In dealing with what Washington Post columnist Steve Pearlstein called the “the world’s most selfish lobby,” the attitude needs to be more we-shall-fight-on-the-beaches Winston Churchill and less peace-in-our-time Neville Chamberlain. We need more pressure on the way Big Ag does business, from the total dominance in federal farm subsidies for just five crops, to regulating its unchecked pollution in places like the Chesapeake Bay and the Mississippi River Basin, and fewer concessions for a Big Ag lobby that projects scorn for sustainable agriculture and licks its chops at the prospect of plowing up land that’s no longer protected by the Conservation Reserve Program ["More Churchill, Less Chamberlain," Environmental Working Group, Jan. 2010].
We don't hear that message enough in South Dakota.
Mr. Heidelberger, the reach of Big Ag extends to the very headwaters of the Missouri itself.
ReplyDeleteCattle allowed to graze in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest in Jefferson County, Montana (not to mention the Black Hills), just one of thousands of such watersheds, are, and have been, introducing anti-biotics into forest ecosystems.
These drugs pass cattle digestive tracts unaltered and are often concentrated at water sources.
Very powerful compounds have disrupted , if not completely killed the fungi necessary to break down the very organic material that cattle deposit.
County commisioners are the first line of political defense; they need to know that there is resistance to contamination, especially in communities frightened by spikes in autism and cancer rates.