Livestock Loggerheads
By Steve Fairchild

Senate Bill 364, the Missouri Farm and Food Protection Act, made early 2007 a contentious time in the countryside.

Sometimes the story is best told by a single scene. In the south hallway of the Missouri capitol building a ruddy complexioned farmer in suspenders stood with his son a good distance from the capitol’s famous rotunda. Inside the rotunda, a boisterous rally against Senate Bill 364 was underway. And to know the position of this farmer and his son, you didn’t need to see the “Yes On 364” sticker on the men’s shirts—their sentiment could be read by their expression as angry voices from the rally bounced into the hall.
 
Soon, a third man joined them and leaned into the suspendered farmer’s ear.

“He’s on the radio and he’s got on a red sticker.”

A look of disbelief.

Moments later, the radio interview must have concluded. A farmer with a red-sticker that read “Support Local Control,” strolled into the southern hallway where he was accosted, in a friendly way, by the man in suspenders, who jabbed at the sticker.

“What are you doing with that thing on?”

Puffing out his chest a bit to show off the red sticker, the man said, “It’s the right side to be on. It’s the right side.”

“Why, I can’t believe you’d say that,” said the first man, no longer ruddy, but red faced.

Both men spun a half turn and walked away, blinking quizzically, shaking their heads. Apparently they shared a hometown or a home county, but they didn’t share an outlook on county health ordinances or the role of the state in regulating agriculture.

Repeat that scene generously and you’ll have an idea of what’s been building over the past decade and why Senate Bill 364, the Missouri Farm and Food Preservation Act, made so much news this legislative session.

While the Missouri Farm and Food Preservation Act drew plenty of headlines this year, the emotion and politics behind the issue have been long in building. Back in 1996 a new approach toward curbing specialization and concentration in livestock operations hit Missouri.

County health ordinances used as a means of legislating against modern livestock feeding operations, specifically hog operations, were first pushed in Henry and Linn Counties a decade ago. Much of the movement was spurred from expansion of integrators such as Premium Standard Farms and Murphy Family Farms.

By 1997, some five Missouri counties would enact health ordinances that spelled out stringent rules for confined animal feeding operations, effectively preventing expansion of CAFOs in those counties. They included Henry, Linn, Livingston, Pettis and Camden Counties.

Today, the list has grown to 16 counties, and the health ordinance movement has evolved from a strike against integrators to a more general movement against CAFOs.

To help understand the contentiousness of the issue, consider the historic nature of the hog industry. For decades, hogs were considered farm mortgage lifters. Producers entered and exited the hog business with ease. There were no overarching production standards or regulations other than aiming for the most production per sow per year, even though such efficiency was often sacrificed to the cyclical nature of hogs as an enterprise or lack of resources directed to the operation.

Over time, technology delivered more efficient ways to produce hogs. Dirt lots were abandoned. Indoor farrowing and nursery operations became the standard for producers serious about raising hogs. Meanwhile, packers made it known that a more consistent product would be rewarded, which in markets means that the opposite—wildly varying carcass traits—would eventually be penalized.

The footing was set. People who could attain efficiencies in breeding and feeding tended to expand operations. Clean water rules passed by the federal government added cost to such operations. Margins in agriculture grew tighter. The attractiveness of entering the market diminished as specialization, regulations and limited margins required increased investment in infrastructure to be a breakeven or profitable producer. Like poultry before it, the pork industry went through a rapid state of consolidation.

Integrators—those businesses with interests up and down the value chain—played a part in that consolidation as their ability to find margins at more than one point of sale helped spread risk.

But corporate integrators have yet to corner the market on hogs. There are plenty of family producers left. And there are plenty of producers who partner with integrators to add a stable source of income to the unpredictable annual farm returns. That brings us to today’s dilemma.

Seeing that county health ordinances were effectively preventing growth, and in some cases the existence, of the livestock operations, early in 2007 a coalition of 14 Missouri farm organizations announced their support of the Missouri Farm and Food Protection Act sponsored by Senator Chris Koster from Harrisonville and Representative Brian Munzlinger from Williamstown. In full disclosure, MFA is one of the organizations on record in favor of the act.

The position of the coalition is that Missouri’s existing regulations combined with federal regulations are sufficient to oversee CAFOs.

When the coalition announced its support of the bill, Charlie Kruse, president of the Missouri Farm Bureau Federation said, “In recent years governmental restrictions impacting agriculture have become more stringent. Increased state requirements for animal feeding operations, revisions to the Clean Water Act and passage of the Endangered Species Act are just a few examples of the growing regulatory burden facing our farmers and ranchers.”

This sentiment was repeated by other leading members of the coalition in a number of letters to the editors, op-ed pieces and media interviews. Opposite of those leaders the Missouri Rural Crisis Center and other groups helped to organize opposition to the bill.

Harbor from lawsuits
Specifically, the act seeks to strengthen nuisance suit protection for farmers. Missouri passed a right-to-farm law in 1982 that is designed to protect farmers from unsubstantiated nuisance lawsuits if the operation was in existence for at least one year and free of negligence or improper management practices. According to the American Farmland Trust, right-to-farm laws exist in every state and are typically designed to establish that agricultural areas should not be impinged upon by newcomers who would seek to change local laws to agriculture’s disadvantage.

The act would clarify Missouri’s statutes to provide for producers to expand, diversify and modernize their operations without losing their protected status so long as applicable laws and regulations are met.

Angry and loud
At the March pro-health-ordinance rally at the capitol, Farm Bureau and others in the coalition were maligned for being interested only in the advancement of corporations. One lawmaker said that people who back the act were peddling dubious science and promises. Applause signs and standing ovations followed.

Yet from the beginning, one of the messages from the coalition was that while the act seeks to protect producers from unsubstantiated nuisance suits, as long as the producer complies with state and federal regulations, the act provides for individuals and communities to take action against producers who are negligent or in violation of regulations.

The bill’s language essentially strengthens existing right-to-farm statutes by better defining what constitutes farming—reasonable modernization, acts of planting, cultivating, harvesting, mowing, applying pesticides or herbicides, land clearing, livestock management, or construction of farm roads, lakes and ponds.

Members of the coalition for Senate Bill 364 also raised questions about the passage of local health control ordinances in the face of long-standing and tested regulations drawn up by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources and EPA—regulations that have metered out a multitude of fines and penalties through the years and provided for closely monitored construction and nutrient plans for CAFOs.

It’s true that county-based rules have been passed with criteria that don’t match the scientific measures used by state and federal agencies. And, the measures the health ordinances do use are so stringent as to shutdown future building or expansion of livestock operations. Sentiments expressed by the coalition were that that the devolution of power to the local level is a good notion, in principle. But when it tramples on the rights of the individual to engage in otherwise lawful commerce, it ceases to be so.

Not soon over
A farmer from the Arrow Rock, Mo. area (who has land adjoining a proposed hog CAFO) told Today’s Farmer that the issues raised by the act pit farmer against farmer. The first months of 2007 were proof of that. And they were proof of an unfortunate evolution in the countryside where, in truth, agriculturists of all stripes are interdependent on each other. The rallies and the testimony showed that the rift born as agriculture modernized won’t be closed soon.

Click here to respond to this article 

Top of page