Feedlot South Dakota

by Bill Du Bois

Too much of what passes for economic development these days consists of little more than putting up the "Come On Down and Plunder" sign. It’s a failure of imagination.

Governor Mike Rounds thinks giant industrial style livestock operations are the future. His vision is “Feedlot South Dakota.” We’re told that either you're a modern forward thinking agribusiness cheerleader or you're a romantic stuck in the past without a clue about the future.

There’s an alternative. Instead of listening to the governor’s corporate pals, we should be asking, what kinds of resources would be helpful to small and medium sized farmers and businesses?

What’s really at stake is whether livestock are concentrated in the hands of a few large operators or whether small and medium sized operations will continue to exist.

Charlie Johnson, a Madison area farmer who promotes family farming , says, “We need to challenge the governor to increase the number of farmers -- not just the number of animals.”

A group called Ag United is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars running tv and radio commercials. They claim giant industrial feedlots are the family farms of the future. In other words, the only way to save the family farm is to kill it.

Although factory farm owners may have families, borrowing $10 million and hiring 20 low wage laborers to do the actual work is hardly family farming. We should be promoting authentic family farms -- not debt ridden industrial operations whose farming practices are dictated by the corporation that owns their contract.

As a member of the I-29ers for Quality of Life, I agree with the i-29ers.com website: “We are concerned about large industrial style feedlots coming to South Dakota. We are interested in promoting authentic family farming & ranching and preserving rural South Dakota main street.”

Somewhere along the line, somebody got the idea of putting cows and hogs on the assembly line. A pr person decided to call this “modern farming.” It’s supposed to lower the costs and make farming more efficient. But farm experts say that with a dairy, for instance, all the economies of scale are reached by 300 and certainly by 1,000 cows. From there on, the costs of managing the manure dwarfs gains. The only way large feedlot dairies are economically feasible is if they can transfer costs and risks on to taxpayers. If they had to assume these risks and expenses themselves, they would not be profitable.

Ten 250 head dairies make more sense than one 2,500 head dairy.

There's an old law from wildlife ecology which says, “The more diverse an environment is, the more stable it is.” In other words, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Diversification is the key.

When I directed a small town chamber of commerce in Iowa, the state research showed that 90% of all jobs in the state came from either someone expanding an existing business or someone already in the area opening a new business. I think it makes sense to keep that in mind when we invest our economic development dollars.

But too many bankers and politicians are lazy. They’d rather write one note for $10 million than a hundred loans for $100,000 or a thousand for $10,000. They think it’s easier recruit to one giant feedlot than work on solutions that help most farmers in South Dakota.

I’m not a farmer -- my expertise is community development. But I listen to farmers and over half the I-29ers are farmers.

Listen to the average farmer. Most don’t think their tax dollars and check-off dollars should be used to put them out of business. How can the average farmer compete when government subsidizes giant feedlots with roads, grants, tax breaks, consultants, million dollar manure digesters, part of the money to build their liquid manure lagoons and low cost loans? Authentic family farmers shouldn’t have to subsidize their competition.

Factory farms also shouldn’t be allowed to hide behind a corporate entity to avoid liability. Taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay for cleaning up a liquid manure lagoon should an operation go out of business or foot the bill if there is an environmental disaster. Giant feedlot proponents say there is nothing to fear. They should put their money where their mouth is. Bonding provides an outside assessment of the actual risk of an operation by a bonding company which is in the business of assessing risks.

If factory style operations are truly good economics, they shouldn’t have to ride piggyback on the shoulders of taxpayers.