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Oct. 14, 2024 |  By: Mark Richardson - Public News Service

Bill would help MO farmers transition to climate-friendly production

a farmer

By Mark Richardson - Public News Service

A bill pending in Congress would use federal funds to help farmers in Missouri and elsewhere transition from concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, to more climate-friendly production. The idea, according to the bill's backers, is to assist producers who want to move from intensive animal agriculture to pasture-based animal agriculture or specialty crop production.

Tim Gibbons, communications director with the Missouri Rural Crisis Center, said the program could allow family farms to better compete with corporate-owned operations.

"Using those dollars to support the vast majority of livestock producers in Missouri would be beneficial, not only to their family farms, but to their local economies, to the land that they're stewards of, and also allowing them to stay in business," he said.

Missouri conservation groups say CAFOs dominate the state's agricultural industry, mass-producing meat at a minimal cost to outcompete smaller independent farms. Agri-business associations say concentrated operations are needed to provide an affordable food supply for a global population.

Conservationists claim CAFOs produce water and air pollution, use hormones and antibiotics in meat production, and often neglect and abuse farm animals. Gibbons says the Industrial Agriculture Conversion Act would help keep independent operations from being forced out of business.

"Ninety-percent of Missouri hog producers were put out of business in one generation, and that's through industrialization, vertical integration and the corporate takeover. We're working to ensure that independent operations can be viable and farmers can pass the farms down to the next generation," he added.

Gibbons said Missouri Rural Crisis Center was formed in 1985 out of the farm crisis of the 1980's and added that the group advocates for policies that support independent family farm operations.