The struggle near Marty SD between the Ihanktowan Oyate or Yankton Sioux and Longview Farms is over a CAFO(confined animal feeding operation). http://equayonabigbear.blogspot.com/2008/04/moving-to-cattle-country.htmlNobody pitches a fit when a farmer moves onto some land with his family, builds a house and outbuildings and starts to raise pigs. Or goats, or whatever. But the 11 man concern building a feeder hog operation near the schools and government buildings of the Ihanktowan aren't going to live there. Their children aren't going to attend the daycare that is less than two miles from this factory. They aren't going to have to dig a well and hope that their concrete cesspool holding the shit and piss from over 3000 pigs doesn't leak and contaminate the groundwater. They won't be doing business in Marty, SD when the nauseating stink blows in. The Ihanktowan people will be doing all that. The owners of this factory farm? They are going to be in Iowa! Its time to make CAFOS pay for the horrors they perpetrate on the animals, the environment and the people who have to live near them. The Union of Concerned Scientists have a petition you can sign at their site http://ucsaction.org/campaign/5_1_08_cafos_uncovered
You can read their report on CAFOs at that site also. If you would like to find out more about factory farms in your state and county, check out this cool interactive map http://www.factoryfarmmap.org/ at Food & Water Watch. Sierra Club also has a factory farm project you can support. http://www.sierraclub.org/factoryfarms/ In fact they won a judgement here in Michigan in January! So they can be fought.
Finally, here's an odd thing about the feeder operation construction. Greenpa referenced a report about the dwindling money to be made in hogs http://littlebloginthebigwoods.blogspot.com/ "Most farmers today lose $40 to $50 per pig, according to Buhr. " But the CAFO feeder operation in South Dakota forges ahead, garnering the enmity of the neighbors, flaunting White power and privilege to force its way on brown people whenever ther's a stinkin' buck to be made, and they are likely to lose money!? WTF?
Affirmations for the Serious Knitter
1 week ago
2 comments:
I always thought it would be funny to figure out where these fine people and try to build exactly the same thing in their neighborhood. Just go to a zoning meeting and put the idea out there. I'd really like to see what they say. If they are for it then build it and see if they like it. If they are against it (which they will be) then bring those same objections home.
I have never heard of anyone doing this before.
That would be pretty cool. My understanding is that this project is being undertaken by a group of eleven farmers from Iowa. They may live near their hog operations, I don't know. If they are wise they don't. I do know that Iowa has the greatest number of CAFOs in the nation at 3,876. They may simply have run out of room for any more, since they are obviously already out of their minds. See the map to check your state at http://www.factoryfarmmap.org/
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