anti-farm

The following is a letter to the editor submitted to the local paper here, the Intercounty Leader'. It is mostly regarding the proposed Hog CAFO. You may not know the names, and you may not have the back story, but I think you’ll get the gist.

When County Supervisor Brad Olson says that if we don’t want to have hog factories, then people have to step up and run small farms, all the while ignoring all the small farms, like mine, that are in his midst, he is being anti-farm.

When he then goes on to complain about his own life farming, and how no one wants to do what he does (even though people do), he is being anti-farm.

When the Burnett Dairy Coop systematically dismantles it’s own membership and constituency by pulling the smallest dairies off their pick up route, and holding others to arbitrary quality standards, all the while shipping milk in from other states, thus acting not like a coop, but like a corporation. they are being anti-farm.

When Burnett Dairy Coop pits farmers against each other, small against large, “progressive” against “libertarian”, they are being anti-farm.

When Burnett Dairy Coop threatens to cut advertising to the Intercounty Leader if coverage of the factory hog issue isn’t sidelined, and the Intercounty Leader capitulates, they are both being anti-farm.

When all our elected officials sulk, deflect, act defenseless and make false equivalencies, they are being anti-farm.

When they act powerless when they are actually just ignoring their own responsibilities, those which they asked us to trust them with, they are being anti-farm, and anti-people.

When Mike Miles gets himself arrested for threatening to enter the Polk County Board of Supervisors with a “bucket full of dead pig”…he is being decidedly pro-farm!

When constituents gather outside the Burnett County Government Center and say “Please don’t sacrifice us!”, they are being pro-farm and pro-people!

Fighting to stop a hog factory was never about limiting the farms that are here. It’s always been about preserving them. These factories will be a destructive force in regards to all of us, no matter the size of our farm.

If you are anti-CAFO, you are pro-farm!

I ponder Supervision Olson, and how someone who supposedly loves farming could act in a way that is so destructive towards it. It’s often that people like himself and Jim Melin don’t love farming. They just happen to find themselves in it. But secretly, they want to escape. My hypothesis is that he is waiting to see what happens with Jim Melin. If it goes “well”, he will dismiss himself from the Polk County Board of Supervisors, sell his farm for the best price to be turned into a hog factory, and ride off into a stinky sunset. One final betrayal of farming and his neighbors.