Dodge County, Inc.: big ag and the undoing of rural America by Sonja Trom Eayrs
Sonja Trom Eayrs grew up on a farm in rural Minnesota. The farm went back several generations and was the pride and joy of her family. Like many family farms, it was diverse - growing a rotation of crops for sale and a large vegetable garden for their family. In the late 1990s and early 2000s they noticed a huge change in local farming. Huge pig CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) were being constructed all around them. When anyone in the community tried to fight back or enforce current county codes, there was a LOT of pushback from the CAFO owners and operators. Not one to easily give up, Sonja and her family filed several lawsuits, started grassroots organizations, and fought back equally hard. Spoiler alert: they didn't win. But they do see some progress in other areas and help other communities with what they learned along the way.
I've read a LOT about factory farming and know full well all the evils that come from this way of "farming." But reading this book made my blood boil. In Eayrs community and nearby communities she witnessed Big Ag taking over the governments of these small towns with their yes men who would ignore the law or in some cases CHANGE IT to better suit the construction of the CAFOs and the destruction of the communities. Then to have the nerve to threaten anyone who spoke out - death threats, false police reports, dumping trash and dead animals on their lawn, etc. She had people interviewed for this book who still wanted to be anonymous 25 years later because they were still afraid of speaking out. After reading this book I decided that every one of the people who lied, schemed, threatened, paid off, and bullied their way into forcing these abominable CAFOs on these communities should be forced to live there. Not just on site, but inside the pig barns. They want to lie about the health issues around CAFOs - show me. Live in it yourself. Or we could just throw them in the manure lagoons... While this book is definitely not a happy ending or a triumphant David vs. Goliath story, it's still an important read. What Eayrs exposes is not just the evils of CAFOs but the way these corporations are taking over small towns - changing the government, forcing people out of generational land and farms - all to line their pockets. May each one of them rot in a special hell just for them of pig manure.
There were a lot of good quotes, I'll try to limit here:
"The bit of propaganda repeated most often by 'Big Ag' (big agriculture) lobbyists is that corporate agriculture 'feeds the world.'...But consider this: the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) released numbers in 2018 that indicated the United States produced approximately seventy-three million hogs that year - the same number of hogs it produced in 1943." (p. 15)
"By signing a contract, young farmers essentially become low-wage corporate employees. Most growers do not receive a pay increase, not even a cost-of-living adjustment, during the contract term. Likewise, they do not get a pension contribution, profit sharing, or health insurance. Many economists and ag scholars deem the grower-integrator relationship today's version of sharecropping." (p. 37)
"The single most important organization in enabling the rapid takeover of hog country was undoubtedly the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) and its state affiliates. The Farm Bureau has a chapter in every state and is active in 90 percent of all U.S. counties...the AFBF is one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington DC and is comparable to the National Rifle Association (NRA) in terms of its influence and reach. But unlike the NRA, many people are unaware of the organization's partisanship and politics." (p. 49-50)
"Indeed, at the time, proximity to a meatpacking plant was the greatest predictor of a community's increased likelihood of COVID infection, illness, and death. Research published in July 2020 found that communities near meatpacking plants had more COVID deaths than would be expected by the baseline, in the range of 4,300 to 5,200 excess deaths, representing an elevation of between 37 and 50 percent above the baseline rate. The researchers also reported that these impacts were lessened in communities where the meatpacking plants chose to shut down. Yet most didn't, and those that did close reopened within an average of nine days." (p. 225)
[On keeping meatpacking plants open with the argument of a potential meat shortage] "In reality, it was a booming time for the meat-packers. In April 2020 the pork industry, led by Smithfield and Tyson, exported a record-setting amount of pork to China...the industry produces at least 25 percent more pork than needed for domestic consumption, and government data reveals that in the spring of 2020, Smithfield had 'hundreds of millions of pounds' of meat in cold storage, or enough to feed the entire country for several months even in the theoretical complete absence of more production." (p. 226-27)
"Officials estimated that during plant closures in April 2020, about seven hundred thousand pigs across the nation could not be processed each week and had to be euthanized...Many CAFO operators resorted to depopulation methods that the AVMA (American Veterinary Medical Association) classifies as 'not recommended' but 'permitted in constrained circumstances.' Ventilation shutdown was a common procedure during the 2020 factory closures. Contract growers shut off the ventilation fans inside the CAFOs, closed the vents, turned up the heat, and piped a cocktail of carbon dioxide and steam into the barns. The animals died from overheating, suffocation, and poisoning...In Iowa in May 2020 a whistleblower employee at Iowa Select Farms, the state's largest pork producer, informed the animal rights group Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) when such an extermination would be taking place. DxE installed a hidden camera. The footage captured the sounds of hogs crying out in agonized pain and distress for hours. When employees arrived the next morning, some of the hogs were still alive. Workers killed them with bolt guns." (p. 228)
"Tom Butler, a North Carolina hog contract grower with about 7,500 to 8,000 hogs, told his integrator, Prestage Farms, that he would insist on sending his hogs to local butchers and distribute the meat to the hungry. His pitch was unsuccessful, and there was absolutely nothing Butler could do about it. Prestage owned the pigs...When Butler's integrator announced tentative plans to come to his farm and kill thousands of healthy adult hogs, he continued his plea to send the hogs to local butchers or just give them away to the community. Butler lives in a rural community where most residents know how to slaughter, preserve, and save pork. Finally, the integrator agreed to remove the overweight animals and transport them to their own meat processing plant in Wright County, Iowa. While an imperfect solution, it was preferable to the total waste that the industry was promoting." (229-30)
"The majority of voters in Iowa, including the majority of Republican voters, favor a statewide CAFO moratorium, and 75 percent favor stricter permitting requirements. For six consecutive years - annually since 2018 - members of the legislature introduced a bill cosigned by dozens of local organizations to enact a CAFO moratorium in Iowa and to tighten the regulation of existing facilities. Yet nothing happens. The state's legislature won't even bring the bill to the floor." (p. 243)
"In a final act of retribution against the Trom family, local industry operative spread manure on the land for nearly thirty-six hours the weekend of Lowell's [the author's father] visitation and funeral. They spread it just steps from the funeral home in Blooming Prairie on the day of the visitation...Spreading continued through the night and the following day. As our family gathered around my father's rural gravesite, several family members had to remain inside their vehicles, unable to bear the foul odor." (p. 264) [I hope every single person who did this drowns in a hog manure lagoon.]
Close to Home: the wonders of nature just outside your door by Thor Hanson
Biologist Thor Hanson encourages readers to look for all the nature they can find Close to Home. If you stop and actually look around, you'll be surprised just how much is going on in any given natural space around you. Hanson uses his own backyard in the Pacific Northwest to show how promoting biodiversity with both plants, animals/insects, and landscape can turn the average backyard into a natural wonder. The book is divided into three sections - seeing, exploring, and restoring. In the "exploring" section he really gets into all the ways to explore nature around you including focusing on what's above, below, in any nearby bodies of water, and nighttime. Throughout the book he gives other examples from around the world of how scientists made discoveries in small, often urban settings. His two main focuses are "citizen science" where everyday citizens can report on their local nature data to help scientists work on larger data/papers/discoveries and "backyard biology" - basically not going to a destination to look at nature but encouraging it in our own backyards or nearby nature spots. The book is a good mix of science and general nonfiction that would appeal to many readers. There are a few black and white photos or illustrations throughout the book but I would love to see a section of color photos of the author's backyard and some of the habitats he explores in the book. Overall, a great read that will inspire you to look more closely at all the nature that's around you.
Some quotes I liked:
"Too often our observation of birds - or any other wildlife - end at the moment of recognition. We look just long enough to see what something is, and then turn away, neglecting to ask the next logical (and arguably more interesting) question: What is it doing? To really understand what is happening in the natural world, we need to pay attention to behavior. That's not always easy. Watching closely takes time, a precious commodity that is often hard to spare..." (p. 75)
"Urban ecology is now considered a distinct field of study, focused on the many adaptations springing up in built environments that simply don't occur anywhere else...a growing number of studies have documented local species embracing new habits, from bats and birds feasting on insects at streetlights to brushtail possums, stone martens, and chipmunks denning in artificial structures." (p. 87-88)
The Grand Canyon: between river and rim by Pete McBride
I read A Walk in the Park by Kevin Fedarko about his experience hiking the length of the Grand Canyon with his friend Pete McBride. McBride is a photographer and he and Fedarko have had lots of adventures together with McBride photographing and Fedarko writing about their experience. After I read Fedarko's book I found that my library system had McBride's photo book from their trip. It is stunning. I do wish that I had this one while I was reading Fedarko's book so that I could see the larger, color photos of what was being described in the book. I've been to the Grand Canyon once and it is amazing. But this is beyond what most people see. Kevin Fedarko writes the introduction and Pete McBride writes a few pages at the beginning of each section of their hike to give some background to the photos. McBride's photography is amazing and if you haven't been to the Grand Canyon in person, this book will make you want to go.
