Stench, Pollution, Low Wages, Health Problems - OH Just Loves Megafarms

[hatrack]

Paulding -- Dust has settled thickly on the dark wood furniture in the home where Bob and Diane Thornell used to live. They moved more than a year ago, but they return daily to pick up mail, survey their 40-acre spread and feed the barn cats. There's no time for housekeeping. Both have been diagnosed with brain damage, and their symptoms worsen when they linger in the neat brick house he built long before the large hog farm moved in nearby -- one of eight hog farms built in Paulding County since 1994.

EDIT

While the Thornells, Kadesches and others struggle with the reality of megafarms of hogs, cows and turkeys in their sparsely populated northwest Ohio rural county, the Ohio Department of Agriculture welcomes the farms as assets to Ohio's economy. Director Fred Dailey takes issue with the term "megafarm." "In Ohio," he said, "they're all family farms." And all farms "are beneficial to us . . . if they operate in a manner that doesn't cause environmental problems." Ohio's farm regulatory program is, he said, "one of the best, if not the best, in the United States."

In reality, the economic benefits of megafarms elude Paulding County, where cows (3,700), hogs (13,000) and turkeys (125,000) far outnumber its 20,000 residents. Only 25 percent of property taxes generated by Paulding County dairies -- about $10,000 per dairy per year -- are reaching the county's three school districts, which rank among the bottom third in the state in terms of resident income. Instead, 75 percent of dairy-property taxes are used for road maintenance, leaving 25 percent for the schools instead of the usual 70 percent, county engineer Mark Stockman said. In effect, the schools are losing $35,000 per year. Even with the extra money, road damage associated with dairies far exceeds the ability of the county and townships to pay for repairs, Stockman said.

Local grain farmers also haven't found the dairies to be a hungry customer. The dairies buy only about 1 percent, or about $25,000, of their premixed feed locally, according to a May 2003 Ohio State University study led by agricultural economist Brian Roe. Pre-mixed feed is the highest single cost for a dairy. Furthermore, some farmers who originally sold grain to dairies no longer do so because of slow payments, Kadesch said."

EDIT

http://www.cleveland.com/living/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/living/110155157262571.xml

[satya]

1. Kompogas--Clean fuel from manure and other organic waste

"Kompogas, a mixture of methane and carbon dioxide (CO2), can be burned in a gas motor to generate electricity, or (with the CO2 removed) used to power cars and trucks (including 1,200 in the Zurich area). It produces 80 percent less smog-forming chemicals than standard gasoline. Wastewater from the process goes into aquaculture projects and liquid fertilizer."more

Concept car fueled by Kompogas

Additional info:
IEA Bioenergy

[CAcyclist]

2. Isn't there a state - North Dakota? - that outlawed

corporate farms after a bad experience with a megapig farm?

[amandabeech]

3. The only locals benefitting from this are the feed & seed distributors

and possibly local trucking firms.

These people are paying for our cheap meat with their lives.

I imagine, though, that the local political offices are held by Republicans. Maybe it's time for some socially conservative Democrats to run in places like this.