Will Branstad Be The Worst Environmental Governor of the 21st Century?
Here's an excerpt of an article written by David Murphy, the founder and director of Food Democracy Now! He is a sixth generation Iowan and an advocate for sustainable
agriculture. You can find his posts at Food Democracy Now! and Huffingtonpost.com.
won't ever happen in Iowa..” – Terry Branstad
After
this early foray into supporting factory farms, Terry Branstad
personally oversaw the passage of one of the state's most controversial
laws, House File 519, which he signed in 1995, stripping all zoning
authority regarding industrial animal confinements from local elected
officials; in Iowa's case, county board of supervisors. The passage of
this bill opened the floodgates for factory hog farms like those built
by Jack DeCoster to spring up all over Iowa and forced more than 20,000
Iowa hog farmers off the land.
Since 1994, the year prior to the
passage of H.F. 519, Iowa has lost nearly 72% of the state's hog
farmers, as the number has dropped from 29,000 to 8,300 today,
increasing consolidation in hog production and decimating rural
communities, as the farmers that small towns depended upon for main
street business survival are now gone.
According to the Iowa Independent,
Branstad told Webster county farmer Gene Brown, “Local control is
something that won't ever happen in Iowa,” speaking of the long fought
battle over the siting of factory farms within the state's 99 counties.
The
state will never allow local governments to decide whether large-scale
animal confinement operations can be built in their areas, Terry
Branstad said in October.
“Local control is something that won’t
ever happen in Iowa,” Branstad said when asked by a Webster County
farmer about the issue. Read more
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