Archive: Opinions

According to the Congressional Research Service's "Air Quality Issues and Animal Agriculture: A Primer" December 22, 2014 - "AFOs [animal feeding operations] can affect air quality through emissions of gases such as ammonia and hydrogen sulfide, particulate matter, volatile organic compounds, hazardous air pollutants, and odor. These pollutants and compounds have a number of environmental and human health effects."

"Agricultural operations have been treated differently from other businesses under numerous federal and state laws. Some environmental laws specifically exempt agriculture from regulatory provisions, and some are designed so that farms are not subject to most, if not all, of the regulatory impact."

A 2006 study commissioned by the North Dakota Attorney General's Office provides a review of 56 socioeconomic studies concerning the impacts of industrial agriculture on rural communities. It concluded: "Based on the evidence generated by social science research, we conclude that public concern about the detrimental community impacts of industrialized farming is warranted. In brief, this conclusion rests on five decades of government and academic concern with this topic, a concern that has not abetted but that has grown more intense in recent years, as the social and environmental problems associated with large animal confinement operations [CAFOs] have become widely recognized."

From "Impacts of CAFOs on Rural Communities" by John Ikerd [Professor Emeritus, U. of Missouri]: "Any tax benefits resulting from increased economic activity are more than offset by increasing public expenditures for schools, law enforcement, and social services, in addition to the increased costs of maintaining roads and bridges due to increased truck traffic hauling feed and livestock to and from CAFOs. The research verifies that most of the promised increases in tax revenues never materialize, as most of the jobs go to people from outside the community and CAFOs spend relatively little for feed or other operating needs within their local communities.  I have not found a single case where local property tax rates have been reduced or local public services have been improved as a result of CAFOs choosing to locate in a community.

"Perhaps most compelling, there is not a single community where CAFOs represent a significant segment of the local economy that is looked to by other communities as a model for rural community development."

It's very important that Lansing residents become informed on the Lansing Agriculture and Farmland Protection Plan and its ramifications before the public meetings. I need to emphasize the need for a series of meetings, because the minimum single public meeting required by law is completely inadequate to ensure the process of public questions and answers, discussion and thought that this plan requires before any approval is even contemplated. In spite of its innocuous and low-impact label, this plan is definitely a "game changer" for Lansing's future.

The Ag Plan promoters use skewed statistics and unsupported arguments to create an atmosphere of unease and force a perception of Lansing's agriculture under siege, but close scrutiny and factual research quickly exposes its many flaws:

1. Creation of an Agricultural District will not help the future of most of Lansing's farms. NYS Agriculture District descriptions are always careful to mention "viable farms," never existing farms, local farms or small farms. Viable farms is a phrase which describes farms that can compete with the largest corporate or factory farms, and if not, too bad. Ag District laws are designed to favor the expansion and profitability of CAFOs (Confined Animal Feeding Operations) and large Agribusiness interests at whatever cost to smaller existing farms and rural neighbors.

The creation of an Ag District won't do anything to protect Lansing's farmers from their greatest threats — it won't stop the rapid acquisition of Lansing farmland by Cayuga County's giant corporate farms, and it won't stop the ever increasing tax assessments that these CAFOs, with their economy of scale and financial backing, have brought to agricultural land sale prices in Lansing — tax assessments that have much more impact on the renting landowners than residential development.

Most of the renting landowners surveyed responded by saying there was not a great deal of housing development pressure, and three-quarters of them "indicated nearby development would not influence them to subdivide their land." So, if there is no real problem with development pressure, why should we create large tracts of residential development in south Lansing to relieve it?

2. GAAMPS (Generally Accepted Agriculture and Management Practices) are economically bad for the community and an increasing danger to the health and well being of its residents and the environment.

According to New York State Department of Environmental Conservation: "Current water quality standards for water supply use of the lake are also being met. However while NYSDEC considers the lake to have water quality suitable for use as a water supply, this use has been assessed as threatened.

In the case of Cayuga Lake, the potential threats are due to considerable agricultural activity, wastewater sources, and other contributors of nutrients in the watershed."

From: National Association of Local Boards of Health publication "Understanding Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations and Their Impact on Communities:" "All of the environmental problems with CAFOs have direct impact on human health and welfare for communities that contain large industrial farms. As the following sections demonstrate, human health can suffer because of contaminated air and degraded water quality, or from diseases spread from farms. Quality of life can suffer because of odors or insect vectors surrounding farms, and property values can drop, affecting the financial stability of a community."

Their conclusion: "Concentrated animal feeding operations or large industrial animal farms can cause a myriad of environmental and public health problems."

From "Impacts of CAFOs on Rural Communities" by John Ikerd: "In calling for a nationwide moratorium on CAFOs, the American Public Health Association cited more than 40 scientific reports indicating health concerns related to CAFOs. The citations include research from such prestigious institutions as the University of North Carolina Medical School, the University of Iowa Medical School, and the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. In testifying before a U.S. congressional committee, the Director of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health cited scientific evidence concerning the contamination of air, water, soil, and foods with toxic chemicals, infectious diseases, antibiotic resistant bacteria, and E. coli."

A letter expressing concerns "regarding the health of Wisconsin's rural citizens" to Kewaunee [Wisconsin] CARES from researchers at The Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future concludes:

"A growing body of evidence has implicated the generation and management of manure from intensive livestock operations in the spread of infectious disease (including antibiotic-resistant strains), the introduction of microbial and chemical contaminants into ground and surface waters, impacts to air quality, and the wide range of adverse health, social, ecological and economic outcomes that result from these events."

This is only a tiny fraction of the material that any search on the internet generates, including a continually growing list of large manure spills, fish kills, algae blooms and instances of E coli and nitrate contaminated drinking water. But for an eye-opening glimpse into one possible Lansing future, Google the Yakima Valley, where as one source describes it: "USGS stated the pollution goes down over 700 feet deep in Yakima Valley. Water contamination is not just a shallow well problem. Yakima River is listed as impaired. The whole aquifer is in danger of becoming contaminated."

To put things in perspective - it was the Generally Accepted Agriculture and Management Practice of "deep plowing" that caused the Dust Bowl, the drought only exposed its defects.

3. Creation of an Agricultural District puts our land under the control of political appointees and lobbyists, leaving the local community unprotected from any act they wish to commit. The Commissioner of the New York State Department of Agriculture is the sole arbiter of all decisions in an Ag District. The Commissioner decides what activities constitute "agriculture," and if the Commissioner decides that any local laws are "restrictive" of these activities, he can force them to be changed. Rather than protecting the farming community, the creation of an Ag District is a tool that allows owners of any "agricultural" designated activity to do whatever they want, without regard to its effect on the sustainability of local farming or the rural community — it's a tool designed to remove the obstacle of home rule from the path of corporate profits.

4. We can do better. The threats to Lansing's rural and agricultural community come from outside, including some of the backers of this plan with their own agenda for Lansing's future. Our local community can do a much better job at identifying and helping those who need help. Communities are all about people, and in an age where our government officials and bureaucrats see themselves increasingly as rulers and molders, not representatives, and view Lansing's residents as disposable items in a bigger plan, it's important to remember that.

Cornell, whose Cooperative Extension has been spearheading Lansing's Ag District creation as a kind of CAFO welcome mat, sees their own community's health and welfare in a different light. Ithaca's 2014 Comprehensive Plan states:

"Goal AG‐6:  Protect the environment and human and animal health from the negative impacts of large concentrated animal‐feeding operations" (CAFOs).

Unsurprisingly, Lansing's Town Board pushed through zoning changes, just weeks before the Ag Plan was made public, to prohibit any dairy farming activities outside of the proposed Ag District. It was fascinating to hear their excuses for not being put into a situation that they deny even exists.

Lansing's "Recommendation for Agriculture and Farmland Protection" by planner George R. Frantz states "Uses that are less compatible with farming that would be excluded from the AG zone include:… nursing homes, multi-family housing, hotels, restaurants and health care facilities, that can be adversely affected by the noise, dust and odors associated with contemporary agricultural operations."  There is no mention, however, of its impact on the hundreds of rural families [and especially on the children and elderly] who are already living in the proposed AG zone, many of whom had lived there for generations before factory farms invaded the town.

As Prof. John Ikerd concludes in "Impacts of CAFOs on Rural Communities:" "The preponderance of scientific [research] leaves little credible doubt that CAFOs represent significant environmental and health risks to rural residents. The only remaining question is whether rural people have the right to do anything about it."

The Agribusiness lobby is fighting back against a mountain of proven unfavorable health, economic and environmental findings by persuading legislators and town governments to sacrifice their rural neighbors as a necessary act for the "greater good," and to create the perception that these families are somehow less worthy of basic citizen rights. The town of Goshen CT [Title 70 - Right to Farm] comes right out and dismissively states: "It is hereby further legislatively determined that whatever impact may be caused to others through normal generally accepted agricultural practices, such impact is offset and ameliorated by the benefits of farming to the neighborhood, community, and society in general."

And lest you fall for the argument that CAFO friendly Industrial Agriculture policies are being enacted to feed America's future, you should know that our government has increasingly been approving the sale of our farms and farmland to foreign countries. China alone now owns more than $1.4 billion of US farmland and 1 in 4 pigs raised in the U.S.

In an interview with Yale Environment 360, Robert Martin, co-author of a recent study on industrial farm animal production states "The purchase of Smithfield by a large Chinese company is very concerning. Number one, it is a huge export of U.S. energy and grain and water to China in the form of pigs. There is a virtually insatiable appetite for pork in China. So I worry that we will be a net loser from an environmental and energy standpoint — and all we will be left with is the hog [manure]."

China recently announced they have already polluted 20% of their farmland through "human industrial and agricultural activities," and coupled with US Agricultural laws that have little or no pollution restraints, and a government that seems willing to sacrifice both its rural population and the environment for the "greater good," the future looks scary.

Today's Agribusinesses have no commitment to clean air, clean water and unpolluted land — instead they favor the maximum allowable pollution model, with any "accidents" automatically forgiven.

Like buying an old trusted company in order to use its name, GAAMPS agriculture trades on the public's concept of an agrarian ideal and closeness to nature to cover up a purely money-making activity that is at war with its neighbors, the environment and the natural world.

It's also worth noting that this "Agriculture and Farmland Protection Plan" covers far more than the proposed Agricultural District. The approval of the plan's aims and priorities amounts to a mandate and will constitute a de facto Comprehensive Plan for the entire town of Lansing.

Even if the Lansing Ag Plan's illogical and unsubstantiated claim that promoting high density residential development relieves development pressure can be accepted, the obvious solution is to put this high density development in Ithaca, the root cause of the sprawl. The Ag Plan's own report and its proposed solution contains far darker implications for Lansing: Take high density housing, multiply by the high cost of residential services and add this to the plan's findings that the job creations are in the Village of Lansing, and you get a worst case scenario for Lansing taxpayers: a huge increase in taxes to pay for the schools and other services demanded by a large influx of new families, who will then work and spend their money in the Village of Lansing and in Ithaca.

The truth of this can be shown simply by plugging in data that is readily available to both the Ag Plan Committee and town officials, and Lansing residents have a right to expect this type of modeling as a standard part of the development planning and approval process.

In a town where high taxes are already cutting into the money many families need for food, heat and healthcare, what responsible political, financial or planning officer would, in good faith, propose such a solution?

This long letter contains only a few of the many points that need to be thoroughly explored before this proposed Town of Lansing Agriculture and Farmland Protection Plan can be allowed anywhere near ratification. It's an "Ag Plan" that calls for the destruction of Lansing's open character and traditional farms in exchange for polluted land, tainted wells and waterways, noxious air, warehouses, slaughter houses and processing plants, crowded schools, congested roads and high taxes. If you wonder why anyone would want this for their community, come to the meetings and ask.

The choice is yours. You can stay home rereading old anti-fracking literature, or go out and make a big difference in Lansing and your children's future. The first step is to demand a series of public meetings that are well announced and publicized far in advance. Then get informed, attend and ask questions. This kind of chance won't come around again.

Sincerely,

Doug Baird
Lansing, NY
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