Be careful what you ask for
Written for the High Plains Journal
A battle that has raged on for the past 20 years maybe always has and always will. However, it is one that has troubled me greater than most others as a spokesperson for all of farming: the battle between big and small farmers.
Honestly, I am less of a fan today than I have ever been but I do understand that we need and absolutely must have all sizes of farms to continue to feed the ever-growing world. With that said, I see a clearer path for small farmers today than I have in quite some time. Although the constant “chatter” from the small farm population about the big farms is starting to come back to bite everyone. A perfect example is unfolding in the state of Oregon right now.
You most likely have heard that the state of Oregon trying to put small farmers out of business. Well, it appears that is their agenda. In the name of protecting the water supply (or something much more egregious), in the fall of 2023 the Department of Agriculture issued a new set of regulations for CAFO’s. CAFO stands for Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation and we have been conditioned to think that anyone who has less than 1000 animal units is not considered a CAFO. Hang on to your horses because that’s not what the new Oregon regulations say. Check out this language:
The State of Oregon defines CAFOs as the concentrated feeding or holding of animals or poultry, including but not limited to horse, cattle, sheep, or swine feeding areas, dairy confinement areas, and poultry and egg production facilities where the surface has been prepared with concrete, rock or fibrous material to support animals in wet weather. A CAFO is further defined to have wastewater treatment works or that discharge any waste into waters of the State.
There you have it: to be permitted in the state of Oregon includes no mention whatsoever of the size of the operation. In reading the entire document, it also includes some government bureaucrat doing an inspection at a minimum of once every 10 months.
Before you go running off to the fact checking world I will update this to include that on March 25, 2024, the ODA announced they were going to delay the implementation of the rule regarding who needed a CAFO permit to own animals in Oregon. But don’t start the big party yet because their statement included language such as this:
“Through this process, ODA will also look for opportunities to clarify who is required to hold a CAFO permit.”
What got the attention of everyone were four dairy farm that I believe collectively had about 12 cows. They filed a lawsuit against the state of Oregon and brought the ridiculous regulation to light for the world to see. I have just visited with Christine Anderson, on owner of one of the dairies involved in the lawsuit, and she knows it is not the time to relax in holding the State Agency accountable because they will not quit. Rather they have just stepped back to figure out how to retool.
To the bigger point, we must stop complaining and seeking greater government oversight on the “big farms” because the only thing that yields is bigger government for all farms and people in government picking winners and losers. I have heard that saying for quite some time, but we are seeing it play out right in front of us every single day.
I continue to grow in my desire for all to follow the Constitution as the path forward. Nowhere in the document does it say that the role of government is to create a healthy economic climate. That has become the intervention of government (county, state and federal) over the past 247 years. Without question, the role of government is to protect its citizens from enemies, foreign and domestic. Protecting the nation’s waterways could come under this guise but what is happening currently is controlling the water and the people and not actually protecting us at all.
Let the market decide who continues to be the suppliers of food. I hope a ground swell of consumers want to know the farmers that feed their families and more aggressively seek the local suppliers to accomplish that. In closing, I realize in the climate we live in today it is hard to stay focused on what Abraham Lincoln said so many years ago but I believe it is more true than at any time since 1862:
“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”
― Abraham Lincoln