Rural Routes/Margot Ford McMillen

Mega Hog Confinements Change Neighborhoods

A couple of weeks ago, my neighborhood looked like the set for a third-rate crime movie. Drug-sniffing dogs ran through the fields while drones circled overhead and sheriffs with high-powered rifles stomped through a pasture, looking for a “perp.”

The action started when some good friends came back to their old place, which they had reluctantly put on sale after the Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) moved in just over the hill. It had been their dream home, built to their specifications with much of the work done with their own hands.

They came back to see if there was damage from the storms that have been pummeling Missouri. Walking around the house, my friend saw that the back door was ajar. Looking into the room that was once her own gourmet kitchen, she found a strange man looking back at her … a squatter. “Don’t call the police. Don’t call the police.” the fellow said, but she had a cell phone, was already dialing 911, hollering for her husband, running for the car.

The timing was ironic. The Missouri session had just adjourned, leaving a bill — Senate Bill 391 — on the governor’s desk for his signature. Among other things, it takes away the right of counties to pass ordinances to better protect their citizens from the incursion of out-of-state and foreign-owned CAFOs that are coming to our state because of our clean water, clean air, and relative innocence over what a vertically-integrated meat corporation can do to a place. One-half of 1% of the producers in Missouri are CAFOs; the rest are independent farms.

It’s a sad story. Vertically-integrated corporations own the animals, the feed mills, the trucks, the slaughterhouses and the lobbyists that walk the halls of the Capitol. While some defenders will tell you that the industrialization was inevitable or a result of technology, it has been, in truth, a result of policy. And the policy has been manipulated. In Missouri, you can trace some of the lobbying money back to Smithfield, owned by China.

But now I’ve left the story with my former neighbors racing to the car. They jumped in, drove to the road, blocking their driveway, and the fellow ran for the fields. When he was caught, the sheriff’s men found a stolen car in the garage, with stolen license plates, hypodermic needles in the kitchen, and food in the refrigerator. He’d been there two days, and had moved in. If it hadn’t been for the storms, he would have been cozy and comfortable. At least until the water and electric bills got to the proper owners.

Since that day, I’ve Googled around to find studies that may have looked at the increase of crime and drugs around neighborhoods where a CAFO’s moved in. So far, no luck. There are studies galore on the decrease in property values and on the increase in asthma in children, or the increase in antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the creeks and the air, but nothing on crime. At a neighborhood meeting, friends reported an increase in folks coming to their homes, looking for handouts of gasoline or asking to borrow a phone, but it’s all anecdotal and, as I mentioned, no studies.

If I find something, it will be posted on a new website, CAFOZONE, for people who live in CAFO-zone communities. And, as the website explains, that means all of us — rural and urban — because industry’s vision is to fill the meat cases and restaurant menus with food raised in CAFOs. The website includes links to dozens of articles about health and environmental risks and other articles on property values. The studies on property values include properties that have been devalued and sold at up to 80% less than their market price before the CAFO, but those studies have been made after actual sales and don’t include no-sales or homes that have been abandoned and deteriorated to the point of wreckage. In my neighbor’s case, devaluation put them upside down in their mortgage and after the bank re-claims the house, the new price will be set.

CAFOZONE was inspired by a reader of The Progressive Populist, Iowa lyricist Matt Olive. He sent me a CD of his song, “Hog Confinementville.” Holy Cow, I thought, how many people are making art around the devastation of their communities? We need a place for them to get together, inspire each other. So, the site kicks off with art and music; at least one drawing will be familiar to Progressive Populist readers, coming from the creative mind of Dolores Cullen — a cover illustration depicting a farmer as marionette with corporate hands controlling the strings. CAFOZONE wants more art, believing that inspired images make connections that speak louder than articles, lawsuits, speeches.

CAFOZONE also has maps, podcasts and blogs from CAFO activists and a link to alternatives — know your farmer, know your food. It’s up to us, after all, to create successful young farmers and to keep them in business until some time in the far-off future the government can offer real protections for our food, water, air and land. I am one of the founders of CAFOZONE and I’m proud that it exists, but wish it didn’t have to.

Margot Ford McMillen farms near Fulton, Mo., and co-hosts “Farm and Fiddle” on sustainable ag issues on KOPN 89.5 FM in Columbia, Mo. Her latest book is “The Golden Lane: How Missouri Women Gained the Vote and Changed History.” Email: margotmcmillen@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, July 1-15, 2019

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