Friends of Rural New York

Discussion posts are asking what candidate Spitzer has to say about factory farms.

There are several posts on the Spitzer2006 website regarding factory farm problems. So far we have not heard Eliot Spitzer’s platform on agriculture in New York State. Perhaps some of you readers can persuade him to reveal his strategy for rural New York. He must know that family farmers are suffering and that as a result many of our rural communities are in woeful straits.
Does Eliot Spitzer have a plan for upstate New York?

Homeowners and environmental groups say no to Dutch CAFOs.

Over the past seven years, more than 40 Dutch dairy farmers have relocated to the midwest, driven out of the Netherlands by costly milk quotas, intense competition, tough environmental regulations and high land prices that made expanding their farms prohibitively expensive.
See;

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/03/27/news/dutch.html

http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/aer824/

“Complying with the EPA regulations will require CAFOs to spread their manure over
a much larger land base than they are currently using, and most will need to move
their manure off farm. Only 18 percent of large hog farms and 23 percent of large
dairies are currently applying manure on enough cropland to meet a nitrogen standard.”
See entire report.

You can help undermine the ravages of industrialized agriculture. Now that spring is arriving in New York State there are at least two options for buying locally grown produce.

One option is to shop at a local Farmer’s Market. If you’re careful, you can buy directly from the farmer that grows the produce. If you still eat animal foods, farmer’s markets also offer pasture-raised animal foods. Parents and children enjoy the Farmer’s Market experience.

There are also community supported agriculture programs available. We pay a local farmer a deposit in the spring. That helps him get his growing season started and he delivers a beautiful box of locally grown organic fruits and veggies every week. What a treat!

Willet Dairy of Locke, NY has total U.S. Department of Agriculture subsidies for 1995-2003 of $735,340.80.
This is for a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation business model.

The Farm Bureau preaches that the CAFO method is efficient. If the model is efficient, why do you and I have to send them our tax money?

Wouldn’t you like to have that kind of welfare payment to help your business?

Besides the welfare money, a CAFO business is exempt from local building codes and, the NY Department of Environmental Conservation looks the other way when a CAFO degrades local streams and emits industrial strength air pollution. The “Right to Farm” law is misinterpreted to protect even the most irresponsible CAFO operator.

For more information on how you can build a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation and thus rip off the taxpayer, call the Farm Bureau or call Peter Wright at Cornell University.

What a sweet, sweet deal for owners of this failed business model.

It is called privatizing the profits and socializing the costs.

Yesterday I celebrated my birthday and my sixth anniversary of abstinance from dairy products. I feel good knowing that my food money does not go to support New York’s State’s animal factories. The transition was not easy. I used to drink at least a quart of milk a day. I love cheese and giving it up has been a real exercise in will power. Ice cream? no more rum raisin or maple walnut!

People always ask about calcium. That has not been a problem. I just pig out on dark greens and have developed a fondness for collards. I am the only one I know who eats collard greens for breakfast. Between the greens and the soy milk, I am getting plenty of calcium.

I got another reward when I lost 25 pounds without even trying. It must be the good karma from not supporting CAFO (concentrated animal feeding operation) bank accounts!

I cannot control the people who are damaging our rural countryside with their misguided farming practices but I can control myself. I will not give up my money to support them.

Now...if I can just do something about my tax money going into those fat subsidies they get.

Horizon Milk is a CAFO (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation)

“It is our contention that you cannot milk 2000–6000 cows and offer them true access to pasture as required by the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990, the law that governs all domestic organic farming and food processing,â€? said Mark Kastel, Senior Farm Policy Analyst, at the Cornucopia Institute. “Both the Idaho and California operations differ little from conventional confinement dairies other than having their high-producing cows fed certified organic feed. Real organic farms have made great financial investments in converting to pasture-based production – enhancing the nutritional properties of the milk and for enhancing animal health – while it appears that these large corporate-dominated enterprises are happy just to pay lip service to required organic ethics.”
See:
http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=20050319152603406

Methamphetamine is one of the fastest growing health problems in rural New York. This is not surprising given the level of poverty and despair in our rural ghettos. Meth is manufactured with anhydrous ammonia, a chemical that is readily available on large and rich farms (CAFOs). According to news reports, anhydrous ammonia thieves are rampant in Cayuga and Tioga Counties. Folks steal anhydrous ammonia from a local farmer, set up a meth lab and create a lucrative business

As rural communities become more decimated, poverty, crime and drugs are making the hinterlands into dangerous places. In both urban and rural ghettos, there are few other career choices that pay as well.  News reports quote meth prices at $100 a gram or $1700 an ounce. That income sure beats the pay of a farm hand or a big box retail clerk.

State and federal farm subsidies go to agribusiness and that has allowed huge operations to put the family farmer out of business. When the small farmers leave, the rural community is decimated. The consequences of that are unemployment, poverty, the bankruptcy of allied businesses, decline in the tax base, desperation, crime and drug use.

Politicians in Albany are looking for legislation to study the misuse of anhydrous ammonia. They are doing what they do so well – whining about the symptoms without dealing with the cause.

Governor Pataki, Nathan Rudgers at NYS Ag and Markets, Peter Wright, the CAFO magician from Cornell University and the Farm Bureau are in the media crying about meth abuse but when it comes to admitting that the failed model mega-farm policies are part of the cause, watch them duck and cover.

Meth is an issue of failed agricultural policy. New York’s bureaucrats, politicians and Cornell’s so-called intelligentsia appear to be either clueless or ethically challenged.

Thanks to Charlie Talbert for reminding us that “we as individual consumers with our purchases, are giving orders to agribusiness and when our orders change, so will its practices.”
Do you know where your milk or your bacon is coming from?
Many of us have either cut back or given up on milk products. We’ve taken to soy milk because those little soybeans don’t put poop in our streams.
Give it some thought.

On March 3, the environmental group Earthjustice announced that the Florida court ruled that factory dairies can no longer dump manure-polluted waste into state waters and directed the Florida Department of Environmental protection (DEP) to start enforcing water protection laws.

“The state of Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection exempted concentrated animal feeding operations—large dairies and feedlots—from obtaining discharge permits for their polluted runoff. These CAFOs contaminated Florida’s waterways with huge amounts of animal wastes, which the permitting program is designed to limit.

Earthjustice, representing several conservation groups, filed suit in May 2001, after these organizations spent years unsuccessfully trying to persuade Florida DEP to enforce water pollution laws that prohibit dairies from dumping untreated animal waste into surface and groundwater.

In March 2004, the Florida Circuit Court ruled that these exemptions were illegal loopholes, and that the DEP was required to protect water quality from these polluting dairy and feedlot operations. The DEP appealed the ruling, and in March 2005, 1st District Court of Appeals in Tallahassee, affirmed the decision made by the Leon County, Florida, Circuit Court.

The ruling requires DEP to comply with federal clean water laws and issue water discharge permits for dairy operations.�
This announcement was taken from the Earthjustice website.
For more information see http://www.Earthjustice.org

The findings of a study on the Northern NY dairy industry were presented on Feb 25 in Watertown. We were not able to be there so we read the synopsis and now we wait anxiously for the usual platitudes to be announced by the usual suspects.
We did our own study by meeting a group of dairy farmers in LaFargeville one rainy night and listened to the dire circumstances of our small dairy farmers in northern New York.  They told us that every week one of their colleagues is squeezed out of the business and they themselves work off the farm just to keep body and soul together. Farm auctions take on the atmosphere of a family funeral.
According to the state bureaucrats, the NY dairy industry is “facing significant changesâ€?. We have more milk produced due to what they call “efficiencies and improvements.â€?  Our farmer friends tell us what that means is:
Farmer Bigcafo gets bigger and bigger. He is helped out with price breaks and transportation breaks from the co-ops. He is further supported by taxpayer subsidies (welfare). He gets up to his neck in manure, which he stores, in a huge cesspool, which then pollutes the nearby streams and the groundwater. He sprays the slurry on too-small fields thereby choking his neighbors and giving their kids asthma and neurological damage.
This is very profitable.

It is called privatizing the profits and socializing the costs.

Meanwhile Farmer LittleDairy gets squeezed out of business. This is called “innovation.�
This innovative system is supported by the state bureaucrats such as the Department of Environmental Conservation, which will not enforce EPA regulations; by politicians such as Senator Nozzolio who tell complaining citizens that they are “collateral damage� and by Farm Bureau bullies who hammer town officials who try to pass zoning regulations.
Then there is Governor Pataki (the environmental governor). During his administration New York State has lost 31% of its dairy farms. Rural New York looks like a war zone, and decent, ethical farmers are getting shafted.
We can’t wait to read the full report.

Professor David Zartman, a professor of animal science at Ohio State University has predicted that within one generation, CAFOs will move out of the USA. We will be raising farmed animals in a system of pastoral farming, he says. That’s good news for the suffering neighbors of U.S. factory farms and really good news for those farmers dedicated to sustainable farming. (Though we have to feel sad for the new victims in the developing world)
Zartman claims that the pressure of environmental advocates and animal rights groups plus a depleting supply of laborers willing to work in these agricultural cesspools is spelling the end of livestock factories.
Though Zartman didn’t mention it, we also have to thank people like the American Public Health Association who have documented the public health risks of CAFO meat and dairy products.
Reported by Danya Cain at TribTown.com on March 1, 2005
(For pasture-raised sources in New York State, see our listing under “links”.)

The Village Voice has published an article on CAFOs. (and they have 200,000 readers!!!)

The current edition of the Village Voice has published an article concerning CAFOs.  You can read it at this link: http://villagevoice.com/specials/0510,letters,61882,7.html

The linked page has all of this week’s letters.  The article is about two-thirds of the way down, under the headline “Meating of minds”.

Sunday evening web blog avoids the CAFO question.

Mr. Spitzer:
I have spoken with people from many areas of New York State who can document Clean Water Act violations by New York CAFOs.
They tell me that the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation is not responsive to their telephone calls. They are brushed off or put on hold for long periods and in some cases have experienced agents who have hung up on them. These complaints come from Erie County, Niagara County, Cayuga County, Washington County and Cortland County. These are good people who are not exaggerating the problems with irresponsible CAFO owners.
After checking with documents in your office, it appears that you have been able to bring only 2 cases against CAFO owners.
The DEC is simply not enforcing regulations and the few regulations we have are inadequate.
As governor, what will you do to help save the environment of rural New York from the over 700 permitted and the several hundred illegal CAFOs in New York State?

CAFO victims in Western NY and all over New York State are complaining that the
Department of Environmental Conservation is not enforcing regulations. ..

The U.S. Court of Appeals in New York declared yesterday that a 2003 Bush administration rule violates the Clean Water Act. The rule allowed CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) to apply manure to land without federal oversight or public input. CAFOs are point sources of water pollution that must be regulated under the Clean Water Act’s permitting program, which in New York State is administered by the Department of Environmental Conservation. The court agreed that CAFO polluters must be held accountable because they pose a threat to public health.

Western New York has many CAFOs that threaten air, water and public health. The town of Perry in Wyoming County is afflicted with more than thirteen CAFO operations. Wyoming County has more than 62 permitted facilities.
CAFO victims in Western NY and all over New York State are complaining that the Department of Environmental Conservation is not enforcing regulations. In Niagara County, neighbors in Wilson are trying to get enforcement action for violations by CAFO owner Flevie Danielewicz. Manure slurry from the Danielewicz farm is running into a nearby creek and from there into Lake Ontario. Slurry residue is visible in roadside culverts. The stench is indescribable. According to a neighborhood group, a representative from Region 9 DEC inspected the Danielewicz operation last August after complaints about air and water violations. It has been 6 months and there is still no report. Neighbor, John Minnick, claims that his phone calls are not returned or he is put on hold and left there.

In Eden, NY, neighbor Gregg Kaczmarzyk describes his life as a CAFO neighbor as pure hell. Gregg says his neighbor has 400 cows packed into a couple of acres. Residential housing including a soon-to-be built new development of 24 houses surrounds this CAFO. The DEC has complaints about overflowing manure lagoons and ground water contamination from the CAFO. Gregg has not received a promise of action from the DEC.

There are seventeen permitted CAFOs in Erie County and seven in Niagara County. Over the years, the Region 9 DEC has received stacks of complaints about excessive manure runoff or toxic hydrogen sulfide emissions. We now have further validation from the courts that CAFOs are point sources of pollution and they must be regulated. In New York, that job is entrusted to the DEC.  We have learned that we cannot trust the DEC to do its job. The citizens who have the misfortune to live near these agri-criminals continue to suffer a great injustice.
Originally published on www .altpressonline.com/