Friends of Rural New York

COMMENT:
Would someone account for the vast amounts of money already donated to CAFOs?
Would anyone at the POST STANDARD investigate and report on how CAFO operators have spent the grants from both state and federal governments and why after all the taxpayer money expended these guys still pollute?
Does the editor know that every time we taxpayers donate more money to CAFO operators they use that money to expand operations and thereby pollute even more.
Why is it the folks at the PS can do a superb job of investigating economic development subsidies but they leave industrial agriculture alone?
NO- THEY DO NOT NEED MORE SUBSIDIES_ BY THE VERY DEFINITION OF CAFO (CONCENTRATED ANIMAL FEEDING OPERATION) MANURE IS USED AS A WASTE PRODUCT. THE CAFO IS A FAILED MODEL, STUPID!

Sustainable Farms: State can do more to help small operations with environment
Posted by Post-Standard Editorial Board December 06, 2007 5:00AM
Categories: Editorial
When you herd cows together, you can count on at least two things: lots of methane and lots of manure. Bring together 3,000 cows in a major dairy operation, the Sierra Club says, and you’ll get four times as much “excreta” as is produced by the entire city of Syracuse.

Animal farms are known as CAFOs—Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations. Although New York state has among the nation’s most stringent regulations in the nation, the farms remain a pollution threat to their surroundings. Two years ago, a massive manure spill at the Marks Dairy Farm in rural Lewis County befouled a 20-mile stretch of the Black River. Neighbors of the 4,000-cow Willet Dairy in Cayuga County have spent five years pursuing a pollution lawsuit. A proposal to bring a 2,000-pig farm to Montezuma has area residents up in arms.

Would New York be better off with no such farms? It’s not just an academic question: Between 1997 and 2002, the state lost 127,000 acres of farmland—an average of 70 acres per day. As farm advocates point out, all too often a farmer’s last “crop” is houses. In 2003 alone, the state lost 1,000 small farms, many of them replaced with housing developments. Last year, depressed prices for milk helped put 500 more dairy farmers out of business.

Most of New York’s dairy farms are family-owned, with relatively small herd sizes. Over the last decade, all 147 of the largest animal farms signed on to the state permitting system and invested in responsible environmental practices. The 464 medium-size farms—with 200 to 700 cows—also are regulated by the state Department of Environmental Conservation. But when profit margins shrink, they struggle with the cost of complying with pollution-prevention rules.

The state Farm Bureau is pressing for more government involvement to help the small and medium-sized farms stay in business as responsible environmental stewards. Instead of focusing mainly on enforcement, they urge the DEC to work with the experts in the Department of Agriculture and Markets and its Soil and Water Conservation Districts, who in turn will work with farmers to improve and maintain their conservation practices without driving them to insolvency.

This will cost money. Already, the DEC under Gov. Eliot Spitzer has increased inspections, added inspectors and sponsored “road show” information seminars for farmers. It also doubled the animal farm compliance budget from $6 million to $12 million.

The Farm Bureau is asking for a major boost in funding—up to $30 million—to provide more technical assistance to help farmers comply with the environmental rules. That money would not come from average taxpayers, but from the state Environmental Protection Fund, which is funded through the real estate transfer tax.

There are many pressing demands on the fund. But with a kitty of some $300 million, surely a bit more can be allocated to protecting New York’s air, land and water—and keeping family farmers in business.