Ag's ability to fend off regulation is a problem for the community but ultimately a problem for ag as well.
1/10
2. For the community, ag externalizing their costs onto everyone else is an obvious problem. But often the more insidious problem is that if you try to use democratic institutions to regulate ag, you'll likely fail, but you could also end up losing those democratic institutions.
3. When the citizen/farmer-led Arkansas State Plant Board tried to reign in the neighbor-to-neighbor damage from dicamba, Monsanto tried to sue them out of existence.
arkansasonline.com/news/2019/dec/…
4. And then they sued each board member individually.
npr.org/sections/thesa…
5. In Minnesota, when ag lobbying groups didn't like the rulings on CAFO regulations coming out of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, the just eliminated the MPCA.
indyweek.com/news/archives/…
6. In North Carolina, the hog industry managed to get the state legislature to override the governor's veto of a law that severely curtailed the property rights of homeowners, arbitrarily exempting CAFOs from public nuisance lawsuits.
indyweek.com/news/archives/…
7. Ag-gag laws in Iowa, Idaho, Utah, and Kansas ran so blatantly afoul of 1st Amendment rights that they struck were down in court. Ag-gag laws that barely pass constitutional muster remain on the books in several states, continuing to violate 1st Amendment freedoms.
8. The upshot of all this is that, while ag may get their way in a narrow sense of the term, they remain embattled, untrusted, and very difficult to be in coalition with other potential allies.
9. As long as they get their way on these issues, that may not matter to them. But I overhear enough grousing about the lack of trust and the feeling of being politically embattled to think that at least some of them do.
As political power shifts inexorably to urban centers they may find themselves needing political allies who are wary of ag trade organizations that are so hostile to responsible regulation and when push comes to shove, to democratic institutions and basic constitutional rights
~ fin ~
#fafdlstorm
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