Welcome back to Movement Mondays in which we discuss all things climate. I had aspirations for writing a round-up of climate wins from 2023, but didn’t summon the energy in time to create such a post. 🙂 However, I do want to shine a light on one issue we haven’t yet discussed here: factory farming.
As a lifelong vegetarian, I’m opposed to factory farming but wasn’t aware of what had happened in Oregon this past year until I did a search for “best climate wins in 2023.” Up popped an article written by Nick Englefried for Waging Nonviolence, a nonprofit media organization: A major win against factory farming points to a powerful new direction for the climate movement. The sub-headline reads Small farmers in Oregon, backed by a coalition of animal rights and climate activists, secured a big legislative victory over industrial factory farms, providing inspiration for wider action.
Here’s an introductory explanation of factory farming: “As animal agriculture became more concentrated and centralized during the last century, huge swaths of the country saw family farmers be displaced by factory farms, often called Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, or CAFOs. Notorious for their environmental impacts and cruel treatment of animals, CAFOs confine hundreds or thousands of livestock in small spaces where they are fed artificial diets with the goal of maximizing profit. The tons of manure produced by CAFOs are frequently over-applied to agricultural fields, or stored in huge artificial holding ponds called “lagoons.” The facilities are also water-intensive, with the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimating 20 percent of freshwater used by humans worldwide is going to animal feed production.”
The article goes on to explain the carbon footprint of CAFOs. Spoiler alert: all that methane is very bad!
But here’s the good news: “In July, Gov. Tina Kotek signed Oregon Senate Bill 85, which places a moratorium on factory farms’ ability to use unlimited amounts of groundwater. While some advocates consider the bill to be a diluted compromise, it has potential to significantly limit the destructive activities of CAFOs in a state where a healthy remnant of the family farming economy still thrives. On a national level, it represents the first major state legislative victory against factory farming in the U.S. in years.”
The long-term goal of the Oregon coalition (animal rights groups, environmental and climate organizations, and small farmers) is to pass a full moratorium on new factory farming in Oregon.
More good news: “Since the bill’s passage, three proposed factory farms — the Easterday mega-dairy in Morrow County and two industrial poultry farms in the Willamette Valley — have been abandoned by their developers. This is good news for the climate and also small farming communities who will not face local competition from these massive projects.” I would add that it’s also very good news for the cows and chickens who now won’t be brutally mistreated in those facilities.
I recommend reading the full article here because it discusses the historical shift in climate advocacy from changing personal habits to forcing systemic change, highlighting the wildly successful campaign to push back against George W. Bush’s plan to build 150 new coal plants. “By 2010, almost every proposed new coal plant in the U.S. was defeated, allowing climate activists to turn their attention to retiring existing plants.”
I don’t know about you, but it energizes me to learn about successful efforts on behalf of people, animals, and planet! I’d love to hear your thoughts on this (for instance, are there feed lots or factory farms near where you live?) so please share in the comments.
Until next week, solidarity! ✊🏽
Tracy Abell 