by Terry Spence
The roots of most American rural communities over the decades have been structured and grown around sustainable family farm operations. With the growth of the factory farm type of agriculture in America, agriculturally dependent rural communities have withered away and some have died out. Large corporate hog farms in Missouri alone have depleted over 60 percent of the independent family hog farmers over the last six years. With the loss of these hog farms there has been a significant loss of family farms, farm families, loss of support to local schools, churches, public institutions and farm-related retail businesses in areas where they operate as well as social impacts.
Missouri had a ban on corporate farming until 1993, when an amendment attached to an economic development bill quietly exempted three counties (Putnam, Sullivan and Mercer) so that Corporate Premium Standard Farms could raise swine in these three counties. Today in these three counties there is a combined population of 15,701 residents and over 1.6 million Premium Standard hogs within an area of 1,625 square miles. This amounts to 985 hogs per square mile, or 102 hogs for every man, woman and child.
Corporate entities undermine the economic factors that communities rely on by getting reduced rates on utilities from what other area farmers have to pay, exemptions in enterprise zones up to 100 percent tax abatements on real property, such as slaughter and packing houses, as well as a raft of community development block grants for infrastructure and job training assistance. The loss of revenues from these factors, as well as the loss from corporations not purchasing locally for their operations and selling the community-based product outside the region brings social and economic disaster to rural areas in Missouri.
A corporate entity in itself is not a living thing; it is without a heart, without a soul or any type of feelings as to its course of action in how it is being used. Corporate executives are living things; they call themselves farmers while dealing with agriculture issues. The only difference in corporate farmers is that REAL FARMERS care about people, their families and their communities, they reside and work at their place of business, they care about the land, and the environment and the animals they raise. REAL FARMERS realize that farming is a sacred trust; to take only what is needed from the land and to use good stewardship, providing opportunities for future generations who follow.
The corporate integration and industrialization of agriculture is slowly eroding away at the fabric that America was built upon. Farmers, for centuries, have been the backbone that makes America what it is today. Farmers have provided an abundance of wholesome, healthy food and commodities, which in turn built strong and healthy rural communities.
Corporate integration hasn’t taken place overnight; it’s been like a black sheep in the night, roaming from place to place, to see where it can fit in without being noticed and being free to do whatever it pleases. Farmers have relied on agriculture groups such as the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF), the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) and the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC) to be a watchdog for anything that might be detrimental to family farmer’s future. These groups became the voice for the American farmer, but at the same time also became good associates with corporate industry. These groups have become so wealthy from dues and checkoffs from the family farmer, that some of them now own stocks and shares in the corporations that are destroying family farmers and agriculture.
Nobody knows better than we do what is strangling the life out of rural America. As farmers, we must individually voice our opinion loud and clear, if the preservation of the family farm is to be continued for the future.
I believe the earth was created so that everything on it could live in harmony. With the new type of corporate industrialization of agriculture, the harmony and balance of nature will soon be nonexistent. Corporate greed has no balance compared to the stewardship of the REAL AMERICAN FAMILY FARMER.
Terry Spence owns and operates a 400-acre, second-generation beef cow/calf farm in Putnam County, Missouri, on which he has lived all but two of his 53 years. He and his wife, Linda, have two children and three grandchildren.