Citizens' Ability to Govern
Under Attack in Pennsylvania

Fulton County, Pennsylvania, could be anywhere in rural America east of the Mississippi. There are farms, villages, larger towns, hills and valleys, and a history dating back to pre-Revolutionary War times. Recent stories covered in the local paper include restoring a historic cabin, a school budget increase, a high school anti-drug rally and Pennsylvania Senate Bill 1413.

And if you believe Thomas Linzey, an attorney with the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund -- and I do -- the last time the region saw a threat to their rural lifestyle and political liberties on par with Senate Bill 1413 was when the County saw its homesteads and farms burned at the close of the Civil War.

The bill, which passed the Pennsylvania Senate and is on a fast track to passage in the lower chamber, prohibits municipalities -- such as half of Fulton County's 10 townships and four other rural Pennsylvania towns -- from adopting "frivolous" local laws to prohibit, restrict or regulate massive confined animal feeding operations, also known as CAFOs.

In other words, because a handful of rural townships intentionally passed new laws banning factory farms in general -- and hog farms in particular -- the agri-business lobby, led by the powerful Pennsylvania Farm Bureau, has pushed state legislators to extinguish efforts by these townships to assert their democratic rights to determine their economic health and chart a sustainable future for their communities.

"The factory-farm barbarians are at the gate again," is how Linzey, who helped these communities draft the anti-hog farm legislation, put it in a guest editorial on CELDF's Web site, "Pennsylvania citizens will not stand for the devaluation of their property, the killing of their rural communities, and the elimination of family farmers by markets manipulated by farm corporations."

But that's exactly what may happen. Rural Pennsylvania is getting a crash course in 21st century economics and politics, where corporate business interests trump whatever remains of the Jeffersonian ideals of rural self-reliance and self-determination. Unless a political miracle occurs and Senate Bill 1413 dies an unexpected death, the big hog farms -- and their
related woes -- will come.

For readers who don't know about factory hog farms, or might be skeptical of this 'Darth Vader' characterization, these animal factories, in which thousands of hogs are crammed together in barns and their wastes are put in open-air lagoons, have established records of transforming rural communities -- and not for the better.

Beyond the well-documented lifestyle impacts of noxious odors, fly swarms, ground- and well-water contamination, and truck traffic are genuine economic issues that send ripples of uncertainty throughout the countryside.

Because factory farm mass-production techniques have cut the market price of pork in recent years, tens of thousands of family-owned hog farms have been priced out of business, according to industry reports. When these farms shut down, so too does the flow of money to nearby economies. A Virginia Tech University study found family livestock farmers make 70 percent of purchases within 20-miles of their farms; the figure for corporate farms is 40 percent.

In addition to these local economic losses are other well-documented impacts. Hog waste lagoons almost always undermine surrounding property values. North Carolina State University found the number of farm jobs fell in that state's largest hog-farming regions as family farms were supplanted by corporate operations. Other studies found population growth has stagnated in factory farming regions, and local property and sales tax revenues have
fallen as well.

These impacts are well known in the affected communities and haven't been taken lightly. Since 1980, citizens in nine Midwestern states have adopted 'anti-corporate farming' laws. According to CELDF, laws were most recently adopted in Nebraska and South Dakota, where it was an amendment to the South Dakota Constitution.

Starting in 1999, a handful of local Pennsylvania townships, including half of Fulton County, started adopting ordinances identical to the statewide laws in the Midwest. "In each of those municipalities, which had previously been targeted for factory farms," CELDF reported, "no new factory farms have been built."

The genius -- indeed the paradigm shift -- of what these small towns did, Linzey said, was they acted to bar the style of farming promoted by the nation's largest agri-businesses. The towns didn't want to be in the box that communities often find themselves in -- reacting to issues by trying to regulate a project that's coming through the door. The towns didn't want corporate farms in their future, period.
"It's not the farming techniques. It's the folks behind them -- the corporations and what they create in communities, " Linzey said. "Who should best determine how food is produced in a local area? The corporations or the local governments? "

But what began as a growing trend of rural communities acting to shape their future has become a sadly familiar story of agri-business lobbyists pulling the levers of power to protect their bottom line and trample the public interest.

In 2000, the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau, long dominated by large agri-business interests, started threatening to sue local officials -- for personal liability -- if they considered passing anti-corporate farming laws. Once those attempts at intimidation failed, Farm Bureau lobbyists leaned on nearly a dozen state senators to introduce legislation to stop the townships. An earlier version of Senate Bill 1413 was introduced, but had stalled for a year after being opposed by a coalition that included elected township officials.

In November 2002, the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau and the factory farms upped the ante and sued Fulton County's Belfast Township. And this spring, Senate Bill 1413 -- nullifying the local efforts to block the factory farms -- surfaced. It passed Pennsylvania's Senate on April 30. It's already passed one House committee and now sits in another, Appropriations, where it's on track to return to the full House in early June.

"Such is the response to democracy by corporations, " says Linzey. "Such has always been the response of corporations to citizens exercising their democratic right to build sustainable communities. "

Linzey emphasizes the bottom line goes beyond the question of whether the factory hog farms should be allowed -- they shouldn't, he notes, even if a few local farmers say they want them on their land. The issue, he says, is who has more political rights and power; the small towns and their elected officials asserting their democratic rights of self-determination; or big corporations, pretending that they have the same rights without accountability, no matter the cost to the fabric of communities.

The latest development in this saga is the entry of the Pennsylvania Farmers Union, a family farm-based organization, into the fray. The group, which helped Midwestern states adopt anti-corporate farming laws, opposes Senate Bill 1413 and may splinter support in the House.

But while the outcome remains to be seen, this is a fight is worth watching for anyone who cares about fundamental democratic issues and creating sustainable communities. If Fulton County loses, we all lose because at the heart of any community's sustainability is the right of self-determination.

Fulton County, which was originally called Liberty County, has been raising hogs, sustainably, for a long time. Let's hope it can reclaim this liberty, instead of being force-fed a future it doesn't want.

Learn more about the mission of Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund and support their work; visit www.celdf.org

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