Iowans debate local control vs. centralized regulation of CAFOs

It's an issue of quality: air quality, water quality, and quality of life. Following a recent tiff between the Iowa, US, state legislature and the executive branch's Department of Natural Resources over rules for approving the construction and operation of large livestock operations, The Des Moines Register has collected several essays on the issues in conflict. Although opponents, particularly of new hog confinements, are often characterized as rural residents relocated from urban areas, it's clear that many are actually farmers themselves, concerned about the scale of environmental risk and nuisances represented by a class of operation that bears little resemblance to the farms of prior generations. Proponents, likewise, are generally farmers, too: farmers who have seen most of the mixed crop and livestock operations vanish from the landscape and find hope in a new business model of the highly integrated, "factory" farm.

Writing in opposition to a county government role in what is now primarily a state-regulated business, the Iowa Farm Bureau president says, "Squeezing the livestock industry out of existence through an additional 99 county political agendas will make it nearly impossible to grow the livestock industry in a meaningful, neighborly and environmentally conscious way." Noting that the Iowa DNR approves virtually all applications for new CAFOs, an activist for local participation in decision-making counters, "Local control will produce locally appropriate limits on hog-lot proliferation instead of the current law’s logical absurdity of inviting a future of thousands of confinement projects lining every road in Iowa."

It's an interesting collection of opinion, unfortunately argumentative and indicative of an "us versus them" mentality, but representative of the lines being drawn, and the walls being built, in this debate. Perhaps if button-holed, each might agree that the others have at least some good points, but given the chance to editorialize for Iowa's big newspaper, these writers have taken their best shots.
© 2006 Livestock & Ag Waste Intelligence