I grew up in Nebraska which shares the problem of confinement operations leaking nitrate and pharmaceutical pollution into groundwater with other states throughout the Midwest including MO, KS, SD, and IA.
Confinement operations have supplanted small family farms at scale, provided nowhere near the "good" jobs promised, and are loosely regulated through financial incentives and partnerships with their state governments.
All of them touch, or sit over, the Ogallala aquifer--for generations thought to be an unlimited reserve and untouchable by pollutants. We know that's not true at this point. The Ogallala is drying up, spawning discussions of recharging it from the Great Lakes. It's water is testing positive for nitrates which is a more expensive and "iffy" problem to solve.
Water is the most valuable resource we can preserve. More noise needs to be made around this problem.
Thanks for your work Jess. I am working with a group advocating for rural Iowa in a 5 county, north central region. Chris Jones is certainly a good one to get the crowd going. I hope you had media coverage and I hope you have active follow-through. Please share your successes, too
The lyrics change, but the song remains the same. Wealth is extracted from an area & concentrated elsewhere. When wealth gets extracted, opportunities leave with it.
I'd love for this post to be shared in newspapers and on social media. The challenge with substack is it reaches the choir. How do we get the general public reading your work.
Very well said, Jess. I grew up on a small family farm in north central Iowa. My Dad raised livestock most of the 50 years he farmed, mostly hogs. He used to tell us kids that it was pigs that paid for the farm, not corn and beans. They finally retired and sold the farm in 1996, just as we were starting to see the first big hog cafos. Dad warned then that it would the ruin of the small independent farmer and the small farming communities that depended on the population and the local dollars, for which he was so correct. Now, in Iowa, our governor has only hastened the hollowing out of rural Iowa with her declared war on public schools and teachers, and the private school voucher program that literally takes millions away from the public school budget and gives it to private interests. The remaing small to medium sized rural schools will begin to close, teachers will leave for other states, and the small farming community of 5,000 will dry up in less then 10 years.
Jess, You make a great case for standing up for clean water. I am also moved by your connecting the dots between corporate ag and the demise of our rural communities. It's time to stand up for our rural communities, families, kids, churches, hospitals, small towns......
The quote below deserves wide attention.
I know it sounds like a few unrelated topics, but the integral role of corporate ag has on schools in rural areas like mine and their decline is due to the contraction of communities, compounded by the consolidation and/or closing of rural hospitals, small businesses, and family farms. The corporate takeover of farming is proving overwhelming to rural communities.
Well, I’m glad I became a vegetarian in 1972 and a vegan years later. Factory farming is terrible for the animals, people and the environment. It is not necessary!
Big Ag is not only contributing to man-caused climate change, it’s making Americans less healthy. Beyond eating less meat, I’ve stopped buying gas with ethanol.
I grew up in Nebraska which shares the problem of confinement operations leaking nitrate and pharmaceutical pollution into groundwater with other states throughout the Midwest including MO, KS, SD, and IA.
Confinement operations have supplanted small family farms at scale, provided nowhere near the "good" jobs promised, and are loosely regulated through financial incentives and partnerships with their state governments.
All of them touch, or sit over, the Ogallala aquifer--for generations thought to be an unlimited reserve and untouchable by pollutants. We know that's not true at this point. The Ogallala is drying up, spawning discussions of recharging it from the Great Lakes. It's water is testing positive for nitrates which is a more expensive and "iffy" problem to solve.
Water is the most valuable resource we can preserve. More noise needs to be made around this problem.
Thanks for your work Jess. I am working with a group advocating for rural Iowa in a 5 county, north central region. Chris Jones is certainly a good one to get the crowd going. I hope you had media coverage and I hope you have active follow-through. Please share your successes, too
The lyrics change, but the song remains the same. Wealth is extracted from an area & concentrated elsewhere. When wealth gets extracted, opportunities leave with it.
I'd love for this post to be shared in newspapers and on social media. The challenge with substack is it reaches the choir. How do we get the general public reading your work.
Very well said, Jess. I grew up on a small family farm in north central Iowa. My Dad raised livestock most of the 50 years he farmed, mostly hogs. He used to tell us kids that it was pigs that paid for the farm, not corn and beans. They finally retired and sold the farm in 1996, just as we were starting to see the first big hog cafos. Dad warned then that it would the ruin of the small independent farmer and the small farming communities that depended on the population and the local dollars, for which he was so correct. Now, in Iowa, our governor has only hastened the hollowing out of rural Iowa with her declared war on public schools and teachers, and the private school voucher program that literally takes millions away from the public school budget and gives it to private interests. The remaing small to medium sized rural schools will begin to close, teachers will leave for other states, and the small farming community of 5,000 will dry up in less then 10 years.
Jess, You make a great case for standing up for clean water. I am also moved by your connecting the dots between corporate ag and the demise of our rural communities. It's time to stand up for our rural communities, families, kids, churches, hospitals, small towns......
The quote below deserves wide attention.
I know it sounds like a few unrelated topics, but the integral role of corporate ag has on schools in rural areas like mine and their decline is due to the contraction of communities, compounded by the consolidation and/or closing of rural hospitals, small businesses, and family farms. The corporate takeover of farming is proving overwhelming to rural communities.
Well, I’m glad I became a vegetarian in 1972 and a vegan years later. Factory farming is terrible for the animals, people and the environment. It is not necessary!
Big Ag is not only contributing to man-caused climate change, it’s making Americans less healthy. Beyond eating less meat, I’ve stopped buying gas with ethanol.