Industrial Farming: The Story in the Soil

My research began with deciding who I wanted to interview. I didn’t have any names but I knew that I wanted to interview someone who knew about pesticides, someone who knew about animal welfare, and someone who knew about the environmental impact of both. Who I ended up interviewing was a Regional Pesticide Expert for the EPA, a Hub Manager for the PASA, and the manager of an Animal Welfare Approved slaughterhouse. Each and every one of these contacts shined a different light on the broad topic of agriculture. The light was positive, negative and sometimes just neutral, but still always educational and informative. Yes, industrial farming and agriculture are two very broad topics, so to be able to interview everyone I wanted to was not exactly a reasonable feat - especially as a high school student. But that just made the information I learned even more valuable.

My first contact was Mr. John Butler, a Regional Pesticide Expert for the Environmental Protection Agency. Before my conversation with him, I believed that pesticidal use - while significantly more restricted than in the past - was still generally unmonitored and extreme environmental damage was a common occurrence. During my conversation with him I learned extensive information on the processes that farmers have to go through in order to be authorized for pesticide use. Not only do they have to receive a pesticide license - which requires rigorous tests and constant inspections - but they also have to follow strict codes on worker safety, amounts of chemicals used, and disposal of said chemicals. In fact in 2017 alone, there were around 41,000 inspections in the Mid-Atlantic region with extremely rare cases of violations - the majority of which were met with a monetary penalty. And while a monetary penalty may not seem like a very influential punishment, in the already risky business of agriculture any loss of money can be immensely detrimental to a farmer.

[Below are the notes I took during our conversation.]

Now I would be lying if I said I had done thorough research before my second interview. A tired baked potato of a human being I was barely awake as I typed my questions and so I cannot complain when at first I was disappointed as my second contact also seemed to be focused on pesticides. However as I talked with them, I quickly realized that while at the EPA Mr. Butler focused on the procedures and rules following pesticide use, this contact’s organization worked to educate and support small farmers when it came to sustainable agriculture - and that included making sure their workers were wearing proper safety protection when working with pesticides.

I’m sure you’re on the edge of your seat at this point so I’ll just tell you. My second contact was Mr. Aaron de Long from the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture. The P.A.S.A. is an organization of farmers, for farmers. They work to provide educational opportunities for smaller farming operations in order to make sustainable farming and planting more accessible to them. Farmers communicate techniques and resources with one another all while working together to create a sustainable and profitable agricultural community. As a former farmer and the current Delaware Valley Hub Manager for P.A.S.A, Mr. de Long manages programming for and with dairy farmers in Eastern Pennsylvania. A helpful and friendly resource, we discussed the programs he runs, one of which is a push for grass-based dairy farming.

[Below are the notes I took during our conversation.]

I’m sure you’re confused at this point. You’re going, “Wait a second. All cows eat grass - why would there need to be a specification for grass-based dairy farming?” Hold on to your brain because I’m about to blow your mind.

Yes - all cows eat grass. However, that does not mean they are all fed grass. Unless it says so on the label, the majority of bovine produce is sourced from grain-fed cattle. Grain-feeding cattle is not uncommon, but it is also not natural, not healthy for the animal and not healthy for the environment. Don’t forget that cows produce milk and also eventually become the burger on your plate, which means that whatever unhealthy life the cow lived is now becoming your life - you are what you eat.

In fact, only 2 to 3% of cattle are actually grass-fed while the rest are confined to feed-lots and fed grain and corn.

During his interview, Mr. de Long mentioned a few other resources that I could contact and later continued to be a helpful resource by giving me the contact information of a Ms. Helen Kollar - McArthur.

Ms. Helen Kollar-McArthur is the manager of Rising Spring Meat Company. RSMC’s official mission statement is “to provide high quality meat processing services to local farmers in Pennsylvania.” My first question was, why do local farmers need high quality processing services? It turns out that, in the agriculture industry, the process of turning cattle into meat is fraught with cases of butchers keeping portions of meat for themselves or even returning the wrong meat to their customer. As a way to combat that and create a more trustworthy business, RSMC has a unique identification system that tracks an animal throughout the entire process and ensures that all parts of the product are returned to the farmer. And, although it may seem unlikely at first glance, RSMC is a slaughterhouse that is extremely conscious of the welfare of their animals. According to Ms. Kollar-McArthur, they RSMC is Animal Welfare Approved as are the majority of the farmers that they work with.

Now all of this information I had to learn through extensive interviews, online research, and face-to-face encounters with individual passionate about industrial farming. If it was so difficult for me to find even basic information on my own issue - I could not help but wonder how an ordinary individual viewed my issue. So, I created a survey. And while I have only received 22 responses so far, they are all so varied in opinion and levels of knowledge they tell a story I could never research.

For each of my questions (the majority of which were multiple-choice), my options for responses were usually based on a scale of complete care and knowledge to no interest and no knowledge. Usually I received a combination of the two. However the most interesting question was my open-ended one that asked “If so, what do you know about them (pesticides and GMOs)? Please feel free to answer in as much detail as possible.” Some were adamant that pesticides were not harmful - they were over-exaggerated and were in fact completely safe. Some insisted that all pesticides were harmful and said that they tried to avoid them as much as possible. And many of them just said “Idk.”