the bigdumbHoosier Archive - 03.15.2001
The Brown Wave
Techno-luddism isn't about knee-jerk opposition to technology, or to change. It means that we should question the appropriateness of "progress", especially when the alleged progress tampers with the natural order of things, or with beloved social institutions. I'm especially dubious when the supposed progress tends to move more and more power into the hands of fewer and fewer people, who themselves move farther and farther away from the problems they're causing.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the growing concentration of the livestock production industry. I don't go by the moniker bigdumbHoosier just to bathe myself in an aura of glamor and sophistication. I do that because I've lived in rural Indiana for pretty much all of my forty-five years. That means farm country.
The Big Eastern was originally a cattle farm, with about 120 head of Hereford and Angus cattle. The herd pastured in the rolling prairies and woodlands, and had a pretty idyllic existence. Every year's spring brought a new generation of calves, and though many of these were destined for the slaughterhouse, their lives were mostly lived in sunshine and rain, wading in the creek and wild green grass, acorns, and alfalfa.
My parents' freezer was always stocked with beef from our herd, fattened up on lots of corn before slaughter at a local locker-plant - a place we actually went into and looked around. Not a fun place, but as good as you could expect considering the work they do there. This beef was great stuff, and when I left home to go to school the meat served at restaurants and university cafeterias not only tasted revolting to me, but it made me sick too. In a couple of years I became a vegetarian, mainly to escape the nausea I experienced after eating commercial beef.
The beef production industry faded in my part of Indiana during the 1970s. I saw why on a trip out to Colorado: huge fields of thousands of cattle standing knee deep in their own wastes. I'd grown up with (almost wild) cattle, and one look at these unfortunate beasts told me how miserable they were, and one of the reasons why I couldn't stomach commercial beef. You are what you eat, and when you eat misery...well, you get the point.
A couple of years ago I served on an advisory board for the local USDA Soil Conservation Service. The board was a collection of landowners, and the purpose was to set policy for the coming years. It was a typical debate - here that means drainage, mostly, as well as issues of crop subsidies, and soil erosion control measures. Inevitably, the subject of the "right to farm" came up. I suggested that it would be better called the "right to harm" because it was mainly an idea being sold to family farmers as a way to speed their own doom.
This comment, not surprisingly perhaps, raised the eyebrows of the president of the county chapter of the Indiana Farm Bureau, who challenged me on it. So I asked him if he'd ever gotten a complaint from myself, or any other environmentalist for that matter, about any livestock operation in our county. He said, 'well, no, not really now that you mention it.' I asked him how big the largest hog producer in the county was. He said, 'a few hundred, I suppose'. I asked him if he'd like to live on a farm with 50,000 hogs. He hesitated for a moment, and feeling that I might be hassling him just a bit too much I said, 'probably not, but let me tell you something. The guy that owns the 50,000 hogs doesn't live on the farm. He lives in New York. Or Hawaii. He wants you out of the business so he can control it. And if you look at the prices you're getting, you can see he'll get you out pretty soon.' There weren't too many things he and I agreed on, but that was one time I think he started questioning the company line from Farm Bureau.
This debate has raged on here in Indiana, and for once the corporate types aren't getting everything their way. The state has promulgated rules that may slow the trend toward pig-factories. A recent copyrighted story in the Indianapolis Star's online edition, Debate pits small farms, large farms says Dennis Avery of the Hudson Institute sees factory farms as the wave of the future. "This idea of going back to 160-acre family farms -- it isn't going to happen, he said." Not unless enough people make an issue about it.
There's no doubt that meat production raises lots of ethical and environmental issues in any event, but most of these issues are at least ameliorated by moderate (but modern) livestock production scattered around over the agricultural landscape. And while being a hog producer isn't for everyone, there's a lot more dignity in being an independent pork producer than working for minimum wage in a vehemently anti-union confinement facility. Mr. Avery's wave of the future is a brown wave. When we catch it, what will we catch?
The present livestock crisis in Europe provides ample demonstration of the need for regulation, oversight, care, and concern about this particular business. You are what eat.
