Re: Wallace Institute's report on ag industrialization

Harold Henderson (hs@niia.net)
Tue, 3 Nov 1998 10:59:54 +0000

I hope this report is more useful than the summary makes it sound. In many
Midwestern states (I have covered Illinois, Iowa, and Kansas) the agricultural
establishment is doing its best to make sure that industrial farms are
regulated, if at all, only at the state level -- leaving local rural
communities with no power to chart the moderate course proposed here, even if
they so chose.

> "Agricultural Industrialization in the American Countryside"
> A New Report from the Wallace Institute
>
>
> The spread of large confined-animal facilities is dividing many rural
> communities. These industrial farms share the countryside with an
> increasingly diverse set of neighbors--including other farmers, nonfarm
> residents and businesses, and recreationists--those diverse interests have
> spawned conflict. Accounts from Oklahoma, North Carolina, Iowa, and other
> states tell how divisive issues, such as managing air and water pollution,
> have pitted farmer against farmer, rural neighbor against farmer, rural
> townspeople against immigrant farm laborers, environmental advocates
> against agri-business, and local versus state governments.
>
> With such contentious problems confounding the search for constructive
> solutions, the Wallace Institute commissioned Professor Emery Castle of
> Oregon State University to analyze the problems and suggest a constructive
> approach for reducing conflict. Professor Castle's new report, Agricultural
> Industrialization in the American Countryside, offers an approach that all
> rural communities can use to assess and shape the process of agricultural
> industrialization for the greatest benefit to their communities. Those
> participants often are urged by special interests to take an extreme
> position--either to accept industrial agriculture without modification for
> fear of losing economic benefits, or to ban all forms of industrial
> farming. Professor Castle rejects both of these alternatives as unwise or
> unrealistic.
>
> Instead, he urges communities to adopt a "monitor, manage, and modify
> where necessary" approach to ensure that new agricultural enterprises
> support the full complement of rural community objectives. He explains the
> concept of "rural capital stock," comprised of manmade, natural, human, and
> social capital elements, for use in measuring and evaluating the effects of
> industrialized farms. If rural communities conserve their total rural
> capital, they have the best chance to achieve economic, environmental, and
> social vibrancy well into the future.
>
> Copies of the Wallace Institute's new report are available for $10.00
> each, or may be viewed or printed from the Institute's Web site
> (http://www.hawiaa.org) after November 6, 1998.
>
> Henry A Wallace Institute for Alternative Agriculture
> 9200 Edmonston Rd Ste 117
> Greenbelt MD 20770-1551
>
> Phone: 301-441-8777
> Fax: 301-220-0164
> Web site: www.hawiaa.org
>
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>
Harold Henderson
hs@niia.net
219/324-2620
Chicago Reader
cityfile@chicagoreader.com
312/828-0350
"When all else fails, read the directions."
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