Richard Finley IV
Are family farms being replaced in Wisconsin? My major is
Land Use Planning. The topic of this
blog is CAFOs or Confined Animal Feeding Operations. These are farms that hold animals such as
pigs, chickens, or cows for at least 45 days of the year without
vegetation. The animals are usually kept
in large windowless buildings with feeding pits. A CAFO can house anywhere from hundreds to millions
of animals. CAFOs buy a lot more land
than just the acreage needed to build the barns. They use this land for fields to spread
manure and produce crops to feed the livestock.
Here in Wisconsin the most common CAFOs that are being
brought in are dairy farms. These farms
usually house several thousand cows that are milked around the clock. The waste from the cow is placed in pits and
then shipped out to be spread on fields that are also part of the property. Spreading manure involves a lot of trucks
hauling around the clock. Hauling and spreading manure is a smelly job and the
whole community learns this quick. Also the dairy’s massive milk outputs flood the
local markets and drive down milk prices and the demand for feed up. The change in prices makes owning a small
family diary of 60 to 200 cows vary hard and usually these farms a driven out
of the area. Also hauling milk, feed,
and manure puts a strain on local traffic.
The extra traffic makes a once docile road become a new hauling route. So basically CAFOs are changing rural
Wisconsin and its way of life.
The pollution to the air and water is also a major problem. Pollution to water in farming through run
off, spill or even seeping in to ground water is inevitable, but the amount of
waste used and produced by CAFOs is so large and concentrated it makes
incidents of water pollution catastrophic.
There is also a concern about air pollution. The manure pits in the area create gasses
such as methane, ammonia, and hydrogen sulfide which in large amounts can be
very dangerous and with correct wind direction can cause trouble in nearby
towns. Any large farm operation is going to have large impacts on the
environment and should be monitored closely.
CAFOs are becoming more popular throughout the United States
and are moving into many rural areas in Wisconsin. In most of these areas there are small towns
that are trying to keep CAFOs out. A
good example is the town of Saratoga.
There has been a resent proposal for a CAFO to be brought into the area
and replace a large wooded area. As with many small towns in Wisconsin Saratoga
was unprepared to fight this intrusion.
The state of Wisconsin has passed a bill that a town can’t ban CAFOs
altogether. However, there are ways to
prevent CAFOs from moving into your community and setting up wherever they
please. These techniques are to set up
zoning and policies that prevent CAFOs from moving into certain areas and keep
them certain distance from creeks, rivers and other water sources. I believe
that all towns should put zoning in and policies to limit CAFOs here in
Wisconsin
For other info and to follow up on the Saratoga case which
is still in courts here are some websites.
http://www.nocafos.org/
http://www.stoptherichfieldcafo.org/
http://michigan.sierraclub.org/issues/greatlakes/articles/cafofacts.html
3 comments:
Small family farms are discontinuing farming mainly because it is to much work for little return or the children that should take over the farm have moved on to bigger and better things. Unfortunately, these large farms are the only thing that can provide enough meat and milk to satisfy our community.
I would agree with the fact that many farms, especially dairy farms, are alot of work for little return. But the return would be greater if the supply of farm produts was smaller. I also argee that many family farmer's children move on but there are still quite a few that take over the family farm but now days most go to college for ag. first.
I don't necessarily think CAFO's are the best thing in the world for the environment or small rural communities and I do agree they run small farms out of business and cause ecological harm, but they are striving to become as environmentally friendly as they can be. They do utilize waste, solid, liquid and gas, in ways where the least damage is done and the maximum amount of product is utilized. As for them running small businesse farms under, they do definitely that, but people need to eat and small farms can't effectively produce enough food for our growing population and not everyone is interested in raising their own food, nor are many people even in the correct geographic location to do it. I do think CAFO's are all about their money, but what would we do without them? They make life affordable for the average person.
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