It’s all about the money.

A company is in the process of creating an “up to” 6,999 beef cattle confined animal feeding operation (CAFO) on 400 acres on U.S. 50 in western Johnson County, just west of Powell Gardens. The Missouri Department of Natural Resource held a permit hearing in Warrensburg on Tuesday evening.

Outside the Warrensburg Community, site of the DNR hearing, two and a half hours before the start of the hearing:

“Protect our Water…”

Opponents of the of the confined animal feeding operation (CAFO):

Supporters of the CAFO for “up to” 6,999 cattle on 400 acres:

We’re not absolutely certain that they’re neighbors.

Kansas City media market network affiliates sent crews to cover the hearing:

“Farms not Factories”

Department of Natural Resources staff during the public comment portion of the hearing:

Previously:

Now that’s a CAFO (March 18, 2018)

Now that’s a CAFO – comments addressed to the Missouri Department of Natural Resources (March 21, 2018)

Suppose you threw a DNR CAFO hearing in Warrensburg and everyone came? (April 3, 2018)

It’s all about the money.

A company is in the process of creating an “up to” 6,999 beef cattle confined animal feeding operation (CAFO) on 400 acres on U.S. 50 in western Johnson County, just west of Powell Gardens. The Missouri Department of Natural Resource held a permit hearing in Warrensburg this evening.

We arrived at the hearing room in the Warrensburg Community Center around 3:30 p.m., two and a half hours before the schedule start time. About a dozen CAFO opponents in red t-shirts and DNR staff were already in the room. Proponents of the CAFO, under the aegis of the Missouri Cattlemens Association held a press conference in an adjacent meeting room.

By the time of the scheduled 6:00 p.m. start there were over two hundred people in a room with approximately one hundred thirty chairs. It was definitely at capacity. Another two hundred people stood outside in the hallway. DNR staff set up the sound system with a speaker in the hallway so that those outside the room could hear the proceedings. Law enforcement officers were stationed at every door.

The Missouri Cattlemens Association press conference before the meeting:

We didn’t attend the press conference. We figured we’d hear it all at the hearing. We took a few photos from the doorway and didn’t get the name of the speaker. Our mistake.

After approximately a half hour of preliminaries from DNR staff the public comment portion of the hearing started. Each individual called was allotted three minutes to speak. Most of the people in attendance and most of the speakers were opposed to granting the CAFO a permit.

After two hours the moderator announced that it was 8:00 p.m. and time to end the hearing. Then this, the only extended unrecognized outburst from the audience:

…Why don’t you explain why you let all the hired guns speak and none of the Ag guys leaders speak? Why did Woody [Cozad] and all these guys automatically get to get up and speak? And we didn’t randomly pull out everybody else’s names? Voices: That’s right. You guys didn’t explain [inaudible]. We put our faith in DNR. And you came up, you didn’t do that. [crosstalk, inaudible]….I’m not saying, you just explain yourselves. Why did you give preferential treatment to these people? [crosstalk]…

Wait, he looks familiar, but we have no idea who he is:

“…Why don’t you explain why you let all the hired guns speak and none of the Ag guys leaders speak…?”

Uh, maybe because the people who spoke were associated with entities (Powell Gardens) or were individuals who were directly affected by the CAFO? Uh, maybe because there were more of them at the hearing?

By the way, a good portion of the CAFO supporters who spoke at the hearing weren’t particular effective with their communication skills. More than one was incoherent.

Standing up in a room and protesting too much while wearing a suit jacket (No tie? Nice touch!) which looks like it probably costs more than my monthly salary doesn’t wear well on anyone’s irate sense of victimhood.

It’s all about the money.

Previously:

Now that’s a CAFO (March 18, 2018)

Now that’s a CAFO – comments addressed to the Missouri Department of Natural Resources (March 21, 2018)

From the Missouri Rural Crisis Center:  

Please Forward!!!

STOP The Factory Farm Protection Bills!

The Legislative Spring Break is Over Monday (the 28th)!  

Please Call Legislators THIS WEEK–

Tell Them to Vote NO on Senate Bill 187 & House Bill 209!!!

Tell them to VOTE NO on House Bill 100, House Joint Resolution 3

& House Joint Resolution 17!

Hundreds of phone calls and emails are making a difference!  SB 187 & HB 209 have become very controversial in the Missouri statehouse.  But the PRO-corporate agri-business, ANTI-property rights, ANTI-family farm bills are still moving!  The following bills would have a radical and damaging effect on the property rights of Missouri ‘s family farmers and rural landowners and on our rights to local control.  

Names of bills and legislators to call are below.

– Senate Bill 187 & House Bill 209 “The CAFO Protection Bills”:

Written to protect Premium Standard Farms (PSF; owned by Smithfield Foods–the largest pork corporation in the world), the CAFO Protection Bills would limit the rights of family farmers and rural landowners to defend their property through the court system.

House Bill 100, House Joint Resolution 3 & House Joint Resolution 17 would:

Restrict the ability of local elected representatives to respond to the needs of their citizens through “local control”.

Please Call/Email “Key Legislators” & Call/Email YOUR State Senator & Representative!

Tell them to VOTE NO on Senate Bill 187 & House Bill 209!

Tell them to VOTE NO on House Bill 100, House Joint Resolution 3

& House Joint Resolution 17!

* See Below for “Key Legislators”.

* You can call YOUR State Senator and Representative by calling the House Switchboard at (573) 751-2000 with your zip code.

An Attack on Rural Private Property Rights (The CAFO Protection Bills)!

Senate Bill 187 & House Bill 209

Corporate agri-business has deep pockets and significant influence in Jefferson City .  At the expense of Missouri’s independent family farmers, rural landowners and their constitutional right to protect their property through the court system, corporate lobbyists have convinced some legislators of the need to protect a very small minority of corporate industrial livestock operations.  Written to protect Premium Standard Farms (PSF), owned by Smithfield Foods, the largest pork corporation in the world, this misguided and dangerous policy would be protecting CAFOs at the expense of the vast majority of Missouri ‘s family farmers and rural citizens.

* Please tell Missouri legislators: “Taking away the rights of farmers and landowners to protect their properties through the court system is unconstitutional and just plain wrong!  Vote NO on Senate Bill 187 & House Bill 209!”

An Attack on Local Control!

House Bill 100, House Joint Resolution 3 & House Joint Resolution 17

For 8 years, family farmers, rural landowners and county commissioners have fought against attempts to take away local control.  Hundreds have journeyed to Jefferson City to ensure that our local elected representatives retain the tools necessary to respond to the needs of their citizens.  

Yet again this year, bills (HB 100, HJR 3 & HJR 17) are moving through the House Chamber that would strip Local Control and the ability of local communities to protect family farmers and landowners from the negative impacts of industrial livestock operations.

* Please tell Missouri ‘s legislators: “Government is best when it is closest to the people.  Don’t Mess with OUR Local Control! Vote NO on HB 100, HJR 3 & HJR 17”

You can call YOUR State Senator and Representative by calling the House Switchboard at (573) 751-2000 with your zip code.

Please Call Key Representatives!

Rep. Tom Loehner (573) 751-1344    Tom.Loehner@house.mo.gov  

Rep. Jerry Nolte (573) 751-1470    Jerry.Nolte@house.mo.gov  

Rep. Casey Guernsey (573) 751-4285    Casey.Guernsey@house.mo.gov  

Rep. Diane Franklin (573) 751-1119     Diane.Franklin@house.mo.gov  

Rep. Keith Fredrick (573) 751-3834    Keith.Frederick@house.mo.gov  

Rep. David Day (573) 751-1446    David.Day@house.mo.gov  

Rep. Kent Hampton (573) 751-3629    Kent.Hampton@house.mo.gov  

Rep. Lincoln Hough (573) 751-9809    Lincoln.Hough@house.mo.gov  

Rep. Mike McGhee (573) 751-1462    Mike.McGhee@house.mo.gov

Rep. Randy Asbury (573) 751-6566    Randy.Asbury@house.mo.gov

Rep. Delus Johnson (573) 751-3666    Delus.Johnson@house.mo.gov

Rep. Anne Zerr (573) 751-3717    Anne.Zerr@house.mo.gov

Rep. Galen Higdon (573) 751-3643    Galen.Higdon@house.mo.gov

Rep. Ray Weter (573) 751-2565    Raymond.Weter@house.mo.gov

Rep. Billy Pat Wright (573) 751-1494    Billy.Wright@house.mo.gov

Rep. Jason Holsman (573) 751-6607    Jason.Holsman@house.mo.gov

Rep. Joe Aull (573) 751-2204    Joe.Aull@house.mo.gov  

Rep. Linda Black (573) 751-2317    Linda.Black@house.mo.gov

Rep. Doug Funderburk (573) 751-2176    Doug.Funderburk@house.mo.gov

Please Call Key Senators!

*You can email all Senators here: http://www.senate.mo.gov/webma…

Senator Rob Mayer: (573) 751-3859

Senator Chuck Purgason: (573) 751-1882

Senator Tom Dempsey: (573) 751-1141

Senator Kevin Engler: (573) 751-3455

Senator Brad Lager: (573) 751-1415

Senator Victor Callahan: (573) 751-3074

Senator Jason Crowell: (573) 751-2459

Senator Dan Brown: (573) 751-5713

Senator Jack Goodman: (573) 751-2234

Senator Maria Chappelle-Nadal: (573) 751-4106

Senator Jane Cunningham: (573) 751-1186

Senator Mike Kehoe: (573) 751-2076

Senator Will Kraus: (573) 751-1464

Senator Ryan McKenna: (573) 751-1492

Senator Brian Nieves: (573) 751-3678

Senator Mike Parson: (573) 751-8793

Senator Jay Wasson: (573) 751-1503

Senator Robin Wright Jones: (573) 751-2606

Senator Jolie Justus: (573) 751-2788

Also, Please Call Governor Nixon @ (573) 751-3222-

Tell him to veto any bill (including SB 187, HB 209, HJR 3, HJR 17 & HB 100) that limits the rights of family farmers and rural landowners to protect their property through the court system, or restricts the ability of local elected representatives to respond to the needs of their citizens through “local control”.

Thank you for your time to engage in the democratic process to protect Missouri ‘s farm families and rural property rights!

Please feel free to call Missouri Rural Crisis Center at (573) 449-1336 with questions.

Premium Standard Farms, Tyson, MoArk, Cargill, and Smithfield talk a good game. When they want permission to build processing plants and to contract with farmers to build CAFOs (contained animal feeding operations), the mantra they repeat to the community is: JOBS. We’ll bring lots of jobs. That’s a siren song in depressed rural areas.

And they are telling the truth. Sort of. Those processing plants need workers. Trouble is, as it always seems to turn out, farmers make lousy factory workers. Sure, some of them try it, but few last long at it. So the CAFOs come in, drive the independent hog farmers and chicken farmers out of existence, and then the farmers, many of them, end up migrating to the cities to look for work.

But you needn’t be concerned that those processing plants stand idle for lack of busy hands. Workers are easy to come by. In Premium Standard Farms plants, which are in Mercer, Putnam, and Sullivan counties on the central, northern border of the state, 55 percent of the workers–as of five years ago–had Hispanic surnames. The percentage might be higher now. Some of those workers are legal. Others ….

The beauty of hiring Latinos is that they don’t file suits with OSHA, they don’t complain, in fact many don’t speak English. I suppose you could call the turnover a downside: 125 percent in any given year. But big ag swats that difficulty aside with a steady supply of new workers. After all, the work requires no skill.

Ken Midkiff, my Sierra Club source for this posting, calls it a “confirmed rumor” that replacement workers are brought up from border towns like El Paso by the bus load. The drivers get $100 a head. Word gets around in places like Salinas, says Midkiff, and workers just show up looking for jobs.

They get paid maybe five or six bucks an hour, and the company provides their living accommodations, such as they are. Midkiff visited the housing that Tyson provides its workers in McDonald County, in the southwest corner of the state. He said that the company takes $50 a week out of the workers’ paychecks–that’s $200 a month–for Acorn trailers. Most of them had no electricity, running water or bathrooms. A few had natural gas.

The corporation can point out, though, that the primitive conditions are hardly its fault. Utility companies don’t like to turn on power for those trailers because of the high turnover rate. People leave and don’t pay the bill.

The farmers that sign contracts to raise the hogs and chickens aren’t all that much better off than the factory workers. CAFO owners have to build the barns and flush systems at their own expense to corporate specifications. The contract they sign stipulates what will be done on any given day and what days hogs will be picked up. The hogs must meet a weight standard or the corporation penalizes the farmer. The arrangement is so weighted in the company’s favor that the CAFO owner ends up being nothing more than a hog janitor.

The community at large fares no better than those directly tied to Smithfield, Cargill et.al. In fact, the larger community pays a considerable price, as I’ll explain in my next posting.

Those poor folks trying to stop the CAFO being built above the Roaring River springs just a mile from the state park line.  They’re fighting city hall the county board and state government at the same time.

They obtained a stay from the Administrative Hearing Commission to stop construction of the chicken CAFO.  That was at the end of July.  Construction continues, and the Department of Natural Resources does nothing to enforce that stay.  Huh?

Then there’s the Barry County Commissioner, John Starchman, who “neglected” to put the names of Mark Stephenson (pictured), one of those requesting the stay, and twelve other people on the agenda.  They were not allowed to speak at that meeting of the county board.  Another meeting was conveniently canceled without notice. 

No wonder Stephenson says:

It’s “who’s bought and paid for,” Stephenson said after recalling how the health department meeting agenda was tabled last May after the department in response to what they labeled an “outburst from the audience,” had phoned the police.

Stephenson also called attention to Ozbun’s contract with George’s Processing, Inc. And who do you think gives legal advice for George’s? Why none other than Matt Blunt’s brother’s law firm, Stephenson replied.

Another way to say it, Mr. Stephenson, is that the barricades you’re facing are made of money.

Thanks to the Joplin Independent for the photo and for their fine article on the stonewall Stephenson and his friends are running into.

On the West County Dems discussion group, Susan Cunningham had the lowdown on Koster’s attempt to prevent local jurisdictions from protecting themselves when hog farms moved nearby.

When I read that Sen. Chris Koster was switching from Repug to Dem, I remembered that I had seen that name over and over somewhere, so I looked in my “legislative report” file. He’s the CAFO guy ! I have been following the environmental bills for our WCD leg reports for two years and the “confined animal feeding operations” bill was one of the stinkiest pieces of legislation brought to the Missouri General Assembly. Basically, Koster’s bill would have made it impossible for local jurisdictions to protect the health of their residents or the cleanliness of their natural surroundings.

This is the bill description taken from the General Assembly web site: “SB 364 – Prohibits counties from enacting public health ordinances addressing farming activities and exempts farms and farming activities from suits of trespass in certain circumstances.  SCS/SB 364 – This act prohibits any county public health order, ordinance, rule, or regulation from applying to agricultural operations. The act protects farms and farming-related activities from suits of nuisance or trespass for any condition resulting from, but not limited to, the acts of planting, cultivating, harvesting, mowing, applying pesticides or herbicides, land clearing, livestock management, or construction of farm roads, lakes, and ponds.”

I also found an article in my “leg file” from the Post Dispatch dated Feb 1, 2007, entitled “A big stink brews in a small town.” It was about the Mo town of Arrow Rock, whose residents were up in arms because an ag company wanted to put a 4,800 hog farm two miles from the town which depends largely on tourism to survive. (I wonder how that case turned out?) The article goes on to say that Gov. Matt Blunt called on legislators to pass a comprehensive bill that would give the state more oversight and “protect farmers….” Sen. Koster was more than happy to do Blunt and Big Pig’s bidding. “These (local) health ordinances are an end-run that have circumvented state principles,” Koster said. “Agriculture is primary to our economy and our regulations should be uniform, border to border.”

Anyone who has been following the problems created by the WTO and other “free trade” groups will recognize the hidden agenda here. Top-down control by a powerful few and loss of local control. This is about as undemocratic as you can get. Sen. Koster has a LONG way to go to learn what it means to be a Democrat. He may be trying to catch a train that has already left the station.

Susan Cunningham