Senseless Murder in the Name of Safe Spinach

even among (4.00 / 3)

tree hugging hippies, we agree that deer populations need to be controlled.But this kind of killing and over reaction is ridiculous and dangerous. Even in places like Swarthmore College where my daughter goes to school(and pretty much every student is left leaning and a hippie there)deer are real problem because the college is also a arboretum. But they look for other solutions to the over population.

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by: LeeN @ Sun Apr 12, 2009 at 14:46:14 PM UTC

I agree there (4.00 / 1)

although I'd like to see large predators reintroduced into the ecosystem instead of humans hunting if at all possible.

"I can understand someone from Iowa promoting corn and soy, but we are not feeding the world, we are feeding animals and soft drink companies." - Jim Goodman

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by: Jill Richardson @ Sun Apr 12, 2009 at 19:12:52 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Makes me glad I'm not growing large scale commercial (4.00 / 4)

I heard about these 'scortched earth' policies regarding wildlife and leafy greens crops. I can understand where all sides - the farmers, distributors and the retailers - are coming from. They're trying to limit liability, the public doesn't understand as much about the pathogen as they should, and the cattle ranch where the original tainted spinach came from, I'm sure, doesn't want to take the fall for contamination, so the wildlife gets the blame.

Unforturnately, if you're a large producer, unless you have an alternative market for what ever you're growing, you're at the mercy of what ever your distributor wants you to do as far as growing. Just as people selling direct to the public are subject to what their customers demand of them.

One of the things I'm curious about is how these farming practices requirements will affect liability insurance that farms are required to carry when selling to distributors and supermarket chains. I have an idea that if your distributor requires you to carry product liability insurance, and you can't get it unless you jump through these hoops like killing wildlife, restricting wildlife from your property, you're going to see a lot more of this.

Regarding locavores as elitists - explain to me how supporting local business is elitist....

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by: Joanne Rigutto @ Sun Apr 12, 2009 at 19:08:21 PM UTC

I also suspect that wildlife destroys a small percentage of crops (0.00 / 0)

so any excuse to control/eliminate it is welcome.

Deer do love the same soft greens you and I love.

Raccoon loves corn.

But a large wolf population -- which would control both -- means a treat to calves and lambs, etc.

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by: zic @ Sun Apr 12, 2009 at 21:20:26 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

I agree (0.00 / 0)

I'm gong to reply here to both your comment, Zic, and to Jill's comment above.

I know of farmers and ranchers who do kill wildlife, especially dear and elk, because of predation on various crops like alfalfa. There have been instances in which large portions of crops are either destroyed or eaten by deer and elk. Our neighbors across the street have a terrible problem with deer. They almost can't keep a garden because of them. At our place, we don't have such a problem, or at least we haven't so far. We have some problems with coyote, racoon, skunk, rats, and raptors. We've lost several cats to coyotes, I lost all of my seed corn last winter to racoons, and you don't know what fun is till you go out to check on a litter of rabbits and find their little feet and legs chewed off, and the bunnies pulled halfway through the wire, only to have to kill them yourself because the rats didn't do a thorough job of it.

The depredation tags for deer and elk, in my opinion, are one of the biggest wastes I know of as they don't allow the meat from animals shot to be used for anything other than to fill the hole dug to burry them. That's the biggest outrage I know of.

That having been said, the farmers and ranchers I know of don't want all the animals killed. For one thing, a lot of large landowners use hunters to supplement their farm or ranch yearly income. Quite a few ranches in central and eastern Oregon guide hunters. And with out predators of some kind, be they human, wolf, cougar, or even coyote, the prey animal population does get too dense, after which the polulation levels correct through disease or starvation, or migration out of the area.

As far as getting rid of all the small mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and insects on a farm or ranch, the only people who want that done and think it's actually doable, are people who haven't actually run a farm or ranch. Especially one with a substantial ammount of acreage. Hell, I'm only on a bit over 6 1/2 acres and I can't even do that, not that I want to....

Regarding the predator issue that Jill brought up -

Farmers and ranchers fight the reintroduction of predators for the same reasons people in urban areas are skittish about people keeping lions and tigers and bears next door to them. Also, reintroducing predators isn't automatically going to control the prey population the way a lot of people seem to think it will, at least not unless you're willing to let nature take its course as far as populations blooming and collapsing over time. In eastern Oregon there is a healthy population of predators surviving on the pronghorn population. The predators kill so many pronghorn fawns that the population of adults has been shrinking for quite a few years now. The pronghorns can't reporduce enough to maintain their population. The predators killing all the fawns are coyotes. I think Oregon even reinstituted the bounty on coyotes, but not enough people are interested in hunting them anymore.

Farmers and ranchers shoot predators for the same reasons that people in cities and towns have bear and cougar removed when they wander in.

Some people say that farmers and ranchers should accept the presence of predators because they are living in the predators' environment, i.e. outside of a city, but I would posit that the cities are in the predators' environment as well. If the predators have the right to come into a rancher's territory and claim livestock, working animals, or even a human, then they have just as much right to come into the towns and cities, which, actually, some have already done.

Regarding locavores as elitists - explain to me how supporting local business is elitist....

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by: Joanne Rigutto @ Sun Apr 12, 2009 at 22:41:21 PM UTC

[ Parent ]