Jim Moss 10/15/08 pullout at bottom

By Wally Kennedy

wkennedy@joplinglobe.com

LAMAR, Mo. — A conference on the environmental and agricultural impact of concentrated animal feeding operations attracted 100 people this week to Thiebaud Auditorium in Lamar.

Darvin Bentlage, a farmer who has been critical of hog CAFOs in Barton County, organized the meeting in a way that restricted debate on the topic until after the meeting had concluded.

Leslie Holloway, spokeswoman for the Missouri Farm Bureau, said the approach Tuesday night did not give those attending the conference an opportunity to hear all sides of the issue.

Speakers were critical of what they said is the inability of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources to protect the state’s natural resources from the manure associated with factory farms.

They said the DNR, which is charged with permitting and regulating the state’s largest CAFOs, is much too cozy with corporate agriculture. They said the department should be doing more to prevent pollution through aggressive enforcement instead of responding to it at taxpayer expense after the damage already has taken place.

They said new setback standards are needed to protect state parks and historic sites, and to protect traditional family farmers from CAFOs that are placed too close to their homes. They said traditional family farmers would be more concerned about CAFOs if they knew that the equity they have in their farms is placed at risk when CAFOs are established near their farms.

Holloway, with the Farm Bureau, said she attended the meeting on behalf of local Farm Bureau members. She said that by not permitting questions to be asked until after the meeting concluded, the organizers were able to spread “a lot of misleading information. We did not have an opportunity to comment about the information that was presented.”

In response, Bentlage said: “If they want to rent the facility and debate us, bring it on. It was not the intent of this meeting to debate them, which would have given them an opportunity to disrupt the meeting.

“We’ve already heard what they’ve got to say. It was our turn to present the facts that they don’t want people to know about. They don’t want people to know that the information against CAFOs is building and building.”

Holloway said a key issue that was misrepresented by the speakers is the impact of CAFOs on property values. The speakers cited a study by an agricultural economist with the University of Missouri-Columbia as the source of the information.

“We’ve seen that information before — that property values can decrease by up to 88 percent,” Holloway said. “They have used that on several occasions. The researcher who did the study that they are citing as the source of that information has sent us a memo that says what they are saying does not represent the findings of his report.

“He said they cannot draw that conclusion from his report. That is one example of the kind of misrepresentation that was evident during that meeting.”