecker and Mather tried complaining about Willet to the
state DEC; Office of the New York State Attorney General; New York
State
Soil and Water Committee; Cayuga County Health & Human Services
Department; former New York Governors Eliot Spitzer and George Pataki;
the U.S. EPA; the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; federal and local
legislators; the New York State Police; the Cayuga County Sheriff’s
Department; and the Genoa town supervisor.
“They all say they’ll ‘look into it,’” Strecker says. “Nobody cares.”
Frustrated, the neighbors tried the legal arena, banding together to
file a citizen’s lawsuit alleging violations of the Clean Water Act,
the
Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, Rivers and Harbors Act, and the

New York State Environmental Conservation Law. Suing Willet were Karen
Strecker; Fred Coon and his late wife Pearl Coon; Connie Mather and her

husband Scott Mather; and three other neighbors, Karen and Kenneth
Keppel and Dale Mangan, according to legal documents.
After five years of litigation, the case was dismissed in July. Their
attorney is Gary Abraham, a T-shirt-wearing environmentalist who works
out of a room in his house in Allegany, N.Y., and who took the case at
his own expense. Willet Dairy was represented by attorney David Cook of

the firm Nixon Peabody L.L.P., a 700-attorney powerhouse with offices
in
17 cities, including Rochester and Shanghai, China.
Judge Frederick J. Scullin Jr. of the Northern District of New York
dismissed the suit, ruling in Willet’s favor that the farm’s neighbors
did not have the legal authority to bring an enforcement action. This
leaves the door open for the neighbors to try again in another
jurisdiction.
Abraham is challenging the court decision in the U.S. Court of Appeals
for the Second Judicial Circuit. Both Abraham and Cook have filed
briefs; oral arguments are expected to begin in May.
Abraham said he is optimistic, bolstered by a Jan. 15 decision by a
Michigan appellate court reaffirming the power of citizen suits to
enforce Clean Water Act violations.
On behalf of Willet, Cook described the dairy as “a leader in
environmental stewardship.” Inaction by the broad array of local, state

and federal government agencies bolsters the argument that Willet did
not violate any laws, Cook said. He called the neighbors’ allegations
of
pollution and detrimental health effects “utter nonsense.”
“Now, do I believe these people believe it? Absolutely. But the science

doesn’t back it up,” said Cook. “When we went out to hire experts to
tell us what the levels of exposure were, do you know what the levels
were? Non-detect.”
Researchers took samples of soil, air and water at Willet and then
extrapolated the results to estimate what Willet’s neighbors
encountered, Cook said. When the Ithaca Times asked to see the data,
Cook declined to release it. “We are still in the midst of litigation,”

Cook said.
Odell, the Willet employee, said he believes the company is being
subjected to unreasonable scrutiny.
During a recent four-day-long surprise inspection of Willet in
November,
the DEC found that Willet “continues to be a well-managed and operated
dairy” in “satisfactory” compliance with permit requirements, according

to a Dec. 11, 2007, letter sent to Dennis Eldred from the DEC’s
Environmental Program Specialist Scott D. Cook.
“We don’t farm any different than anybody else does up and down this
road,” Odell said, referring to Route 34. “This is about the nature of
our business, about how we farm. It’s not about Willet. It’s about the
dairy industry.”
While Genoa’s other two CAFOs, Osterhoudt and Ridgecrest, have never
been cited for environmental violations by the DEC, Willet has paid for

two. On March 8, 2001, the DEC fined Willet $25,000 for leaking “a
significant amount of manure” into the Cayuga Lake watershed when a
pipe
burst, resulting in a fish kill and a water quality violation, the DEC
said. The company paid $15,000; the remainder of the penalty was
suspended due to satisfactory compliance with clean-up efforts, the
DEC’s O’Connell said.
On Dec. 11, 2006, the DEC fined Willet $2,500 after manure spilled from

an overturned tanker, leaking into a tributary of Salmon Creek in the
Cayuga Lake watershed. The company paid just $500 of that amount;
$2,000
was suspended because Willet complied with the clean-up to DEC’s
satisfaction, O’Connell said.
From January 2005 through June 2007, the DEC filed 30 enforcement
actions against CAFOs.
The Sierra Club, Food & Water Watch, the National Resources Defense
Council and other national environmental organizations have long
criticized industrial farms as major polluters, particularly because of

the run-off problems associated with liquid manure. A 1998 study by the

federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of nine large Iowa
CAFO sites turned up chemical pollutants, pathogens, bacteria, nitrates

and parasites in lagoons and other areas in and around the sites.
In an effort to mitigate pollution, CAFOs are required to file annual
reports with the DEC, and the agency sends regulators to inspect the
facilities once a year. However, the agency does not keep farms’ waste
management plans on file, and the documents are not available for
public
view. The Sierra Club, in its 2005 report “Wasting New York State,”
says
this makes enforcement difficult.
It’s a familiar refrain from environmentalists: There are too many
loopholes; too little oversight. Or as Abraham put it: “The system is
broken.”

Lagoon covers help fight global warming. TAXPAYERS MILKED AGAIN- FORCED INTO PAYING FOR A PROJECT THAT WOULD NOT EVEN BE NECESSARY IF CAFO CRIMINALS WERE ACTUALLY GOOD FARMERS.

http://www.theithacajournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080102/NEWS01/801020302/1002
Lagoon covers help fight global warming
Technology captures, uses emissions from liquid manure
By Bill Huttunen
Special to The Journal

KING FERRY — In an innovative move designed to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions and provide revenue for cash-strapped dairy farmers who store

liquid manure for long periods of time, Environmental Credit
Corporation
has completed installation of one of two manure lagoon covers at
Fessenden Dairy, a 550-cow Dairy of Distinction farm owned by Tim
Fessenden, of King Ferry in southern Cayuga County.

The lagoon covers will capture methane and other air emissions with
high
global warming potential produced from the manure and convert them into

less harmful carbon dioxide (CO2) through a flaring process.

This capture-and-conversion process will greatly reduce the farms’
greenhouse gas emissions to a figure roughly equal to the emissions
produced in one year by nearly 700 cars.

The reduction in emissions will be registered as carbon credits and
monetized on the Chicago Climate exchange, giving each ton of
greenhouse
gas reduction a monetary value that can be sold as an additional source

of income for farmers. Methane is 21 times more potent than CO2 in
trapping heat in the atmosphere.

Fessenden’s farm, handling more than 16,000 gallons of manure per day,
is the first one in New York to be chosen for the program based on its
progressive manure management practices and opportunities for carbon
credits. The company hopes to install more than 200 covers for other
dairy and hog farms throughout the United States over the next several
years.

Environmental Credit Corporation will pay the entire cost for
installation and project operation expenses through a $1 million United

States Department of Agriculture grant to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions, and once the system on a farm is in place, the corporation
will create and monetize the carbon credits to generate revenue.

In return, farmers such as Fessenden will be paid for their
participation in the program and simply observe and record the system
performance and do occasional maintenance. After a period of time, if
results are satisfactory, the system can be purchased outright.

“The lagoon covers will not only reduce harmful emissions, but they
will
also help in pest and odor control and improve air quality during
storage, which will please our neighbors,” Fessenden said.

Another plus will be a reduction of lagoon volume. “Last year,
rainfall
increased the lagoon volume by 30 percent. That created a problem
returning it back into the land, and it also carried over into the
croplands,” Fessenden said. “The covers will definitely help by
keeping
the rainfall out of the lagoon.”

EEC president Scott Subler believes the Lagoon Cover program is a
win-win situation for eligible farmers helping a stressed environment.

“The carbon credits are a great incentive for farmers who are
striving
to be environmentally conscious in their day-to-day work. “They’ll
receive a guaranteed payment for their work, with incentive bonuses
based on system performance.”

Environmental Credit Corporation plans to monitor farmer participation
in the program and provide onsite monitoring, documentation and carbon
credit registration up until 2020.

Fessenden anticipates having the second cover installed within the next

six months, weather permitting. “It’s very exciting to have our farm
selected to be the program’s pilot project for New York,” he said.

Article published Feb 28, 2008
Experts blame lake’s odor on farming, pols
By Krisy Gashler
Ithaca Journal Staff
ITHACA — Scientists at a public forum on phosphorus in Cayuga Lake said residents concerned about stinking algae should blame farmers and elected officials, not Lake Source Cooling.
Robert Howarth, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Cornell, said biofuels like ethanol are one of the greatest threats to water quality because they encourage farmers to grow more corn, which requires more fertilizer and herbicides, and causes more erosion, carrying phosphorus to the lake.

A proposed biofuel plant at the Seneca Army Depot could decrease water quality in Cayuga and Seneca lakes, he said.

All of the scientists, from Cornell, the Community Science Institute, the Ithaca Area Wastewater Treatment Plant and the Finger Lakes Institute, agreed that tributaries to Cayuga Lake contribute the most silt and phosphorus to Cayuga Lake.

The lake is on the EPA’s impaired water bodies list because of excessive phosphorus and silt.

Cornell’s Lake Source Cooling contributes approximately 10 percent of the phosphorus load to the lake, according to Cornell’s 2006 Lake Source Cooling monitoring report.

John Halfman, director of the Finger Lakes Institute, has been studying an increase in deep water phosphorus in Cayuga Lake. Similar trends have occurred in other Finger Lakes, he said.

He called the impact from Lake Source Cooling “miniscule.”

Rich DePaolo, an area resident, said the “lake has been studied to death.”

“We can talk about 20 micrograms per liter, but the bottom line is in the middle of the summer on the Southern shelf of Cayuga Lake you’ve got sailboats that can’t get out of the weeds, you’ve got things that smell,” he said. “When are we gonna stop studying the problem and start doing something about the problem?”

Halfman and Howarth said those interested in protecting the lake should encourage municipalities not to scrape the sides of ditches but rather let plants grow there, to capture sediment and phosphorus before it gets to streams and eventually the lake.

DePaolo and several other members of the public said they want the state Department of Environmental Conservation to enact stricter regulations on all sources of phosphorus contribution.

Roughly 50 people attended the forum Wednesday at the Tompkins County Public Library.

It was co-sponsored by Cornell Cooperative Extension and the Community Science Institute.

This is a hoot! We can’t imagine why people are getting a mite annoyed with pollution caused by livestock factories in Cayuga County.  CAFO criminals don’t respond to polite requests and everyone knows the government is ignoring neighbor’s complaints about water pollution from runoff.

Cayuga Lake Watershed Network

“Sharon Anderson stated that the project with the Community Dispute Resolution Center to begin a consensus building process to resolve issues related to pollution in Salmon Creek and Cayuga Lake is underway. This process is partially funded by the New York State Agriculture Mediation Program. She made a proposal to the group that to further this process that the WQMA provide some funds to show local support. Bruce Natale stated that the issues with agriculture in that area is getting contentious and it is getting to the point where there is a need for dispute resolution. Jim Young stated that it might be a good model to use elsewhere in the County and Steve Lynch stated that a good model could help the County with these issues.”

from Meeting Minutes of the Cayuga County Water Quality Management Agency 2/7/08

March 1, 2008
NYT Op-Ed Contributor
My Forbidden Fruits (and Vegetables)

By JACK HEDIN
Rushford, Minn.

IF you’ve stood in line at a farmers’ market recently, you know that the local food movement is thriving, to the point that small farmers are having a tough time keeping up with the demand.

But consumers who would like to be able to buy local fruits and vegetables not just at farmers’ markets, but also in the produce aisle of their supermarket, will be dismayed to learn that the federal government works deliberately and forcefully to prevent the local food movement from expanding. And the barriers that the United States Department of Agriculture has put in place will be extended when the farm bill that House and Senate negotiators are working on now goes into effect.

As a small organic vegetable producer in southern Minnesota, I know this because my efforts to expand production to meet regional demand have been severely hampered by the Agriculture Department’s commodity farm program. As I’ve looked into the politics behind those restrictions, I’ve come to understand that this is precisely the outcome that the program’s backers in California and Florida have in mind: they want to snuff out the local competition before it even gets started.

Last year, knowing that my own 100 acres wouldn’t be enough to meet demand, I rented 25 acres on two nearby corn farms. I plowed under the alfalfa hay that was established there, and planted watermelons, tomatoes and vegetables for natural-food stores and a community-supported agriculture program.

All went well until early July. That’s when the two landowners discovered that there was a problem with the local office of the Farm Service Administration, the Agriculture Department branch that runs the commodity farm program, and it was going to be expensive to fix.

The commodity farm program effectively forbids farmers who usually grow corn or the other four federally subsidized commodity crops (soybeans, rice, wheat and cotton) from trying fruit and vegetables. Because my watermelons and tomatoes had been planted on “corn base” acres, the Farm Service said, my landlords were out of compliance with the commodity program.

I’ve discovered that typically, a farmer who grows the forbidden fruits and vegetables on corn acreage not only has to give up his subsidy for the year on that acreage, he is also penalized the market value of the illicit crop, and runs the risk that those acres will be permanently ineligible for any subsidies in the future. (The penalties apply only to fruits and vegetables — if the farmer decides to grow another commodity crop, or even nothing at all, there’s no problem.)

In my case, that meant I paid my landlords $8,771 — for one season alone! And this was in a year when the high price of grain meant that only one of the government’s three crop-support programs was in effect; the total bill might be much worse in the future.

In addition, the bureaucratic entanglements that these two farmers faced at the Farm Service office were substantial. The federal farm program is making it next to impossible for farmers to rent land to me to grow fresh organic vegetables.

Why? Because national fruit and vegetable growers based in California, Florida and Texas fear competition from regional producers like myself. Through their control of Congressional delegations from those states, they have been able to virtually monopolize the country’s fresh produce markets.

That’s unfortunate, because small producers will have to expand on a significant scale across the nation if local foods are to continue to enter the mainstream as the public demands. My problems are just the tip of the iceberg.

Last year, Midwestern lawmakers proposed an amendment to the farm bill that would provide some farmers, though only those who supply processors, with some relief from the penalties that I’ve faced — for example, a soybean farmer who wanted to grow tomatoes would give up his usual subsidy on those acres but suffer none of the other penalties. However, the Congressional delegations from the big produce states made the death of what is known as Farm Flex their highest farm bill priority, and so it appears to be going nowhere, except perhaps as a tiny pilot program.

Who pays the price for this senselessness? Certainly I do, as a Midwestern vegetable farmer. But anyone trying to do what I do on, say, wheat acreage in the Dakotas, or rice acreage in Arkansas would face the same penalties. Local and regional fruit and vegetable production will languish anywhere that the commodity program has influence.

Ultimately of course, it is the consumer who will pay the greatest price for this — whether it is in the form of higher prices I will have to charge to absorb the government’s fines, or in the form of less access to the kind of fresh, local produce that the country is crying out for.

Farmers need the choice of what to plant on their farms, and consumers need more farms like mine producing high-quality fresh fruits and vegetables to meet increasing demand from local markets — without the federal government actively discouraging them.

Jack Hedin is a farmer.

This website was set up by Cornell and NYSERDA intends to provide data on CAFOs as a source of manure and food waste for digesters.  The mapping feature is a little frustrating.  It also lists other things that are near the CAFO, including schools, nursing homes, hospitals and more.

http://wastetoenergy.bee.cornell.edu

CAFOs Collect Their Checks and Keep Polluting.
CAFO operators laugh all the way to the bank!

Finger Lakes, Central New York receive $7.3M to protect waterways

Posted by dgroom <http://blog.syracuse.com/news/about.html>
February 22, 2008 13:53PM

The state today awarded $13 million to pay for projects to help keep
water clean throughout the state—with $3.8 million of that going to
the Finger Lakes and $3.5 million to Central New York.

Patrick Hooker, state commissioner of Agriculture and Markets, was at
the New York Farm Show at the state Fairgrounds to announce the awards,

which will “help farmers protect New York’s lakes, streams and rivers
from agricultural runoff.”

Manure or chemical runoff from farms can wreak havoc with water
supplies.

Debra J. GroomState Commissioner of Agriculture and Markets Patrick
Hooker announces $13 million to help farmers protect state waterways
and
water sheds from agricultural runoff

Douglas Fisher, program manager with the Onondaga County Soil and Water

Conservation District, said in the past there were problems with
pathogens from manure runoff in Skaneateles Lake, which is the drinking

water source for the city of Syracuse. There also have been sediment
deposit problems in Otisco Lake, which is a drinking water supplier for

other parts of Onondaga County.

In Cayuga County, agricultural runoff has been noted as one cause of
the
water quality problems in Owasco Lake, the prime drinking water for
most
of Cayuga County. Projects to be done in Seneca and Cayuga counties
will
reduce the ag runoff into Cayuga and Owasco lakes.

The same is true in Madison County. Steve Lorraine, district manager of

the Madison County Soil and Water Conservation District, said projects
there will help keep the Chenango, Tioughnioga and Unadilla watersheds
in good shape.

As usual, CAFO neighbors bear the burden for CAFO “cost-saving” pollution.

Mecklenburg residents, dairy farmers discuss use of fertilizer sludge
By Cara Hoffman
Special to The Ithaca Journal

Chemically treated human and municipal waste from the Syracuse metro
area containing unregulated heavy metals and PCBs is being spread on
fields in Schuyler County by Bergen Farms in a cost-saving move that
has
local residents alarmed and looking for information.

But the product — sold under the name Earth Blends or N-Viro Soil and

manufactured by Waste Stream Environmental, Inc., in Syracuse — may
be
as much of a mystery to the Bergens as it was to the crowd of concerned

citizens who packed the Mecklenburg Fire House on Wednesday night for
an
informational meeting that the Community Dispute Resolution Center
facilitated.

Sitting in folding chairs in the chilly fire hall, wearing coats and
caps, the group of more than 80 had concerns that ranged from odor,
quality of life issues and impact on real estate values, to potential
well, ground water and watershed contamination and long-term health
effects on human and animals including cancer.

According to marketing materials on the N-Viro Web site, Earth Blends,
which has a tagline of “mixtures of earthly good,” is used as a
“bio-organic and mineral fertilizer with agricultural liming and
nutrient values.”

Jim Bergen said his 2,200 head family-owned dairy operation is able to
buy the product for $7 a ton, and though it is only half as effective
as
lime for regulating the pH levels of crops, it beats the $35 a ton the
farm would pay for lime.

N-Viro goes through a number of treatment processes to neutralize E.
coli and other pathogens before it becomes the dry product that is
spread on crops. But pathogens are a small part of the equation as
Murray McBride, director of Cornell’s Waste Management Institute,
explained to residents.

Treating the sludge does not eliminate heavy metals, such as arsenic,
cadmium, lead, copper and mercury, or man-made chemicals such as PCBs,
fire retardants and dioxin, which build up in the soil over time and
bio-accumulate in crops and in the bodies of animals that eat those
crops.

McBride explained there are no EPA regulations regarding the use of
these industrial and chemical pollutants in land application. The EPA
did, however, make a statement in a 2000 report from its inspector
general’s office stating it “Cannot assure the public that current
land
application processes of sewage sludge are protective of human health
and the environment.”

The Bergens have been spreading N-Viro’s sludge product on their fields

in Odessa for 10 years. In October 2007 they purchased land in the Town

of Hector on the southwest corner of Perry City Road and the
intersections of routes 227 and 228. A month later they had spread 600
tons of the treated sludge on their fields.

Mark Ochs, CAFO planner for Bergen Farms, said that a great deal of
scrutiny goes into planning how the product is spread and that there is

a buffer of land that is not fertilized with the product between Bergen

Farm’s fields and other properties to prevent possible contamination
from runoff. “There is a lot of oversight for these plans,” Ochs
said.
“They are heavily science based.”

“The last thing we want to do is go around polluting someone’s water
source,” said Skip Bergen. But Bergen said he did not have all the
answers about what the product contains.

“The problem is the EPA says it’s OK to use this,” said Bergen’s
brother
Jim. “It shouldn’t be up to us if it has PCBs in it.” He said he
knew
the product contained some heavy metals but Wednesday’s meeting was the

first time he had ever heard the waste contained PCBs.

“We are not anti-farming,” said Mecklenburg resident Harley
Campbell.
“We are against poor farming practices and poor regulations.”
Campbell
said the farmers were led to believe what they were doing was all right

and it wasn’t. “We need to ask the Bergens as neighbors not to use
(N-Viro),” he said.

Skip Bergen nodded thoughtfully at the question. “If people were
really
upset about it, I think that’s something my brothers and I could sit
down and talk about.”

After the meeting Jim Bergen said discussing the use of the fertilizer
was a likely scenario. “There’s definitely concerns,” he said.

*Originally published January 25, 2008*

The NY Times story on EQIP grants funding lagoon construction left out
one important fact.  There is no oversight on how the EQIP grant money
is spent.  None.  They are simply issued a check to spend as
they see fit.  Nobody checks up on them to see if they are using it
for conservation purposes.  The farmer can buy a sports car, a new
tractor or a new SUV with it if he wants, and many of them do.

January 13, 2008
THE FEED
In the Farm Bill, a Creature From the Black Lagoon?

By ANDREW MARTIN
IT may not surprise you to learn that much of the pork and chicken and beef and milk that you buy at the grocery store comes from huge, industrial-size operations that bear little resemblance to the quaint family farms that adorn many food packages.

But you may be surprised to learn that your tax dollars have helped pave the way for the growth of these livestock megafarms by paying farmers to deal with the mountains of excrement that their farms generate. All of this is carried out under the rubric of “conservation.” Congress is about to renew the program — and possibly even expand it — as part of a new farm bill wending its way through the Capitol.

It’s called the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, also known as EQIP — a name that suggests an initiative to encourage farmers to improve environmental standards.

And, in fact, when the program was created as part of the 1996 farm bill, that’s exactly what it was. At the time, the government agreed to pay a share — up to 75 percent — of a conservation project, and the payments were limited to $10,000 a year. Farmers used the money for small-scale projects that had environmental benefits, like planting cover crops to prevent erosion and soak up excess nitrogen or installing fencing to better manage grazing cattle.

But in the 2002 farm bill, the program was changed at the livestock industry’s behest, and funding for the program was raised from $200 million a year to, eventually, $1.3 billion. Yearly payment limits were scratched, replaced by a provision that farmers could get no more than $450,000 during the bill’s life.

Another change: large-scale livestock facilities that once were not eligible for EQIP money were encouraged to participate under the 2002 bill.

As a result, many farmers are using their EQIP money for animal waste management practices, which include helping to pay for lagoons to store manure. The lagoons are lined ponds that are used to keep the waste until it can be pumped out for some other use, usually as fertilizer on nearby fields. In some instances, manure lagoons have leaked or overflowed into the groundwater or neighboring streams.

Defending real food in An Eater’s Manifesto
Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. These seven simple words of dietary advice are at the heart of journalist Michael Pollan’s new book, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto. Having covered the ecological repercussions of our food choices in his bestselling The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Pollan turns now to consequences for our personal health. He questions why decades of nutritional advice have left U.S. eaters fatter and less healthy than ever. His conclusion? In place of real food, Americans today are eating “edible food-like substances” that come largely from factories instead of farms. But we can, in Pollan’s words, “reclaim our health and happiness as eaters.” Read an excerpt from the book.
http://www.michaelpollan.com/indefense.php
Also, read Pollan’s recent article in the New York Times Magazine about what’s wrong with our food system.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/magazine/16wwln-lede-t.html
FROM: Union of Concerned Scientists

Thanks to Evangeline and Paul and all the other hard-working sustainable farmers who bring us delicious,healthy, locally grown foods.

Article published Jan 1, 2008
Winter isn’t fallow for vegetable farms
Root storage, greenhouses keep crops growing
By Rebecca Lerner
Special to The Ithaca Journal

Every other Wednesday in the winter, Trumansburg farmers Evangeline Sarat and Paul Martin set out to meet the people who eat their food.
“Everything we grow is for them,” said Sarat, co-owner of Sweet Land Farm. “We really believe in the idea of a community supporting a farm.”

Sweet Land Farm is a CSA (community-supported agriculture), a kind of agricultural business model that connects organic growers directly with consumers.

By cutting out the middlemen — distributors, truckers and grocers — CSAs bring in more money for farmers, who often struggle to earn a living wage. Most small farms had negative profit margins in 2004, the last year data was available, according to a report this year by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. And because members buy shares before the growing season begins, farmers have income available when they need it most, to purchase seeds and soil mixes, advertise and work on building projects.

In general, a CSA operates like this: Customers purchase shares in a farm’s harvest in advance, then come to designated pick-up points on a weekly or bi-weekly basis to pick up a pre-determined variety of produce that shifts as the season progresses.

On a recent mid-week afternoon, Sarat and Martin spread boxes of fresh kale, potatoes and other produce on the tables at Main Street’s Hazelnut Kitchen, a Village of Trumansburg eatery where they distribute their food. The CSA’s 64 wintertime members trickled in over a four-hour stretch, taking time to swap recipes and trade updates about their lives.

“A couple generations back, everyone had a garden or bought from the local grocer. It’s really different these days. Most food in the supermarket, you have no idea where it came from — you’re never going to visit that farm in California,” Sarat said.

Buying locally grown food is a way of life for many in Tompkins County, as the popularity of the GreenStar Cooperative and the Ithaca Farmers’ Market can attest. CSAs, too, have become increasingly prolific. A search on the Web site LocalHarvest.org showed 17 area CSA farms.

Most CSAs, however, operate in the summer. Sweet Land Farm in Trumansburg and Blue Heron Farm in Lodi are the only two in the area offering winter shares.

Sweet Land Farm is solely a CSA, both in the winter and the summer. Sweet Land began its operations after Sarat and Martin bought the property on the winter solstice of 2006.

Blue Heron Farm, run by Robin Ostfeld and Lou Johns, sells produce at the Ithaca Farmers Market, GreenStar Cooperative Market and to four restaurants. In 1997, Blue Heron also became a wintertime CSA, though it does not have a summer CSA program. This year, Blue Heron has upward of 120 members — each of whom pays $150 — and a long waiting list.

“We find it gratifying on many levels,” Ostfeld said. “Educating people about what it takes to grow and store food really helps to bridge the gap between passively consuming and actively choosing how to spend food dollars.”

Many of Blue Heron’s CSA customers are motivated by concern over global warming, Ostfeld said: “They want to do their part to eliminate long-distance trucking of produce from California to the Northeast in the winter.”

Local-food advocate Tycho Dan, a produce manager at GreenStar Cooperative Market, called CSAs “pioneers” in sustainability.

“Even at GreenStar, which is the most local grocery store, we get 25 percent of our apples from New Zealand in a given year,” Dan said. “It is absurd, in the opinion of a person who studies these things, how much energy and pollution comes from what we do. It’s really mind-boggling.”

But the challenge of the CSA model is that the consumer has to adjust to eating only produce that is in season, Sarat said.

Sweet Land’s June 7 distribution offered chard, parsley, cucumbers, basil, peas and broccoli. The Aug. 17 one had cantaloupes, onions, sweet peppers, summer squash, edamame and cucumbers. A recent wintertime distribution had potatoes, kale, carrots, beets, parsnips, cabbage, leeks, rutabagas and salad mix.

Wintertime distributions generally contain less variety than summertime distributions because they include root vegetables that the farms have stored in humid cellars, in addition to freshly harvested produce. Kale grows outside unprotected in the winter because it can survive freezing temperatures, but other items, such as lettuce varieties, are grown inside a greenhouse in tunnels covered by poly-blend fabric.

EPA has failed to set adequate CAFO standards
From Auburn Citizen

Sunday, December 30, 2007 3:04 AM EST

In response to the proposed hog factory farm in Montezuma, past news
articles have quoted the farm owner, Richard Snyder, as stating that he

intends to “follow the rules” and regulations of running a
large-scale
factory farm. Although his intentions seem sincere, there is a major
flaw with the regulations themselves. Did you know that although the
Clean Water Act requires large livestock operations to obtain permits
for more than 30 years, noncompliance has been widespread? In 2001, the

EPA estimated that at least 13,000 concentrated animal feeding
operations CAFOs — were required to have Clean Water Act permits, but

the EPA had issued just 2,520 permits. Some states with the highest
numbers of CAFO#s have issued the fewest permits under the Clean Water
Act. How many CAFO#s are operating without permits because of this lack

of oversight?

As reported by the Environmental Integrity Project, the EPA enforcement

against CAFO#s is almost non-existent. The EPA has not taken a position

on regulations, legislative efforts to protect the environment, welfare

or public health. Because the EPA has failed to set strong standards
for
CAFO regulation, state laws vary. Because of the lack of oversight from

the EPA, and non-existent regulations for CAFO#s, the factory farms
have
been allowed to build and expand with no thought to the environment or
public health. The industry cannot have it both ways. If the CAFO
industry cannot manage or control its pollution, then there needs to be

a moratorium on the expansion or building of new CAFO#s until they can.

When Mr. Snyder states he’s going to “follow the rules”, the
public and
our elected officials needs to realize there are no rules.

Nicole Ward

Montezuma