CAFO Crap 2

REMEMBER TO VOTE TODAY!

In an update to this post, we get a report of cow crap in an unexpected place -- the New Mexican desert:

Curry and Roosevelt counties now enjoy the dubious distinction of being at the heart of the Great American West's dairy industrial complex. With barely 20,000 dairy animals in 1992, the two counties now feed, milk, and clean up after 120,000 cows at 58 operating dairy farms, a number that by all accounts will double in a few short years.

[snip]

CAFOs present a serious threat to the counties' main water source, the Ogallala Aquifer. And at the same time that the industry is sucking the ground dry, nitrates from the manure are finding their way back into the ground water in such concentrations as to alarm public health workers and state officials.

The cows did not just migrate to NM following an ancient, herd instinct. They were brought by farmers fleeing the "overregulation" of California's Chino Valley for laxer water quality standards and cheaper water. It's all about the money:

Over half of America's milk is now produced west of the Mississippi. The economic advantages of a near perfect climate, cheap land, subsidized water, an uneven, if not lax regulatory environment, a multi-billion dollar infrastructure consisting of rail, grain elevators, and dairy processing plants, and low-cost Mexican labor (only of half of which is legal by the admission of one Curry County dairyman) have made western dairies the low-cost producers in the national milk market. A New Mexico dairy farmer's breakeven point for a hundred pounds of milk production is between $11.50 and $12.50. For a large (500-head), efficient New England dairy farmer, the breakeven point is over $14.00.

What are the impacts of 5,000 cow "dairies" replacing 100 head operations? Predictably bad: more flies, falling groundwater levels, higher pumping costs for neighbors, higher medical and education costs for illegal workers and their families, more crime and flies flies flies...

[Survey] respondents (n=150) said that dairies were the number one cause of the county's air and water quality problems. As Theresa, a housewife, put it, "living on the high plains, we have natural air conditioning, but we can't open the windows because the manure odor is so bad."

None of the people I spoke with were optimistic about conditions improving. As Dan said, "we don't have an Erin Brokovich to go after these guys." This statement was backed up by a unanimous belief that government would not help them. "The politicians are in the pocket of the dairy industry," said Theresa.

The loss of political control to dairies is a familiar scenario, and I am betting that those who overthrew "democracy" in Chino have overthrown it in New Mexico. Too bad for everyone else.

Bottom Line: CAFOs are unsustainable, and one major reason that they are unsustainable is that they do not have to pay for overdrafting aquifers or polluting water. Tell your politicians that -- at the polls!

ps/Want more? Read this: "In the moisture-limited West, raising water-loving livestock makes about as much sense as raising oranges in Alaska. If you can get most of your costs subsidized, and if you and society are willing to ignore the environmental consequences, it can be done. However, as more of the true costs of western livestock production are realized, including the cost in precious water resources, society may want to reconsider this folly."

hattip to DW