Professor John Ikerd has traveled through 16 states and three provinces of Canada listening to both sides of an argument. Though the communities and companies involved vary, the promises and the results are the same.
“The agribusiness corporations promote CAFOs as a logical rural economic development strategy, as the future of animal agriculture and the only means of maintaining a viable agriculture sector in rural communities,” Ikerd said.
They offer many things rural communities want to hear. They talk about the money that will be spent during the construction of a new facility, the jobs it will create, the tax revenues it will generate. They say grain prices will be higher and grocery bills will be lower. What small town wouldn’t dream of having one of these money-making facilities?
But when the building starts, often the dreaming ends. It isn’t a local crew doing the construction, the neighborhood hardware store didn’t sell them the materials, and the nearest feed store never gets an order for feed, and most of the new jobs go to people from outside the community.
Research done by Dr. Ikerd proves this theory. For example, look to the hog industry in Missouri. “Corporate contract operations create a net loss of employment. While creating 9 jobs for every 12,000 hogs produced, corporate contract operations displace 28 independent family hog farmers,” he said.
Despite these facts, some see this mass production version of agriculture as the only way to feed the world’s growing population. Information found by the Missouri Rural Crisis Center shows otherwise. CAFOs are a relatively new idea, yet Missouri farmers produce the same number of hogs as they did 15 years ago.
However, they found several things had changed. In the last 20 years, the price consumers pay for pork has increased 64 percent, though the hog producers’ share of the profit has dropped 39 percent. This pair of statistics does not help a struggling rural economy, but it gets worse. The 2.8 million hogs Missouri produces annually used to be raised on 19,000 farms, now there are only 2,000.
As farms vanish, so do the families that own and operate them. As farm families vanish, so do the rural communities they used to be a part of. Once this cycle begins, it is hard to stop. Ikerd points out that when the situation gets bad enough, “Rural parents routinely advise their children to go away to college and get a good education so they won’t have to return to the rural community or the farm to live.”
Farm families are a valuable resource, and they must be protected, Ikerd attests. They build their homes and build their lives on a piece of land they can call their own. They go to the nearest town to buy food for their children and their livestock. When they go to town and spend their hard earned money, they are doing more than buying provisions; they are investing in the future.
As Ikerd's research has shown, there are just some things you can’t put a price on.
