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Factory Farming 
Tue Jan 12, 2010 at 12:53:45 PM PST
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Here's an op-ed from a South Dakota farmer I caught while on vacation. http://www.argusleader.com/art...
Here's my rebuttal. http://www.argusleader.com/art...
Note that I'm criticized for being anti farmer in my defense of "farming" against "producing," but that I reply by defending farmers.
In part I show agreement with the original: family farmers were greener than GMO.
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Wed May 20, 2009 at 14:41:09 PM PDT
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(Wow! GREAT DIARY! - promoted by Jill Richardson)
 Nourishthespirit's diary ( http://www.lavidalocavore.org/... ) and Joanne Rigutto's comment in it got me thinking. (In case someone hasn't read them, the diary is about how giving up meat and/or going vegan can make a big difference in fighting factory farming, and Joanne's comment points out that factory farming includes vegetables, too.)
I typed a long response to Joanne then decided to make it a diary instead. Ergo...
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Sun May 17, 2009 at 20:29:22 PM PDT
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You see things riding along on your motorcycle.
A bit of history: It is widely believed that the civilizations of China, Egypt and Mesopotamia were weakened by the breakdown of their irrigation systems.
The fields along the road are a patchwork. In one acreage,dead fruit trees, torn up by their roots, await the chainsaw. Nearby, someone has just set out saplings. There are signs, probably distributed by some organization, in fallow fields: CONGRESS MADE DUST BOWL.
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Fri Apr 17, 2009 at 13:52:27 PM PDT
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Yesterday I posted about factory chicken farmers going broke. I figured that perhaps it would be a good idea to write up an explanation of how the broiler industry works as a whole. What is amazing is that under this system, you can raise an absolutely disgusting and unsustainable amount of chickens and still not make enough to live on.
Source of info in this diary: The Economic Organization of U.S. Broiler Production by James M. MacDonald, USDA ERS
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Fri Apr 17, 2009 at 08:00:00 AM PDT
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It's tragic. The people we rage against - factory chicken farmers - are actually just victims themselves. The real criminals are the "integrators" - companies like Tyson, Perdue, and Pilgrim's Pride. They profit the most from factory farming and take the fewest risks. And when times get tough? They screw over a few hundred farmers and perhaps shed a tear that their stock price dropped a few points.
Check out this article in the LA Times: Recession closes in on chicken farmers. It tells the story of the recession from the point of view of one farmer, Andrew Meeks. Four years ago he borrowed $500,000 to build 3 chicken houses. On just 25 acres, he could raise up to 60,000 chickens.
The deal farmers like Meeks make is described well in one of my favorite articles, "Finger Lickin' Bad:"
The companies provide local growers, who work under contract, with chicks, feed, medicine, and transportation. Growers take care of the rest, investing hundreds of thousands of dollars in construction, maintenance, and labor costs. When the company requires upgrades, the costs fall to the growers. The massive amounts of manure, too, are their responsibility. (In Arkansas alone, chicken farms produce an amount of waste each day equal to that produced by 8 million people.) Payment is results-oriented, based on measures like total weight gain of the flock. It's a system, says the United Food and Commercial Workers, that leaves 71 percent of growers earning below poverty-level wages.
If growers protest, companies can cancel their contracts, leaving farmers responsible for incurred debt, says Laura Klauke, director of contract agriculture reform at the North Carolina-based Rural Advancement Foundation International.
That's what happened to Meeks and 800-900 other chicken farmers, mostly in the South. Chicken sales are down, so the integrators are cutting off many of their farmers. And ya gotta wonder - why is it that farmers like Meeks take such huge risks when the predictable outcomes are so bad???
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Thu Mar 05, 2009 at 19:00:00 PM PST
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The USDA runs several conservation programs. Most are pretty good and would be better if they were fully funded. But one of them sucks. It might have been good once but in 2002, the rules were changed. Factory farms are now eligible to receive this "conservation" money. The program is called EQIP - the Environmental Quality Initiatives Program.
A report (Industrial Livestock at the Taxpayer Trough by Elanor Starmer and Timothy A. Wise, Dec 2008) found that nationally, factory hog farms comprise 10.7% of all hog operations - but get 37% of all of the EQIP contracts. Factory farm dairies make up 3.9% of all dairy farms - but they get 54% of EQIP contracts. All in all, between 2003 and 2007, 1000 factory hog and dairy farms ate up $35 million in EQIP conservation funding.
This happened at the expense of smaller farms that COULD HAVE gotten the money. Mid-sized hog farms make up 15% of hog operations but got 5.4% of EQIP contracts. Mid-sized dairy farms make up 13% of dairies - and got 7% of contracts.
THIS SUCKS. And we've got til March 16 to take action.
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Thu Aug 14, 2008 at 10:00:00 AM PDT
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A very exciting Unanimous Decision of New Jersey Supreme Court Results in Precedent-Setting Victory for Farm Animals.
In this monumental case, the Court ruled that factory farming practices cannot be considered humane simply because they are widely used, setting a legal precedent for further actions to end the most egregious abuses on factory farms throughout the U.S.
The Court also rejected the practice of tail-docking cattle, and the manner in which the NJDA had provided for farm animals to be mutilated without anesthesia.
The rest of the article details more practices routinely done (OFTEN WITHOUT ANESTHESIA), such as de-beaking, de-toeing, and castration. At a minimum, it seems likely that factory farms will have to give the animals anesthesia or painkiller of some sort when they do these things. Unfortunately, this decision did NOT address farrowing crates, veal crates, or transportation of downer cows. And I'm sure nobody will be surprised to learn that the EU is ahead of us on ruling out many of these practices.
You can find more info at NJfarms.org.
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