Litchfield Independent Review
Thursday, June 30, 2005
www.independentreview.net

LETTER: Sen. Dille’s outrage over Land Stewardship Project is misplaced

Livestock needed to make living on 270 acres

By Joe Paddock, Litchfield

As a founding member of the Land Stewardship Project, an organization with which I worked during its early years, I was terribly troubled by your editorial of Thursday, June 16, “Dille continues in trenches of feedlot wars."”Your editorial space was given over almost entirely to Senator Dille’s perspective and his state-wide war on the Land Stewardship Project and other organizations that disagree with his approach to the raising of livestock. Not a word in the piece suggests that a call had been made to the Land Stewardship Project to get their side of the story. If you had, I doubt that you would have published the piece as written.

Word-spin is ever so important in politics today, and in the editorial it's clear that Sen. Dille shies away from being labeled a proponent of the factory farm. Instead, it would seem he wants to be seen as a savior of the family farm. Argue as he might, however, his record proves him an advocate of large-scale livestock production, operations where owners all too often avoid living on their production sites and are in fact distant investors. In truth, from the 1930s on, the family farm has ever been cover for those who work to expand farming beyond what the words “family farm” imply.

It would seem that Senator Dille wants us to believe that he has to defend family farms from organizations such as the Land Stewardship Project whose work it has always been to defend family farms.

It’s easy to understand why Sen. Dille doesn’t want to be associated with the factory farm. A computer search quickly leads one into a manure-soaked labyrinth of angry tales that tell of how things can go wrong on the land and within the human community when thousands of animals are held in confinement. They tell, too, of how local communities are often left to pick up the tab. It's beyond the scope of this letter to enter into this argument, and anyway it's the Ripley Dairy situation that has outraged Sen. Dille.

The people of Ripley Township in Dodge County have enacted a temporary moratorium on the expansion of industrial animal agriculture in their township. The moratorium seems to have put an end to a planned development called Ripley Dairy, and the senator blames the Land Stewardship Project for the township’s action. But just what sort of “family farm” might Ripley Dairy have been?

There’s a story here:
On the evening of Oct. 6, 2003, Ripley Township held a meeting to discuss a proposal by the Zaitz Trust, a New Jersey firm, to build a 3,000-animal-unit operation in their township. If built, this would be one of the largest dairy operations in the state of Minnesota. (And you and I are already beginning to doubt that this was to be a family farm.)

The citizens of Ripley Township felt they needed a moratorium so they might study the impact of this huge industrial operation on their community. And who could argue that an operation that included an earthen basin the size of seven football fields, eighteen feet deep, meant for the storage of manure, didn't deserve a bit of study?

But, when the citizens arrived, they found their meeting hall already packed to the gills with representatives of industrial agriculture. The meeting sign-up sheet tells us that Monsanto Corporation had five representatives at the meeting. Other representatives from Land O’Lakes, Cargill, Agri-Bank, and the Minnesota Department of Agriculture were also there. These proponents of corporate-backed factory farms took over what turned out to be a three-hour steamrolling during which local people were left standing at the back of the room. The town board chair who supported Ripley Dairy was later quoted as saying, “We can't just look at what the citizens want. We have to look at the big picture. If that hurts your feelings, I’m sorry.”

It must have been confusing, even frightening, for local people to run into such a corporate juggernaut in their own town hall. Is it surprising then that the board members who were part of orchestrating that meeting were voted out of office? And that the moratorium passed? It was democracy at work, and thank God for whatever help the Land Stewardship Project gave those people.

One of the ag big shots who spoke at that meeting was Sen. Dille himself who is now outraged by the moratorium and its assault on the “family farm.” And since, he has warned the Land Stewardship Project staff that it is going to “cost” organizations like the Minnesota Farmers Union and the National Farmers Organization to be associated with them.

Early in June, Minnesota Agri News quoted Sen. Dille as saying that because the Land Stewardship Project would not back off from its grassroots organizing he’d worked to scuttle legislation that would have benefited sustainable agriculture and family farming. He claimed as well that, because of the Land Stewardship Project, $2.5 million was “left on the table.” Can it really be that our senator would work to block good legislation, legislation he seemed to believe in, because he dislikes an organization?

On June 14, in Minnesota Agri News, Senator John Hottinger (DFL, Mankato) responded to Senator Dille’s earlier remarks in that publication: “In the article, Sen. Dille suggests LSP is to blame for the lack of funding for sustainable agriculture,” writes Hottinger. “In fact, LSP has been a leader in our state in working for funding of programs that benefit family farmers and sustainable agriculture. Sen. Dille is inaccurate when he says that LSP left $2.5 million on the table for sustainable agriculture because they would not go along with his effort to silence their advocacy. There is no money [left] ‘on the table.’”

Sen. Hottinger then describes a legislative moment in which he offered an amendment to Sen. Dille’s livestock siting bill which would provide for written notice to a township when a feedlot of over 500 animal units was proposed:

“While Sen. Dille recognized that an improved notice requirement was good public policy,” writes Hottinger, “he asked the committee not to pass it because LSP supported it and he wanted to use it as a bargaining chip in his attempt to silence them.”

I would urge Sen. Dille to stand back and recognize the mean-spiritedness inherent in such a response. Earlier this year, he called for peace in the feedlot wars. The Land Stewardship Project found his offer to be one-sided. I would urge Sen. Dille to, in truth, offer that olive branch he’s made much of, and allow the Land Stewardship Project its freedom of advocacy, whether he agrees with its perspective or not.

Joe Paddock is a founding member of the Land Stewardship Project and principal author of “Soil and Survival: Land Stewardship and the Future of American Agriculture.”

Copyright 2005 Litchfield Independent Review

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