Ag United Deceives South Dakotans

by Bill Du Bois

February 2006, Dakota Farmer magazine

Ag United has spent $100,000’s on tv and radio advertising to convince the public that they represent family farmers. It is a colossal fraud.

Ag United is composed of the same giant agribusiness front groups who’ve been siding against the average farmer for years. Farm Bureau has organized similar propaganda outfits nationwide. They promote an agenda of “Get big or get out.”

However, the commercials don’t tell you that. They’re ashamed to show the actual giant industrial facilities. Instead, one farmer says he hopes to expand to 500 cattle.

Talk about deception. Ag United promotes operations much larger.

In November 2004, Ag United hired Steve Dick as director. Scott VanderWal, the president of the Farm Bureau remained as president of Ag United. They said they were forming to counter the misinformation being put by groups such as the I-29ers. Since we’d been telling the truth, I knew right then honest dialogue wasn’t on their agenda.

Like an old time medicine show selling snake oil, Ag United roams the I-29 corridor misleading County Commissioners. By opposing even the most reasonable safeguards such as bonding, healthy farming practices and pollution standards, they have pitted neighbor against neighbor. They also oppose the right to vote preferring to let lawyers, lobbyists and backstage deals with government officials determine policy.

“Say Anything for a Buck” experts testify to the most outrageous things. 14,000 head hog feedlot won’t stink in Lake County. You can’t smell a feedlot a quarter mile away in Lincoln County. A feedlot right above the wellhead for Deuel County rural water won’t pose any risk.

Ag United opposes monitoring air pollution in South Dakota even though hydrogen sulfide levels seven times beyond Minnesota’s limit were found at a dairy feedlot near Brookings.

Ag United portrays itself as “Good Neighbors” and even gives out such an award. However, good neighbors don’t endanger another’s health and then hire a propaganda firm to cover it up.

In Dakota Farmer, Steve Dick claimed a giant feedlot next door won’t decrease your property value. Actual independent scientific research demonstrates he’s wrong.

Last month, he accused me of making inaccurate statements and claimed giant feedlots receive no tax dollars.

Check out the tax dollars being used to help build liquid manure lagoons

Or the $2.9 million in federal tax dollars last year for just one anaerobic manure digester in South Dakota.

Check the Moody County records for the tens of thousands of tax dollars used to build roads for just one feedlot dairy.

Or the $203,500 in tax dollars a speculators group headed by now Assistant Senate Majority Leader Joel Dystra got to recruit European dairy farmers.

Tax dollars directly pay for a parade of feedlot promoters at SDSU.

The Corn Council used checkoff dollars to fund Todd Kays at 1st District Planners studying zoning laws. Anyone who isn’t pro-feedlot is forbidden to see the study. Kays then works at taxpayer expense to write zoning laws to get around the right to vote.

Economists say we’re in a post-industrial economy based on information and service. It means putting people and ideas together effectively. It means listening to consumers. When you ask, consumers don’t want meat saturated with antibiotics or milk with genetically modified growth hormones.

Ag United claims DENR does a good job regulating CAFO’s. Three years ago, DENR gave existing feedlots three years to meet standards. Only 10% complied by the September 30, 2005 deadline, 70% were somewhere in process and fully 20% thumbed their nose at the process completely. A DENR spokesperson said she was proud that 80% had applied. That’s like a dentist being proud 80% of his patients don’t die in his dental chair.

The I-29ers have brought in people to tell what has happened in other states with massive manure spills. Mr. Dick says, it can’t happen in South Dakota. However, it comes out of the same end of the cow. And it’s the same technology that has failed in other states.

Rather than adopting an industrial model that causes so many problems for neighbors and taxpayers, South Dakota has a chance to do economic development right.