Dakota Farmer

Commentary: Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations are part of a failing style of agriculture.

June 11, 2019

1 Min Read
pigs in confinement barn
PORK PRODUCTION: Pigs are raised in a confinement building.dusanpetkovic/Getty Images

By Frank Kloucek 

The livestock industry is changing. New technology to reduce pollution and contain particulates on site is being developed. Why is it not being used? Please ask your local pharmacist if the avian flu and swine flu now make up 50% of the flu vaccine we take every year. They will confirm that it is.

According to the National Center for Disease Control, disease spreading between animals and humans is happening. Documentation shows huge issues of pollution, failed contracts, failed infrastructure and producers giving up their family farms based on this failed model of ag production. 

I’ve been involved in many aspects of agriculture as a crop and livestock producer, Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) operator, hog buyer and more. I see the changes in farming and the livestock industry firsthand. Profits have shifted from the farmer to the corporate owners at the top of a pyramid-type structure. Foreign investors from China, Brazil, Canada etc., reap the benefits while leaving little profit for those at the bottom.

This style of agriculture is already obsolete. It has caused massive taxpayer bailouts with disease outbreaks, massive pollution issues that in too many cases cannot be reversed, human health issues and so it goes.

 I will close with this quote from Robert Kennedy Jr:

“I always saw pollution as theft, and I always thought why should somebody be able to pollute the air, which belongs to all of us, or destroy a river or a waterway, which is supposed to belong to the whole community?”

Kloucek is a Scotland, S.D., farmer and former state legislator.

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