Objective is make agriculture do 'what's right'
Agriculture can do what's right when it comes to the environment. It has the resources. Let's make them step up and be accountable, stop polluting and act responsibly, said Peter McKeever, attorney with Garvey, McNeil & McGillivray. In opening, McKeever said the objective of the conference was to build a network that can work to bring about change. He used a three-legged stool analogy and said that large agriculture operations all too often cause all legs of the stool to tip. Large animal confinement operations, also known as CAFOs (confined animal feeding operations) "benefit only themselves and not the community," said McKeever. "Water and air belongs to everyone. Industry has no right to infringe itself on neighbors." McKeever said stronger legislative initiatives are needed in Wisconsin and elsewhere to keep industry from controlling the political system and to protect communities.

Jamie Saul, staff attorney of the Midwest Environmental Advocates (MEA) told Feedstuffs that the place to start in correcting the imbalance is at the local level by giving control back to the counties and townships. Doing so, he said, would allow some communities to remain CAFO-free.

CAFOs aren’t the problem polluters in Wisconsin
Animal manure is an environmental concern in Wisconsin but violations to date show CAFOs are not the major source of problems, said Gordon Stevenson of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. Neither CAFOs nor non-CAFO operations are without sin when it comes to the environment but, he noted, in general it has been the smaller farms, even some organic farms that have historically been responsible for the state’s environmental problems. Stevenson shared with the group the extensive list of regulatory requirements that CAFOs are required to meet compared with the lack of requirements for non-CAFO operations. Of Wisconsin’s 30,000 plus livestock operations, Stevenson said there are only approximately 180 that are registered CAFOs. "We are talking about a small percentage of farmers in Wisconsin that are CAFOs." A CAFO is an operation with 1,000 or more animal units. Animal units are primarily calculated based on the weight of the animal. For dairy animals, 1,000 animal units is equivalent to 700 milking cows.

Call goes out to 'take on big agriculture'
Author and columnist Jim Hightower urged consumers and environmentalists to join together to pursue a united fight against big agriculture. It is possible to "escape the corporate tentacles," he said, encouraging those taking on the state's CAFOs to continue the battle. The fight, though, he said, will not be easy considering agriculture's money and power and influence on politicians. "You are trying to change some 60-odd years of ignorance and arrogance, avarice that have brought us an industrialized, conglomeratized, subsidized and globalized food and agricultural system that is unsustainable," said the former Texas agriculture commissioner. "It is a system that runs roughshod over family farmers, runs roughshod over our soil and water, over small business and rural communities, over food and industry workers, over consumers, over food itself, over our people's values of fairness and justice and opportunity. The agribusiness powers get to thinking they are the top dogs and we are just a bunch of fire hydrants out here in the countryside." Hightower likened CAFOs to "the concentration camps of agriculture" and accused corporate agriculture of turning food production into an assembly line using genetic engineering, antibiotics, sex hormones, irradiation and cloning so that "every cow and every tomato will have the same texture, taste and composition." He called for a grassroots effort toward a sustainable agriculture that unites farm families with consumers, with environmentalists and with local economies.

Agriculture's power in political circles called to great
When it comes to politics, the big corporate farms have a definite advantage over the family farms, said Mike McCabe, executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. He said the "huge amount" of money infused by corporate agriculture into the political arena directly influences the distribution of grants, low interest loans and tax credits granted by the state commerce department. He said his calculation show corporate agriculture donors in the state received eight times the financial support of non-agricultural contributors. He also said there seems to be a general feeling in state political circles that only big corporate farms are good farms and that the small family farms are "too stupid" to accept technology to improve their operations and productivity.

Laurie Fischer of the Wisconsin Dairy Business Assn. told Feedstuffs that 98% of the state dairy farms are considered family farms and that many are very accepting of technology and recognize the benefits it can provide the production of a safe, affordable and abundant food supply.

Organic farmer says consumers must open up their wallets
Predicting an end to the "inefficiency" of big agriculture, organic farmer Jim Goodman told those gathered in Madison, that organic food production at the local level needs to be the future direction of U.S. food production. A strong proponent of organic agriculture, Goodman addressed the question of whether organic food production is sufficient to feed the world by stating that we haven’t been able to feed the world through conventional agriculture so what’s the difference.

The first step in a move to a more organic model is a willingness on the part of consumers to open their wallets and pay more for their food, said Goodman. It isn't going to work if we see a situation here like that which occurred in the U.K. when the tethering of sows was banned, the price of pork went up and consumers went to the grocery store and instead bought Danish pork raised in confinement because it was less expensive. Goodman also encouraged traditional organic farmers to make their voice known against the large organic farms and push those big companies to meet the stated organic requirements.