North Dakota Farmers Union

FU employees raise $7,130 for Red Cross
Beth Dewald (center), executive director of the American Red Cross Buffalo Valley Chapter, received $7,130 from North Dakota Farmers Union and Farmers Union Mutual Insurance to help underwrite the chapter's activities. Following area flooding, Farmers Union employees pooled their cash donations to support the mission of Red Cross. Representing Farmers Union were Lucy Bardell (left), executive secretary, and Odean Olson (right), who is general manager of Farmers Union Mutual Insurance that provided matching funds to the employee donations. Red Cross provides around-the-clock disaster preparedness and response in the counties of Stutsman, Dickey, Foster, LaMoure, Logan, and McIntosh.

FSA Director Caruso to lead ACRE meetings
(JAMESTOWN) – USDA’s newly-appointed Farm Service Agency Director Doug Caruso, Washington, DC, and Scott Stofferahn of Senator Kent Conrad’s office will offer the latest information on the Average Crop Revenue Election (ACRE) program at meetings to be held June 23-24.

“ACRE is a revenue-based safety net that may be a more valuable choice over the current price-based counter-cyclical safety net,” said North Dakota Farmers Union President Robert Carlson. “At last, producers have new options when it comes to choosing a program that best fits their risks.”

NDFU is organizing the ACRE meetings, which will be held at the following locations.

• June 23 at 8:30 a.m. in the Minot Holiday Inn, and at 3 p.m. in the Lake Region State College dining room in Devils Lake.
• June 24 at 8:30 a.m. at the North Dakota Farmers Union office in Jamestown, and at 3 p.m. in the Ramkota ballroom in Bismarck.

ACRE is available for the crop years of 2009-12. The ACRE program provides producers an option to protect against declines in market revenue. A decision to elect ACRE may be made in any of the crop years 2009-2012; however, the ACRE election is irrevocable and cannot be changed from the time of election through the 2012 crop year.

Producers have until Aug. 14, 2009 to make their decision for the 2009 crop.

Caruso and Stofferahn will answer questions from producers.

“Farmers and ranchers are curious about ACRE and how it will work for them. We are extremely fortunate to have FSA Director David Caruso direct from Washington to update us on this innovative safety net option,” added Carlson.

Farmers Union Insurance - 100 agents strong
Farmers Union Insurance is now 100 agents strong across North Dakota. “We’re bucking a trend of mergers and acquisitions that put agents in an office well removed from rural communities,” said Odean Olson, general manager of Farmers Union Insurance. “Instead of retreating from rural North Dakota, we have been expanding to bring insurance services closer to North Dakotans.”

Today, Farmers Union Insurance agents may be found in all corners of North Dakota, and in communities as large as Fargo and as small as Grenora. “This is true to our mission, to build better communities,” added Olson. “We want the farmers, ranchers, and rural residents who populate North Dakota to be able to talk to us one-on-one about their insurance questions. Also, we are grateful that our products work equally well for those living in the state’s largest cities.”

Most Farmers Union Insurance agents are actively involved in their hometown communities, volunteering their time to numerous community projects and organizations.

“Much of the premium our policyholders pay for coverage stays in North Dakota to pay out claims and to support a better way of life,” explained Olson. “More than $20 million of our portfolio is invested right here in North Dakota. These dollars allow for much-needed civil improvements to become a reality.”

Farmers Union Mutual Insurance is a North Dakota company that was formed in 1944. As a mutual company, Farmers Union Insurance is owned and governed by its policyholders in much the same way that a cooperative is owned and operated by its members. Headquartered in Jamestown, ND, Farmers Union Mutual Insurance delivers a wide variety of products to farmers, ranchers, homeowners, and businesses across North Dakota. Farmers Union Insurance consistently earns an A (excellent) rating by AM Best. For more information about the company, including a list of its hometown agents, go to www.ndfu.org/FUI/InsureHome.

Policy Pennings by Daryll E. Ray
Even without the critics of large scale meat animal production who, on moral grounds, won’t eat meat, those involved in the raising of meat animals find themselves divided into two diametrically opposed camps with very few left in the middle.

On the one hand we have those involved in confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) who are generally a part of a vertically integrated production system that begins with animal breeding and ends with a packaged product ready for placement in the grocer’s meat case. At the farm level, many people got involved with CAFOs as a means of reducing the risks that they faced as independent producers.

As profit margins tightened, it seemed safer to become a part of a production system where they could make a smaller margin on a larger number of animals rather than hold out for a larger margin on a small number of animals.

This process of introducing industrial-style production systems to the raising of meat animals came at a time when Americans were becoming more conscious of the health impacts of the foods that they were eating. Pork and beef responded by providing a leaner animal that was also more tender.

The grocers wanted a more uniform product so they could offer predictability to their customers. The packing houses wanted a consistent sized animal to improve the efficiency of the slaughter operation. The industrial method of production and genetics allowed the meat industry to offer a product that met the needs of consumers, grocers, and the packing houses.

While we may be generalizing a little, those involved in CAFO meat production see their systems as the way of the future. They are able to provide a product the customer wants at a price the customer can afford. They have cut the fat not only out of the animal, they have cut it out of the cost of production as well.

They view the small “mom and pop” operations with fewer than a couple of hundred animals as an inefficient relic of the past. The faster these operations go out of business the better. When it comes to a discussion of organics, local production, and sustainability their contempt is hard to mask.

On the other hand we have small producers of all stripes—the “mom and pop” operations. Some focus on organic production, while others are traditional-style producers who are finding it more difficult to find processors to buy and slaughter their animals.

The small producers take pride in the animals they produce. Their ranks are growing as they begin to tap into another stream of consumer demands that might be characterized as lifestyle considerations: local production (referred to as locavores), animal welfare, antibiotic use, air and water pollution, sustainability, dispersed production systems that support community vitality, craft production, and meats that meet ethnic or religious considerations, among others.

Some of the small producers focus on one or more of these considerations while others simply don’t have the money or desire to engage in the demands of industrial production.

Just as the large producers would like to see the small producers disappear, the same attitude can be found among small producers when they talk about CAFOs. They are quick to point out the pollution problems that are a part of CAFO production. Many small producers also are quick to say that they use antibiotics sparingly—if at all—and only when their animals are acutely sick.

Many anti-CAFO meat eaters would like to see the end of CAFOs and their replacement by a myriad of small producers scattered all over the map so consumers can purchase meat that was produced near where they live.

From where we stand, it appears that neither side will get its wish. Given the current levels of meat consumption per capita, it is clear to us that as population grows and international markets expand, there will not be enough land available for all chickens to be raised free-range and all cattle and hogs raised on pastures. CAFO production has its place and there are consumers who are willing to purchase its products.

That having been said, CAFO producers are not off the hook. We expect they will have to come to terms to increased regulation concerning such issues as air and water pollution and the use of antibiotics. They may also have to pay more attention to animal welfare issues as these issues become a higher priority for more consumers.

Meeting higher environmental standards will involve increased costs. It seems reasonable to us that producers who were in compliance with the regulations in force when they constructed their facilities have access to some cost-share by the USDA in order to meet more stringent requirements. At the same time, those building new facilities would have to bear the full costs of meeting the more stringent regulations—air and water pollution, labor safety standards, the use of antibiotics, manure management, and other regulations.

Many small producers and interest groups would fiercely oppose this policy treatment of existing and new CAFOs. That is understandable from a purely market-competition point of view, but is less defensible when considering the traditional criticisms of CAFOs.

In forcing CAFOs to solve and internally bear the attendant costs of pollution, antibiotic-use, and other CAFO-related problems, small producers would find themselves on a more level playing field with CAFOs since existing and especially new CAFOs would be producing with a higher cost structure compared to today. Of course some would argue that such a transformation in CAFO’s cost structure will not occur. But we are not so sure. We suspect—to quote Bob Dylan, “the times they are a-changin.”

Consumers eventually get their way. Small producers will benefit from this, not only because consumers will be putting increasing pressure on CAFOs to internalize environmental and health costs, but also because of consumers’ varied preferences of food production techniques, location of production, and other food attributes.

Small producers are very nimble; they are committed to satisfying these various growing—yet changing—meat/food demand opportunities, opportunities that large operations couldn’t profitably address.

Agricultural research is key. Over the last decade or two the concerns of large scale producers have come to dominate animal research and the needs of CAFOs. When it comes to research funding whether from check-off dollars or public appropriations, more needs to be spent researching the issues facing non-CAFO producers.

We see a future in which there will be both large and small producers and both will need to stay attentive to the ever-changing nature of consumer preferences.

Daryll E. Ray holds the Blasingame Chair of Excellence in Agricultural Policy, Institute of Agriculture, University of Tennessee, and is the Director of UT’s Agricultural Policy Analysis Center (APAC). (865) 974-7407; Fax: (865) 974-7298; dray@utk.edu; http://www.agpolicy.org. Daryll Ray’s column is written with the research and assistance of Harwood D. Schaffer, Research Associate with APAC.

Climate change policy: the time is now
By ROBERT CARLSON

Climate change and renewable fuels are leading topics of discussion in local coffee shops, at Capitol Hill hearings, and at international conferences. We can be grateful that North Dakota agriculture is well positioned to play an instrumental role in securing solutions to today's pressing challenges.

Right now, climate change is a dominant policy issue in Washington, DC. Recently, the Environmental Protection Association announced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are a threat to public health. The U.S. Supreme Court gave EPA a directive to regulate GHG emissions. At the same time, Congress is considering a bill that would more clearly define the nation's climate change policies, including which federal departments will have responsibility to implement programs.

Our nation's climate change policy will affect everyone. Because of this, it is critical that federal policy be designed to work for the overall good of America. I have asked North Dakota's Congressional delegation to ensure agricultural offsets are included in any climate change legislation moving through Congress. Certain farming practices have scientifically been proven to "offset" or capture carbon dioxide in the soil - in effect removing a greenhouse gas from the atmosphere.

If EPA alone is responsible for addressing GHGs, the agency may well create a regulatory scheme that would not factor in the agricultural carbon credit benefits available (and already in use), and instead employ policies that would only increase production costs. EPA by its historic nature is geared toward penalties and fines to obtain compliance.

North Dakota Farmers Union members have long been concerned with the effects of climate change to agriculture and recognize the need to act. While multiple options exist for reducing GHG emissions, the flexibility of a cap and trade program holds the most promise in making actual reductions in GHG emissions while minimizing, to the extent possible, overall energy cost increases. A cap and trade program with an appropriately designed agricultural offset program would provide farmers and ranchers a means to contribute to overall GHG emission reductions through carbon sequestration and reduction of emissions from livestock operations, while at the same time providing income to producers. That income turns over in local communities.

Since launching the Farmers Union Carbon Credit Program in 2006, Farmers Union has become the largest aggregator of carbon credits on the Chicago Climate Exchange. To date, almost $9.5 million has been earned for the nearly 4,000 Farmers Union members nationwide who have voluntarily committed to a legally-binding contract to perform certain rules-based projects that are scientifically and independently verified. By using specific agricultural practices and prescribed land management, farmers and ranchers are being recognized for their achievements in capturing GHGs in the soil.

Our organization has learned valuable lessons on how to properly construct an offset program and hope Congress will utilize this hard work rather than try to recreate the wheel. Carbon sequestration projects on agricultural lands are the cheapest, easiest and most readily available means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions on a meaningful scale.

With an aggressive timetable to move climate change legislation through Congress, all of us need to urge lawmakers to support the following to ensure agriculture is allowed to play a significant role in helping reduce GHG emissions:

• award the U.S. Department of Agriculture authority to determine the parameters, promulgate regulations, and serve as the administrator of an agricultural and forestry offset program;

• recognize the early programs to sequester carbon dioxide and allow those programs to be eligible under a mandated cap and trade system;

• avoid placing artificial limits on the use of domestic agricultural offsets;

• and, base carbon sequestration rates upon science.

Some industries and individuals have raised objections to climate change policies, citing reasons from higher energy costs to questioning whether climate change is real. The reality is, climate change policies have already been adopted by other nations and the U.S. is certain to follow. Far fewer people today question whether global warming is real. The physical evidence has been mounting for years, and now that visual evidence has found an audience - think of the dramatic photos of receding glaciers - people are more ready to ask "what should we do?" I can appreciate the concern over costs. As I have demonstrated, agriculture can actually reduce emissions of GHGs while also pumping money back into rural communities. As to energy, we all understand aging power plants will need to be replaced and new plants are needed to meet the nation's growing demand for electricity. We have an opportunity to design plants that are more environmentally friendly. Consumers know creating a "greener" future takes a unified commitment. Indeed, voters across the U.S. are asking for a future that delivers more energy from wind turbines and renewables fuels. There are common sense ways of incorporating greener technology with our existing utility infrastructure.

The one cost that so far has been avoided by those debating climate change could be the most expensive in the long run: the cost of doing nothing. There is no doubt that from the industrial revolution on, human activity has affected the planet. We have come a long way since the days of acid rain and polluted rivers, toxic landfills, and lead paint. Our economy survived just fine and we have enjoyed a healthier environment. The time is now to enact an effective and intelligent climate change policy. Agriculture needs to be an integral component of the policy solutions we already have at hand.

(Robert Carlson is president of North Dakota Farmers Union, whose 42,000 family members make it the largest general farm organization in North Dakota.)

Sign up for FEMA disaster assistance
If you sustained losses or damage due to spring floods, you may be eligible for disaster aid.

To register, call 1-800-621-FEMA (3362)

When you register for disaster assistance please have the following available:

Social Security numbers for you and your spouse

Your private insurance information, if available

The address and zip code of the damaged property

Directions to the damaged home or property

A telephone number where FEMA can reach you

For the speech- and hearing-impaired dial TTY: 1-800-462-7585, or register online: www.disasterassistance.gov

Click here to view pdf

Policy Pennings by Daryll E. Ray
As we look at livestock production in the US and the concerns that have been raised about the impact of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), it is important to look at some of the alternatives that have been proposed by CAFO critics.

Those alternatives, it seems to us, fall into four broad categories: location of production, inputs, animal welfare concerns, and indirect outputs. All of these affect the scale of production, an issue that is the target of many CAFO critics. In this discussion we are talking about critics who offer alternate production systems. We are not talking about those opposed to the eating of meat altogether.

The idea behind this series on CAFOs and alternative livestock systems is to summarize the origins, motivations, and challenges of CAFO and non-CAFO livestock operations. We will end the series with an analysis of the future role of each system in light of the diverse economic, social, and environmental realities of modern society.

Many CAFO critics remember a time when a large percentage of the meat consumed in a given area was also produced in that same area. While large-scale cattle drives and Chicago packing houses have been a part of the American landscape for more than a century, 50 years ago local livestock production accounted for a larger percentage of meat consumption than it does today.

With the concerns of global warming, agricultural sustainability, and the economic vulnerability of small-scale agriculture in mind, those interested in an alternative to industrial-scale agriculture have been promoting the idea of locally grown foods.

Because locally grown food is not shipped over long distances, they argue that its carbon footprint must be smaller than meat shipped to the local grocery store in refrigerated semis. In addition, without large processors in between the grower and the customer, the grower has the opportunity to capture a larger portion of the food dollar spent on meat.

The issue of inputs includes a number of concerns that are partially interrelated. Some of the critics of large-scale meat production want meat that is organically grown. In response to this concern, the meat cases of many larger supermarkets contain a section for organically grown meat.

Depending upon the area, local producers are providing meats from chicken, to goat, to beef that may not have USDA organic certification, but none-the-less meet the requirements of their customers. These meats are usually available in channels other than chain supermarkets.

A major issue for those who are concerned about meat and dairy production inputs is the prophylactic use of antibiotics and the use of rBGH (recombinant bovine growth hormone), a genetically modified product. RBGH is only used in the production of milk and primarily affects dairy products and the meat produced from cull cows. Most grocery stores carry some milk that is rBGH-free.

The prophylactic use of antibiotics to prevent the spread of disease among animals grown under confinement conditions as well as to reduce the amount of time and feed required to raise an animal to market weight is an issue that affects a wide range of meats. In the US as much as 70 percent of all antibiotics sold are for veterinary use. This leads to the concern that this volume and type of use will speed up the development of antibiotic resistant disease strains. Then when humans are infected with one of these antibiotic-resistant strains, the number of effective antibiotics available to the doctor becomes limited.

On the other side of the coin, livestock grown under more open-range conditions can be subject to significant exposure to harmful micro-organism including salmonella and trichinosis.

Animal welfare concerns can involve setting the minimum allowable pen/cage size used in the production of meat animals, particularly broilers, egg layers, sows, and veal animals. While setting minimum pen/cage sizes is acceptable to some, others argue for cage-free/free range/pasture raised animals.

The animal welfare goal in meat production is to reduce the stress on the animal and provide a more humane production system.

The direct output of the meat-animal production system is the meat that we eat. Examples of indirect outputs could include air and water pollution, the development of a concentrated industry that captures an increasing share of the profits generated from meat-animal production, and a change in product quality. The development of antibiotic-resistant disease strains in CAFOs and increased incidence of certain diseases in more open-range operations are other examples of possible indirect outputs.

Most of the production systems advocated by CAFO critics, involve raising animals over a larger area, thus reducing the problems that arise when animal wastes are concentrated in smaller areas and higher concentrations. Traditionally in dispersed animal production systems, animal wastes were used as a means of restoring land fertility after grazing or crop production.

For many critics the increased use of dispersed production systems would reduce many of the air and water pollution problems that result from CAFOs while achieving other objectives including more space for animals and when possible the replacement of grains with forage in the diets of animals such as beef and dairy cattle.

In this series, we have focused our discussion on livestock’s production side, there are of course other considerations of importance. For example, often marketing considerations are of great importance to non-CAFO proponents including the use of direct marketing, cooperative-like arrangements in which a group of farmers sell to wholesalers, community supported agriculture groups, and other approaches to market their output.

Each of these marketing mechanisms have multiple objectives and serve several needs but they all aim to help farmers receive more revenue per unit of production via higher prices and sharing less of the revenue with intermediaries. Proponents also believe their food, produced using non-CAFO methods, is exceptionally wholesome and nutritious.

Clearly, there are advantages and challenges to organizing livestock production around both CAFO and non-CAFO production methods. Farmers, who have committed their resources and family livelihood to one approach or the other, usually see the their chosen approach as THE right one, dismissing the OTHER approach as inappropriate or unrealistic.

Is it a matter of one or the other? That’s the topic of the next column.

Daryll E. Ray holds the Blasingame Chair of Excellence in Agricultural Policy, Institute of Agriculture, University of Tennessee, and is the Director of UT’s Agricultural Policy Analysis Center (APAC). (865) 974-7407; Fax: (865) 974-7298; dray@utk.edu; http://www.agpolicy.org. Daryll Ray’s column is written with the research and assistance of Harwood D. Schaffer, Research Associate with APAC.

Policy Pennings by Daryll E. Ray
The current financial crisis has spread its devastation far and wide. We have all read about the problems created by risky behavior on the part of some of our most-trusted financial institutions: reduced consumer spending including a drop in demand for automobiles, new homes and even chickens.

Suddenly farmers, who signed contracts with integrators as a means of reducing their risk, find themselves with cancelled contracts and no income to pay the mortgage on their chicken barns. A number of those with cancelled contracts mortgaged everything they had to get into or expand what they thought was a steady, relatively safe business. Today many of them face bankruptcy.

The present problems cannot be laid only at the feet of the financial crisis. The meteoric increase in grain and oilseed prices between the fall of 2006 and the summer of 2008 played a significant role in this crisis.

After years of extremely low prices, grain and oilseed farmers were breathing a sigh of relief as the price of their commodities rose above the cost of production. What looked good for crop producers was a disaster in the making for poultry, dairy and livestock producers as they saw their feed costs go through the roof. Dairy farmers were hit by a double whammy: much higher feed costs and a large reduction in milk prices. Many dairy farmers will not be in business at this time next year.

In the case of poultry, growers typically do not sell the output produced nor do they pay for the feed. The cost-price squeeze occurs one step up from the farmer producer, at the integrator level. But the result can be just as devastating to producers. Take what has happened at Pilgrim’s Pride.

The combination of lower poultry demand, higher feed costs, and a relatively large debt load pushed Pilgrim’s Pride over the edge and they filed for bankruptcy. As part of their reorganization plan, they began to close their less profitable plants, leaving the farmers who grew chickens for them without a contract.

Because the growing areas for the various poultry plants tend not to overlap each other, when a plant closes the farmer often does not have an alternate market for 200,000 chickens several times a year.

Other poultry producers saw the number of “turn-arounds” reduced. When an integrator decides to reduce production, the integrator might not close a plant but rather reduce the number of birds processed by the plant.

A producer may be notified that instead of growing 5 batches of broilers one-after-another in a year’s time, he will only be delivered 4 batches of chicks per year. Often 4 turn-arounds pay the producer’s out-of-pocket expenses but no money is left to pay for his own labor, management and other costs.

This situation points out some of the problems that are an inherent part of industrial farm animal production. In a given area, a single integrator has monopoly control of the local market. Farmers, who have a contract dispute with the integrator or farmers whose contract is cancelled or modified during an economic downturn, may still owe the bank $500,000, but they have no alternate market. They are at the mercy of a single integrator.

Nationally, in addition to Pilgrim’s Pride, there are two other major poultry integrators, Tyson Foods and Perdue Farms. With their market power, it would be very difficult for an independent to purchase a closed plant and make a go of it. In addition, because the three top firms control a major share of the national broiler production, they have little incentive to sell a closed plant.

The purpose of closing a plant in a time of oversupply is to reduce production and stabilize the price they receive for their broilers. Selling a closed plant and allowing the supply to remain on the market defeats one of the purposes of closing the plant.

Because of market concentration in the production of broilers, the integrators are able to capture the bulk of the profits generated by the industrial-scale production of chickens. According to a Los Angeles Times article “Farmers provide half the capital in the industry but earn only 1% to 3% on their investments, versus more than 20% for integrators in boom times, the National Contract Poultry Growers Assn. said”
(http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-chickens13-2009apr13,0,2407745.story).

While individual producers have signed contracts to reduce their risks and stabilize their income, they also have tied their prosperity to decisions made by the integrators.

Daryll E. Ray holds the Blasingame Chair of Excellence in Agricultural Policy, Institute of Agriculture, University of Tennessee, and is the Director of UT’s Agricultural Policy Analysis Center (APAC). (865) 974-7407; Fax: (865) 974-7298; dray@utk.edu; http://www.agpolicy.org. Daryll Ray’s column is written with the research and assistance of Harwood D. Schaffer, Research Associate with APAC.

Policy Pennings by Daryll E. Ray
In the previous column in this series we looked at the development of concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) from the perspective of farmers who at each step undertook the changes in order to stabilize or increase farm income while at the same time reducing risk.

While the development of CAFOs has mostly been greeted positively by many farmers, they have not been without critics. Much of the criticism comes from the indirect effects of the shift from a decentralized, small-scale production system like we had in the early part of the twentieth century.

The effects fall into two rough categories: market power and environmental impacts.

Small producers who have resisted the pressure to embrace the industrialized production of hog CAFOs, in particular, have complained that the research and advertising sponsored with funds from the pork check-off have been oriented toward solving the problems of the large producers and have paid little attention to the issues faced by the smaller producer. The same complaint has been lodged against university research.

Another problem faced by small producers is price discovery. With more and more animals under contract, the number of buying stations has dwindled leaving independent producers with fewer markets and those that do exist are further away.

Others complain about CAFOs because of environmental issues: dust, odor, water pollution, and the prophylactic use of antibiotics in animal feed.

Let’s start with odor. Hog manure always smells. We remember Sunday trips on two lane roads through the countryside. We could always tell when we passed a farm with a hog waller. It smelled like hog manure. The decomposition of the manure in that setting was aerobic.

Pass a hog CAFO today and what one smells is a combination of ammonia and hydrogen sulfide—the result of an anaerobic reaction that takes place in the pit or the lagoon where the manure is stored in large quantities. In some cases the manure is stored for nearly a year before it is spread on the land.

In the 50s and 60s most people who lived in the country expected animal odors as a part of life, but for the most part the odors were transient and not likely to take one’s breath away. Though farmers might not always like the way a neighbor farmed, farmers stood up for each other when encroaching suburbanites began to complain about farm smells.

That all changes in the 90s when the number of confinement buildings began to multiply in rural communities. Transient odors became chronic smells that prevented people from holding barbecue dinners and outdoor graduation parties for their children. The nature of the smell changed from that of the aerobic decomposition of hog manure to the results of an anaerobic reaction: hydrogen sulfide and ammonia combined with that piggy smell that clings to every pore in one’s body.

Suddenly communities in Iowa and Minnesota saw grain farmers going to township meetings complaining about an application to build another hog building in the neighborhood. The bib overall code of farmer solidarity had been broken. In states that allowed it, townships and counties began to establish their own setback requirements as well as rules governing the application of hog manure.

To be fair, many large-scale hog producers tried their best to minimize the odor problems. With this goal in mind, today, there were/are as many purveyors of hog-odor-reducing nostrums traveling the country roads as there were snake oil salesmen in the 1890s. The problem is none of them to date have worked very well and some of them were very expensive.

That does not mean that there will never be a scientifically based means to reduce the odor problem. Iowa State University and others are engaged in multi-million dollar projects that address the odor issue.

The Iowa State project was recently singled-out by some in Congress as a pork barrel project, no pun intended. Of course, the hundreds of thousands of people downwind from CAFO operations don’t think the funding of odor projects qualifies as “pork” if pork barrel funding has come to mean a pet project that affects relatively few of a Congressperson’s constituency.

The staunchest of CAFO critics generally do not support odor-reduction projects and other public investments designed to ameliorate perceived CAFO environmental problems, believing that solving such problems would encourage their further growth.

People outside the hog industry have difficulty understanding why their doctor is resistant to prescribe an antibiotic when their child has the flu. The doctor says she wants to reduce the chance of the development of antibiotic-resistance in the child.

At the same time many confinement operations are using low levels of antibiotics in the animal feed to prevent the spread of illness and increase weight gain. Some of these antibiotics are released into the environment and raise the potential of the development of antibiotic resistant pathogens.

Potential and, in some cases, actual manure contamination of water bodies with pathogens and nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus are problems that have long plagued CAFO operators. State governments are increasingly scrutinizing and strengthening manure handling and disposal systems. Critics complain that few manure handling systems approach the waste treatment systems required of incorporated communities of humans.

The problem of developing a coherent set of policies is complicated by producers who are resistant to changing a profitable system, while there are those among the critics who would like to see the end of all industrialized meat production.

Daryll E. Ray holds the Blasingame Chair of Excellence in Agricultural Policy, Institute of Agriculture, University of Tennessee, and is the Director of UT’s Agricultural Policy Analysis Center (APAC). (865) 974-7407; Fax: (865) 974-7298; dray@utk.edu; http://www.agpolicy.org. Daryll Ray’s column is written with the research and assistance of Harwood D. Schaffer, Research Associate with APAC.

ACRE, SURE online tools available

Through ACRE, USDA offers producers an alternative to Direct and Counter-cyclical (DCP) payments. The ACRE alternative provides eligible producers a state-level revenue guarantee, based on the 5-year state Olympic average yield and the 2-year national average price. ACRE payments are made when both state- and farm-level triggers are met. By participating in ACRE, producers elect to forgo counter-cyclical payments, receive a 20-percent reduction in direct payments and a 30-percent reduction in loan rates. ACRE sign-up dates will be announced soon, or a producer can choose to stay with DCP. A decision to elect ACRE binds the producer to the program through the 2012 crop year, the last crop year covered by the 2008 Farm Bill.

North Dakota State University has set up an online ACRE calculator from which producers can download an analyzer to evaluate the program as it relates to their own operations. The Farm Service Agency has an online SURE Assistance Calculator which also allows producers to evaluate the program.

NDSU Extension Farm Management (ACRE Calculator)

FSA Farm Bill Homepage with SURE Assistance Calculator View Farm Bill Information