Midday; Hog farming

Minnesota Public Radio's Main Street Radio is supported by major grant from the Blanton foundation strengthening rural Minnesota's communities through grant making leadership training and conferences. Good afternoon I'm Mark style and this is a special mainstreet radio broadcast on hog production where at the. Chuckwagon restaurant in the community of Cleveland the suer County the farmland around Cleveland is a proposed site for a large scale hog operation. Yesterday though the county board meeting in the center placed a moratorium on feedlot construction moratorium which will last at least until the fall. So that means the large hog unit will not be built at least for now in this part of Minnesota. This sort of debate on large farms is going on all over Minnesota and the rest of the country. Proponents of large farm say they're efficient and deliver a consistent supply of economical pork products. Opponents though contend the large feedlots can cause environmental damage and economic hardships for family farmers and small towns. The FM news stations Todd mole reports. Dave cronic owns and runs a hog farm near the south central Minnesota town of Cleveland.

He raises some 6000 pigs a year and says his livelihood as a pork producer isn't threatened by a large hog farm networks. His main concern is running an efficient operation raising his hogs at a profitable level and keeping production costs low. He says a large hog co-op like the proposed Pheasant Run a five site feed lot in Le Seward County just outside of Cleveland probably wouldn't have a major impact on his farm because they're going to either build in some other states. The pig then pigs do they do go in trailers in their mobile they can move to others you know to markets and so we're looking at a nationwide industry not just a Minnesotan industry so that's who are really competing against are the producers in the other states whether they be independent or corporate. Chronic represents le sewer County on the state board of the Minnesota Pork Producers Association. He's talked with farmers in nearby Martin Blue Earth and Nicolette counties and has found the idea of Farmer networks to be for the most part

non-controversial. But in his home county of Le sewer large hog co-ops are a new trend and are being met with opposition. It is something new and something that people aren't familiar with and so I think. The people opposed to it are a little bit like said no. Have a little fear of the future now the unknown future about these larger operations and how they'll affect the local community. Opponents of large hog Feedlots are concerned about the pollution they create and about the social and economic changes they could cause in small towns across Minnesota. Christine Hartsfield a community activist who lives along Lake Emily near St. Peter is opposed to the Pheasant Run operation. She's not sure the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency has carefully considered the ramifications of building large feedlots near residential areas and natural areas such as lakes and watersheds Hartsfield says a lot of residents in the St. Peter community were stunned when Pheasant Run received a building

permit even though the PCA has ruled that hog feedlots don't pose a serious threat to the environment. Hartsfield says she's concerned about the proper management of the large hog operation and its potential for expansion in speaking candidly with people on the citizens board and staff and employees at Minnesota's pollution control. They are basically saying that. They don't believe this is a great culture they believe this is industry but that's beyond their scope to make any kind of you know changes or definitions there that that should be left up to state government as a whole to redefine this whole thing so even Minnesota Pollution Control knows that this is not agriculture as we know it. This is something newer and bigger and needs to be addressed and there have to be revisions made. Hartsfield acknowledges that some farmers need to join cooperatives to remain economically viable in a competitive global ag market. But she says regardless of whether the feed lot is run by a co-op or an individual farmer hog

operations that are much larger than most farms today could cause economic damage to small farms and rural communities. When farmers plead let us do this because we need to be able to make money. They are asking the community to make a sacrifice on their behalf which is to sacrifice clean air to sacrifice maybe. Some potential pollution. And so for a so the whole community is being asked to make a sacrifice and then I would ask what portion of that community is really going to benefit one of the proponents of networking among hog farmers is the Minnesota Pork Producers Association. Dave Price lawyer of Le center is executive director. He supports large hog operations as long as they're managed by farmers who understand the needs of rural communities. Chrysler says farm networking is a growing trend in the hawg industry of the 90s as farmers strive to meet their economic goals. He says the new feed lot operations can vary. Some are large farms run by one or two people who control the hogs from breeding to

market. Others are cooperatives set up among several farmers and all farming no matter if you are. A a small farmer or a medium sized farmer or large farmer. And again looking within the context of the corporate farm laws that we have in this state is a business and if you're not profitable in that business you're not going to last very long. But it is a business on the issue of land usage. Chrysler says he understands the concerns of environmentalists and rural residents over air and water quality and zoning ordinances for farms. But he says locating a large hog operations in areas that are zoned for agricultural use makes the best sense. For now listen our county commissioners say they want to study the issue of Farmer co-ops. The county board has placed a moratorium on large hog farm networks in the county for the FM news station. I'm Todd moe. You're listening to a live Main Street radio broadcast from Cleveland where at the chuckwagon restaurant in the

owner of this restaurant would like it to be known that she does not take a position on the issue of hog production large scale or otherwise but has simply furnished this restaurant made it available to us as a site for this discussion. We have a couple of guests with us here in the studio or in the chuckwagon restaurant in the Cleveland Linden Olsen is a producer from the Worthington area we'll hear from him first of all. Linda you've adjoined up a large scale hog venture the green prairie co-op. Tell us about that and then why you felt it was right for you to do that. Certainly Mark first. We've not just defined what large scale is. And it seems to me that a lot of people that defining large scale as anybody that got 10 cells more than they do. So a relative relatively speaking a minute sort of does not have very many large scale hog operations they have larger scale ones and they've seen there's a couple counties in northwest Missouri that have a thousand sols in two counties

in Minnesota we're not talking anything like that. There's places in other parts of the world like Yugoslavia and Hungary where they have 30 or 40 thousand sols basically in one site. We're not talking anything like that in Minnesota. We've got two counties in North Carolina Monro and Sampson counties where they've got hundreds of thousands hogs. We're not talking anything like that in Minnesota. So first let's discuss define what what large scale is is a thousand hogs in a barn is a twelve hundred sow's But what is large scale. Because there are people who would say yes I don't like large scale hog farming particularly if you've got 80000 sow's in a few buildings in one county. I don't have a problem if we've got a few farmers go together and have twelve hundred thousand one site. I don't think that's a large scale hog farming. As a member of green prairie one of the things that we looked at was we got a group of us got tired of seeing our corn and our kids and our soybeans being shipped to North Carolina or Oklahoma or other parts. And our kids too and raise hogs for somebody else so

we were looking for a way in which we could be competitive keep our families on the farms keep up our production in Minnesota keep the churches in the schools in the towns working because we kept the families there. So we join together about 70 of us in the green prairie as a network to to to build F1 guilds that are members and other peoples in the area could take back to use their farm to get the best genetics and keep keep the whole farm economy in Minnesota thinking a little bit. It was a farmer from the wall Basso area you take a position that large scale hog production is not something that benefits the state and that there are alternatives to it. Also what are some of the things that can be done. Well first of all I want to make clear for the for this program is that I'm here today representing the Land Stewardship of livestock concentration committee in that general sense when you ask the question about what are the alternatives I think it's first important to understand some of the

aspects about sustainable agriculture. I mean Land Stewardship supports a sustainable way because we feel it's it's more continual renewable. We feel it's more in harmony with nature. We look at a thing called holistic resource management in great and in which we get the operator and the family to sit down and look at their goals set their goals. We call it engaging the brain. And what we believe too is in in less capital intensive operations we ask three key questions when looking at a live stock operation and look at any particular type of an operation is it profitable is it environmentally sound. And then how does it affect the community. Looking at some of the basic alternatives we think there are some real good viable alternatives in which that need to be looked at for example the gym Vanderpool farm up about Kirkwood Minnesota use pasture base pairing. It's an operation in which the whole family enjoys taking part of it and they're doing very well. What's coming new on the line

that's being done and it's being put together right now. This is at this phase Marlene hall in the university Minnesota is working on a peace based fair wing and so and the straw based pairing doesn't involve a water order that takes care of some of the problems that we're talking about with some of the largescale units and the problems that are happening in the community and that looks to be very viable that's the Swedish model. And so that's that that is some of the things that we think producers need to take a look at. I don't think there's any doubt that you know small producers can see in business for the time being at least you've heard the economic arguments though that larger units of production will be needed to to meet to meet demand to meet that type of hog that meat packing plant plants are calling for. Do you buy that argument or is that something put on by some. No no I don't buy that argument. I look at the gold industrial egg she has to control the market by eliminating through the process eliminates open markets. I think a good example is

North Carolina where the hog prices substantially less to independent producers and the Bakken aspect of that occurs here in Minnesota and across other states across the Midwest. It can be real damaging in terms of what happens and I think the other part when you look at industrial and egg you have to look at what are the total costs. You know what are the costs the community what are the costs of the environment and when you look at all those aspects I think people are going to see that the sustainable AG is a much more viable alternative. Linden how about that the argument of industrial agricultural versus family farms. Well I think you have to look at what are the driving forces behind the changes in pork production. I think first of all one of the driving forces has been that historically the pork production is at a 20 to 25 percent return on investment. Particularly in some cases well-run operations even higher. And as interest rates dropped in the 90s in the late 80s investors were looking at places where they could get more than three or four percent return on their money.

And there were some very enterprising people that put some other things that were happening together and said operations we can expect to get 20 25 percent. Couple that with the changing eating habits of our American consumer over the past years where over 50 percent of our meals in our eating in restaurants like this in fast food restaurants in schools in institutions like hospitals military a whole changing place of where we're eating and those types of institutions want a more uniform product. Then what's coming. So by combining some large scale with genetic changes technological changes they could get a more uniform product which the hotel restaurant institutional trade demand it. Another thing was that technological things that came along that made it possible to raise hotels in larger numbers without the threat of disease and. Fourthly I think as this begin to happen smaller producers said hey we've either got to make some changes and get on the

bandwagon or we're not going to be around to survive. And as he looked at the lowering returns for a number of animals and the number of pigs that a person could raise under alternative system someone decided that they would rather go along that direction than do something else and so the networking concept of producers banding together came along in the last factor I think was that really gave us the push was a nav to get where we realize to a larger extent that we're now in an international market and appeared to be competitive in an international market. We've got to band together in bigger volumes. We're going to go to a caller right now. Rebecca from White Bear Lake is on the line. Hi. Questioned the concept that making farmers more efficient is really an issue. We've been saying this to farmers for years and years and farmers have become more efficient and a lot of small farmers are still not profitable. And I'm I have two questions for

either of your guests. One of our large scale systems really more efficient than that in family size farms and also what is really keeping small producers from going. Hospitable is it that they're not very efficient or is it problems with the marketplace. Let's take those one at a time the question first of all the efficiency Linda. Are they really more efficient. Well I think Paul made a point it depends on how we measure efficiency and we in this country have several different ways in which we can measure efficiency. We can measure efficiency by cost. We can measure efficiency by energy usage. So the way that one of the ways in which we can measure efficiency and production is how many pigs we get out of a in a year because to a large extent whether you have a sow on pasture we have somewhere if you have a certain amount of cost of that is going to be involved on that issue how does the green prairie co-op do. Well we're just getting started but we estimate that we will have about 21 or 22 pigs out of our software here the

national average is less than 14. When you pull that down and spread it across all the cost of the pigs the large units that are going up very few of them will ever be under 20 pigs for sapi year and right now we can we're raising about 100 million homes in about 7.4 million breeding herd. Talk about efficiency we can raise the same number with less than 5. How about that Paul. Are they more efficient. Well when we look at it for example one of the things that we're we have engaged right now the Lancer which are probably projects that are currently doing a study on a family sized hog farm in southeastern Minnesota which uses low cost environmentally sound methods to produce hogs 17 cents a pound cheaper than the top producers in the region. This one example this one farmers have to sell fair to finish operation which minimize cost of production using a naturally ventilated low maintenance buildings and sustainable cropping practices but the cost of production averaged 24 cents a pound. I don't think they can beat that. Well the hot thing that well that hospital farms can can match operations and the top producers were doing 41 cents a pound. In this particular case the

pigs produced per year were twelve point eight five versus 13 highest farms in the area were producing around fifty fifteen point thirteen versus the 22 that Lennon is talking about and you had one quick comment on this. Well several records from the University of Minnesota picked champ which thousands of farms all over the country the top five or 10 percent are are hitting up close to 24 percent per year. The other thing none of the large producers that I know of are telling the small producers or the kind of people that Paul is talking about that they shouldn't raise hogs that way I think what they do resent is that people are raising hopes this way or trying to tell other people that they shouldn't raise all of the way they want to. Let's take the second part of your question real quickly the question of why are small farms continually going out of business through the decades since the 30s. Does not that point to. The inevitability of of larger farms coming on the scene. PAUL Well I think when you look at the issue of small farmers going out of business since the decades the

30s is that the mindset of farmers in the leadership in agriculture and particularly I would fault you to a certain extent the university system and the extension system for pushing an industrial model of agriculture. That's not going to support rural communities and that's not going to support the environment and doesn't measure all the costs. And we look at that aspect. We we started we have been substituting more and more agribusiness even if even if that's true is a time not to change that. Absolutely. There are numerous farmers across the state that are engaging those practices that are learning those practices just at Montevideo Minnesota. I mean at best in Minnesota there were 17 producers this is my first time I happen to attend the holistic resource management course. When you start to look at these total aspects these total costs and look at some viable alternatives. There's a Michael Hart from farm already given Minnesota that's doing extremely well. So it's a matter of education getting the information to the public and part of that's

happening too. So there's a saying a few shots of universities some good things because they're sustainable I program the university Minnesota that's helping advances Lindon. Well one of the things that smaller producers can't do is when you get into multiple enterprises to keep up to date on everything that's going on in halls in Darien and beef and corn and soybeans and grain production and hay and marketing and all that kind of stuff it's almost impossible for one people one person or even a family to keep up on all those things. So part of the reason for the larger scale in a network that we're in is that you can allow people to specialize and take advantage. So everybody doesn't have to know everything. You're listening to a special mainstreet radio broadcast from the chuckwagon restaurant in Cleveland. I'm Mark style and our guests this afternoon are Linda Nelson a farmer from the Worthington area who is a member of a large scale hog operation. And also Paul Silva Since keep from Basle farmer who would rather not

see the large scale operations on the scene. We have another caller on the line Jim from Chippewa County Go ahead. Yeah thanks for letting me on. This was Jim Bender. I just called in a couple of comments. One I'd like to say to the caller that called in just ahead of me that because I seem to sense some concern there or a willingness to try to help out if if if if if there was something that could be done. The public is very influential and not what kind of agriculture we have because the public all of us are people who support one kind of agriculture or another by how we spend our food dollars. So that's something for to think of. I wanted to call in just to say that I have a pastor based operation here. We're building a building just off this summer for finishing it. Bet it kind of a situation also usable for fairly. But our main emphasis is that you're also pestering the gestating

animals in doing that in the past two years we returned 350 dollars an acre to the to the pasture. That's the end in terms of the gestating animal. I don't have figures on the on the on the fairway. The other thing I could tell you that you might be interested in is that well in my opinion agriculture is extremely overcapitalized and that's the place for the so-called family farmer the smart operator. You know we're making a living here undercutting the rest of the hog industry and capital are our capital investment. We've been able to push it down down to about a third of what the industry average is. In terms of what I read in the paper. OK. Well Jim thanks for your call and another gets a vote in favor of the small farmer but he raised a very interesting question about does the consumer affect the type of agriculture all their Linden.

Yes they do read like comment on one other factor of what he said. I think I was raised and came up to the 40s when there was an awful lot of pasture ferrying operations and what happened was every time these pasture for road hogs came to market in the fall and winter the market went down seven to ten fifteen dollars a hundred it was a price increase when there were no hogs ready packing plants had to close down part of the reason. And my father happened to be involved in trying to move away from strictly the parent failing operations to having the pharaoh sought. It's twice a year so that they can more readily utilize the facilities in the packing plants and everything within the state of Minnesota. So if everybody did what Mr. Vanderpool did we'd go back to the 40s where we had the boom and bust price cycles and it was not profitable for anybody about that. I think the spells all clearly Land Stewardship thought about looking ahead when we're talking about the other alternative which is using adapting the Swedish

model so that through that combination of doing pasture based failing on the pasture and then the opportunity to do feral during the winter time using the straw based model for an even flow. But I think more important that you raised the issue about the consumer. And if I was a consumer today I'd looking at what's going to happen in the choice between both systems. First of all I would I would be saying that first of all if I was a consumer I would want to have to have to pick up the liability of these proposed models of Agriculture and a specifically limited liability. Senator Charlie Byrd from Chicago has been proposing and hammering this for the last five to six years in the Minnesota legislature admitted liability. What what would happen in your view limited liability limits limits the operators of a bill. Sense in terms of not having to pick up environmental risk and also some other bills. So yes and sickly if the operation goes out of business there may be a heck of a mess for the public to clean up.

That's correct and if the public is stuck with that cost and right now that's that's why the issue of why this is so heated in communities and towns all across the state in Iowa and is is is the issue with liability because right now it's the it's the county system it's the taxpayers in the county. And this is borne out in a corporate farm taskforce hearings by spalls Paul Stromberg of the attorney general's office. That the liability right now would be picked up picked up by the taxpayers in the county. And we don't think that that's good public policy when there is an alternative that's cheaper and so when you measure total cost about which system is going to survive or compete we have to have an equal playing field and giving limited liability protection to that type of enterprise does not make sense for the control for the consumer. Linda No so first of all the issue of limited liability is kind of a red herring because we have limited liability and you know all the corporations of the state of Minnesota. By general nature a corporation is a limited liability. What Paul is talking about and what Senator Byrd is talking about is the limited liability company which grants would

grant farmers the same limited liability that 3M has plus the tax advantage of a Subchapter S or an individual that's what limited the limited liability the liability is not the environmental liability that Paul talking about at all. There have been almost zero problems with environmental liability in the state of Minnesota. Those problems that have surfaced recently particularly in this area along the Minnesota River have been a small part producer hasn't been of the big one. So there's limited liability in the environmental damage and all that. To me I think is a red herring when units of any size and whether it be international paper or in International Falls or Pheasant Run when they're well cited when they go through the proper procedures for review by the Environmental Quality board of the Minnesota Pollution Control the possibility of environmental damage is not too great. Let's go to we're going to go to Dan in Minneapolis we have a lot of callers on the line Dan your question I'd like to.

Preface my comments first of all so that farmers listening in the audience don't judge my comments sincerely I'm not your average city slicker I grew up in a rural area and worked on farms throughout my youth and in fact I consider the farming business to be among the most honorable profession. But I would like to open up the scope of this discussion a little bit further and make three arguments in support of the contention that this form of agriculture is immoral and unethical. And the first argument would be that it generally results in what most people would consider if they were exposed to it and not be sensitized to it as an Ethical Treatment of Animals. Beyond that the second argument is that the general effects that it's having on the diminishment of family farms is also unethical. And then thirdly there's been considerable scientific studies done showing

that the consumption of meat is a in the manner in which the American society is doing it is unsustainable. That if the rest of the world were going to consume. Meat Products at the rate that we do that the Earth would run out of resources in a matter of about I don't know the exact figures but if it's an alarmingly short period of time and rather than. I support the argument that your guests are making in the idea that banding together and cooperate is the way to challenge this competition but rather than try to meet the competition head on I would suggest that they consider a different approach and that would be one of rather than going head on doing an end run and abandoning the meat producing idea

altogether and start to form collectives to generate vegetable food products which will in fact result in higher efficiency. True when you consider the efficiency of conversion of vegetable protein into const. Proteins are OK there's a lot there in that question. Let's start with the third point. First of all the the idea that there's too much meat production. I mean for our guests here both are in favor of livestock production. Is there anything there that you can see turning around any time soon I mean meat seems to be pretty popular. Well I think that meat has been out of food from the beginning of time from the biblical times clear back there was there was honey and then Abraham kind of. Had his flocks. And so it's been all through history. And if people choose not to eat meat that's I think that's their choice. For those people that wish to do

to eat meat what we're trying to do in our cooperation and I think most pork producers in the state of Minnesota and basically around the world are to are to convert corn and soybean meal or cook or grains and other form of protein into a more edible nutritious delicious type of product that people want it's a food of choice. It's not something they have to eat. Pork Producers don't have to produce for it they can. They can raise corn they can raise carrots if they feel there's a market for it. I don't think any place that large pork producers that I've talked to whether it be in North Carolina I've been to Denmark and across the country nobody is telling people that they have to eat pork and consumers have a choice in when they have the information they want. I think they ought to have the choice to eat the kind of products that they want. PAUL Well let me let me say first of all I appreciate the callers call and I and I certainly don't take issue with the choice of having the opportunity to eat vegetable food

products. But I think it's important to point out in terms of meat consumption meat consumption and having livestock connected with agriculture is what we call sustainable. It's very important to have why stock involved in farming operations for example if you take highly Robel land and you put into pasture. And for example one of the biggest things that's been very very well moving to clean the dairy industry has been rotational grazing and it's even now being used in the hog industry. Jim Venables doing that on his farm and in the vet's land it's a road that's in grass production. It's not going to blow. It's going to stay there so I'd really like to point that out that the other part about that that's really unique when you look at rotational grazing and one of the things they've been advanced by it lends to it your project is it's a new concept it's called what I call engaging the brain instead of taking the tractor and taking and using all the fossil fuel and going out and bringing the hay and stick it in the silo bring it in taking the animals to the land and it's watching her.

Let's go to the second part of the question real quickly. An Ethical Treatment of Animals is confinement livestock production unethical. Well in my viewpoint it's not. I was raised we did raise hogs on pasture back in the 50s. And to me that some of the treatments that things that happen to me are just as unethical as as when we put them in buildings and take good care. I can remember times in which we had six inches of rain in a short period of time and we drown ten litters out in pasture. To me that's not an ethical I can remember days. I can't remember what year it was when we had days like this only hotter it was a high I think it was a hundred hundred one or two degrees and we didn't have any wind. We lost a lot of pigs out on pasture from heat exhaustion we should have been able to get out there and sprinkle them. We didn't have the equipment that time it was kind of an unusual deal. We put hogs in confinement. We can take care of these hogs the way they need to be taken care of no matter what the weather is I can remember I think it was the winter of 1970

74 when we had the big snowstorms. There were hogs lost outside lots because the snow covered up their ventilation systems. To me as a person who looks at raising hogs I have to take care of that hog when it's 100 degrees outside and when the wind chills 80 below and I can do a heck of a lot better job taking care of that animal in a confinement situation or if they need heat and heat if they need ventilation and given ventilation. If they need to be sprinkled with water to keep them cool I can do that. I can always do that under other situations. To me the way we raise hogs I think is a highly ethical system. PAUL Well I think the key aspect of whether you gauge any type of system it's management and what's being use if you're not using management sustainable exist I'm sure you have problems but you're going to have huge problems in a combined with System. If you're dependent on fossil fuel and electricity fails and you don't have a generator all ready to go those kinds of things always going to happen to. I think the biggest probably the difference here between industrial egg and probably sustainable egg as it relates to

this is you probably have to do more with the working more in the natural state of events with animals working with the animals nature rather than trying to substitute high tech equipment to deal with those kinds of things and I guess that a good example of that is I was thoroughly impressed with Marlene's hall rescinds a field thing that took out it in Minnesota on the knoll juggles farm. In which happen get a look at at a strong basis them where they had the system set up where the animals could choose where they farewelled and that type of thing and really working in nature with animals. As a hog producer myself and one who has sort of split between both systems I can really see some value to that and that's something I'm definitely looking out the future so I think a lot of the large pork producers feel that they're in a sustainable system too as they take in the corn and soybeans and putting him through a port product and they're putting the waste product back to the land to recycle

that back to more corn and more soybeans. So the definition of sustainable I think is also open to debate. We have probably made definitions of sustainable as we might have people in the room but people in the large hog operations and being a part of green prairie that's one of the things that we wanted to do was to make sure two things we put in our mission statement. One we wanted to be environmentally friendly and secondly we want to be socially responsible environmentally friendly we try to build and locate in site units which are not going to cause a lot of problems in which the waste could be put back on the land to be used as fertilizer. And secondly we want our members to be members of the community so that the profits that we generate from any hogs being raised they're going to stay in the communities to support the schools in the churches and the communities in part of the part of the I think. Disagreement over large scale operations is who controls them and where the money is going to go you know in a large number of cases and it's not true in Minnesota that money is going to ivory tower somewhere and it's going out of the state

with a corporate families in state of Minnesota. The province's main production business is going to stay in the state of Minnesota. Let's go to the next phone caller we have Mark from Wisconsin dialing in with a question go ahead. I got a quick question to either gentleman there to address maybe both would like to respond. It's in regards to. When you have a higher concentration of hogs or whether it's dairy or whatever within a specific area. What would the risks be that would be involved as far as disease. In the interm now large production facilities may foster a lower food costs. What about long term say like a pseudo rabies or some type of epidemic or something hits and goes through these areas. It could potentially wipe out large vast numbers of animals in a real quick sweep and just a quick comment regarding the other question that the caller called in with the ivory towers.

I was fortunate enough to grow up on a dairy and a wind farm and if a guy initially started it with. One Pharaoh would save the little one brought him back eventually had her going which paid for my college education. And without the high IQ I probably wouldn't be doing what I'm doing today even though I'm not in the business per se but it is good to keep the money into the community local at least to have people I can work on the farms to try to achieve future success. OK thanks for the question. Let's try to keep the answers short if we can we have a lot of callers would like to get to as many as we can but Linda tell me how you handle disease concerns at that your operation. Well first of all when he talks about concentration we don't have concentrations of hogs in United States like they do in Europe. You have some places in Europe where hogs literally are in the backyards of people's houses within 50 or 100 feet. We were in Denmark in the house. It was less than 50 feet away from totally enclosed

operation. When you get into Holland in some places in Germany they have large hog operations and they don't have disease problems. I think the disease from it is overrated. New technologies now and in the disease control that we have. If there's a disease coming through it's going to go through all the herds in an area that doesn't make a difference whether they're inside or outside. So rabies has gotten into bio secure units gotten through anywhere. I think that that's an overrated point that what we have now will control most diseases we've got international diseases like hers and it doesn't make any difference where they're coming from so I think it's a question not of size or concentration it's a question of management in some clime logic climatological conditions and other things. PAUL Well I guess my sense when I look at the total system of industrial AG. Naturally back as it relates to me just as a human being and how we affect our natural environment and how we deal affects our health

and look at an animal if it's stressed it's not in the natural environment. I think makes it much more susceptible and I think there's a there's less possibility of a disease problems. And on the my premonition about it on sustainable farms and there's going to be you know hugely confinement operations. You're listening to a special mainstreet radio broadcast here in Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Mark style in joining me at the chuck wagon in Cleveland are Linda Nelson a farmer from the Worthington area and apostle the Cynthia farmer from the wool Basso area. Sharon from Minneapolis is on the phone line with us. What's your question. My question has to do with the work that's been done in Iowa looking at counties where there were large hog production in those counties that did not have it. And in those counties without large production there were stronger rural communities more people living in the county. And it just seems to me we've been talking about the land in the air but not a lot about the communities.

You know that I want to study is correct. It's just another way to increase the strength of our rural community. When the bottom line being dollars rather than people question about the a rural community the social structure economic structure. CLINTON Well first of all I we has a different corporate law structure than Minnesota which allowed outside people to come in and I think in the cases of I wait a fair amount of that was true what we have in Minnesota that people in Minnesota are going to have to do this. The corporate farm outlaws people from outside the state from doing what happened in Iowa and I think what we're trying to do a green prairie is an example of that we've got 70 local farmers involved in this rather than somebody from the outside with outside Capra come in tell us what to do. We have raised the capital with it and we're going to do what we want so that things do stay in our local communities. Paul.

I guess I look at them I think about the example of two people who went over and visit North Carolina Dr. Drew and Dr. Dearmer anthropologist and University of Iowa. They came up with a number of striking things that affected in terms of the community. And they found a loss of jobs decline in number of independent farmers animosity in rural communities we certainly have that going on property values decline decreased tax base environmental problems nuisance problems and water problems. So these are just a number of pieces of eugenic get generated by by this style of Agriculture. We have another caller on the line Relf from Scott County. Go ahead with your question. Yes I'm a journalist and I write a weekly farm issues column that appears in life from newspapers across Minnesota and Iowa. I just like to make a comment and ask your panel to respond. It seems to me that what's missing here in your discussion is a clear view of the impact of large

operations on farming and on real economics. The truth is that when giant volume of hog operations entered the picture. The economics and incomes of family sized farms small town rural Minnesota generally decline farms disappears will disappear local businesses disappear. Young people you know our greatest resource and investment for the city and don't come back. Until recently. OK been profitable for five years. Thanks for that question that's a big issue. It's one that comes up a lot. Linden is there any evidence that large hog operations drive small operations out of business. I think you could look at the statistics and make an argument on either side. Any way you want it to. I think some of the old thinking was that packing plants and industries will be built where the homes are raised. But just in the last four or five

years that thing has gotten turned around and right now packing plants are being built where people want them come in there. One building in Oklahoma. Basically they're going to build a whole whole industry around Guymon Oklahoma where there were no hogs because game in Oklahoma went around and solicited basically it was seaboard who had a plan and how quickly they close the obsolete plant moved to Oklahoma. There are a couple other examples and I won't take the time to do it but if we move the packing plants out there are going to be any pork production and all Minnesota's going to be is a place to grow great and ship to somewhere else so they can feed a hoax. Paul. And I guess I look at the keyed not to moving people out is to keep as many people involved in production a culture as possible. And that's what I look at in terms of the family farm system. If you look at I was a test case between 1993 the most powerful large herds and I were generating a profit twelve thirty two hundred in the most

profitable small herds earn twelve ninety three hundred. So profitability and having connected with family farms is key. Once you lose that connection that's when rural communities suffer the impact of the lost. And I agree with Paul that the idea is to try to keep as many people in the land with good different opinions on how we're going to do in the state of Minnesota. Stephanie from Dundas is on the line with us what's your question. All right. I have many but I'm surrounded by dairy farms over here and we were concerned that in addition to the problems with hogs that we've experienced in our county that it would open it up to the huge dairies but at the moment we're holding in the legislature. I've heard there's a big area near Cleveland. And is that where you folks are. That has not been able to live up to terms of its permit. And that does make people uneasy. Do either Speaker know about that project and in the second case in the Worthington area there's been some coverage of problems are absorbing workers come. You have to work for

low wages. Sometimes under poor conditions over there. OK can you fill me in on any on that. I think both of those are a little bit outside the scope of the discussion in the expertise of the panel here. On the meatpacking question there's no doubt that there's a lot of jobs in Minnesota and that maybe we could follow up on that just a bit the Linden kind of broach that question that packing plants if they don't get the type of hog they want from a large operation may move out meaning that small operators will not have a place to sell their hogs either. Paul did you place any credence in that is that what I when I look at the meat packing industry I look at the Packers and Stockyards Act the Packers and Stockyards Act was started it was was put in back during the Depression 1030 because there was monopolies by the meatpacking by a number of large Packers taking control of the market with a captive supply industrial agriculture that's being advanced. It calls for a cap to supply it down in my area in Springfield Minnesota when the proposed operations that was going up when the when the hog price was $26 a

hundred which I was getting from my hogs were at that time those people indicated that they had contracts in the neighborhood of forty three to forty five dollars. So what they're doing the packing industry is simply working through producer networks setting up so they can buy a captive supply and so what they buy in the open market can be just like North Carolina buy it cheap from independents. And that's what's going to put independents out. And that's why those of us who are involved in sustainable agriculture don't believe that's been the sustainable agriculture industrial AG can sit by side sit side by side because it's about control. They intentionally intend to eliminate the independently farm system replace it with hers. There's some interesting thing that's happening. If you go to carry the pork production farther than just the farm ory utilization research institute is looking at the feasibility of Farmer own packing plants. It's seems to me that the future of particularly pork in the profits where used to be in the production now it's going to be in the marketing in branded pork products and things like

this. It seems to me that in some way the farmer rather than just being a supplier is going to have to have some control of that pork farther down the pork chain or share in the profits some way with the Packers if they're providing the proper profit they want. We have another caller on the line Phil from New Brighton. Go ahead with your comment and question. Hi I was wondering if there is any information out there as far as the environment from these large Hawker park operations in North Carolina are Missouri Hang Up and Listen thank you. That's something that you hear a lot from Minnesota producers that watch out did it happen in North Carolina the same thing's going to happen there what has happened in North Carolina is there any evidence of. Significant damage environmentally or other ones. Yeah there is some and some evidence that there are some environmental problems particular in order. I think we have to realize the difference between North Carolina Minnesota he's close in North Carolina Sampson and mineral counties where the folks are concentrated has a low flat area. It's

extremely humid hot hot area and the concentration is very high. In Minnesota we do not have that kind of climate. We have hills and we have trees and we have a lot more land a lot more distance between our operations and they do out there so I would agree that if we're not careful where these units are sited how they manage and so on there can be problems the other thing that we have difference in North Carolina is a lot of the goons. And in that kind of a climate what's human. I think the orders carry a lot farther than they will here where we're in a drier climate we don't work quite that many months of the year and we're probably not sizing those particular lagoons if we want to use them as humans properly. But my experience regards the environment I started working on this issue back in 1900 and that type of look at that time in terms of compact cleaners was nine inches that's what the NPC was allowing to take place. Now they've moved up to two and a half feet of compacted Calais that's only come because of citizens demands that the government

take an environmental policy. If people are dependent on the middle so Minnesota Pollution Control Agency to protect the environment the quality of water they're in big trouble in my opinion. The other aspect about lagoons why we don't have very much on it is that we haven't done very much in terms of monitoring and most operations monitoring wells are not being required or some type of system that's going to assure that we're not causing a problem until we do that I don't feel that society can bear the cost of what that potential might be without taking care of those things first and first up let's hear from Vernon Northfield if you have a real quick question we can get him going. Yeah sure. My name's farmer here and race County and as I said you're trying to kind of map out my hog future I think. I listen very carefully to when people talk about alternatives and that kind of thing and I have my experience has been I've checked out some of the things that Land Stewardship people have brought up and I didn't talk to Mr. Vanderpoel who called in and look at some of his data and I find

basically the things they're trying to map out for me are the data and stuff is so very unsophisticated that I really could have a tough time trusting it. It's kind of in the wrong form to Mr. Venable even mentioned like you talked $350 per acre return I'm just stating I need data that is not in a preclear is I want to compare it to other systems you know and I want to compare it to reading. So I think I've got a kind of a challenge to Land Stewardship to maybe not dangle eat carrots out here of all legal truth is it really or in my opinion all that well documented yet. I even went so far as to check out the Swedish system pretty good heavily and you know just like it was with a lot less capital intensive. I'm sorry we're going to have to go to a comment here Paul. Go ahead with your comment well out of three seconds briefly glance through a chipped piece and saw a process that has involved a number of people in the process. For example one part of the northwest area Foundation report Better wrote a whole than economics economic environmental study of the social impact of sustainable eg. It's involved the University of Minnesota its Vaal North Dakota State

University northern plains sustainable AG society Montana State University University of Montana a number of organizations that are directly involved working on this. A quick closing thought. Yes I don't want to see Minnesota. Lose its paws operation like it has. It's feedlot operation as a poultry operation. California is now the number one dairy state. I think we've got to have all kinds of alternatives in order to keep Minnesota from becoming just a grain producing state. And that will bring to a close our broadcast here from the chuckwagon in Cleveland and like to thank our guests. Paul Silva since he and Linda Nelson for joining us here for this discussion. A reminder that Main Street radio's coverage of rural issues is supported by the Blendon foundation providing leadership training through the blended Community Leadership Program. And it's been an interesting hour. Thanks again to both of our guests. This is Mark style from the chuckwagon in Cleveland.