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Agricultural Facts Not Presented Accurately
By The SC House of Representatives should be commended for passing H-3555, a bill that protects South Carolina farmers’ right to farm and at the same time protects local governments’ rights to Home Rule. As an agricultural leader, who makes a living from farming, and who appreciates the quality, abundance and affordability of our nation’s food and fiber supply, I am troubled by the continued flow of misinformation when agricultural issues are discussed and reported. The debate and news reports about H-3555 were no exception and I feel compelled to set the record straight with some of the facts. First of all, H-3555 was purported by opponents to be another emotionally charged “hog bill.” In actuality, H-3555 is a bill to protect all family farming operations from local governments who have been sold a bill of goods by extreme environmental activists who would have them believe that agricultural operations are harmful to the public. In reality the agricultural industry is already one of the most tightly government controlled and regulated industries in the nation. Debate on the bill created yet another opportunity for anti-farm factions to falsely equate South Carolina’s swine industry with that in North Carolina. Here are the facts – North Carolina has a hog population of more than 10 million, the second largest hog population in the country. South Carolina has 320,000 hogs, ranking twenty-first in the nation’s hog population. North Carolina officials (backed by public documents) who lived through floods caused by Hurricanes Floyd and Dennis say the swine industry did NOT cause water quality problems in North Carolina. In fact, it was human municipal waste treatment plants (a total of 24) that dumped raw sewerage into waterways that caused the problem. South Carolina has never sited a hog farm in a flood plain and cannot under current laws. While municipal waste treatment systems discharge effluent into South Carolina’s public waterways routinely, there has never been a problem with livestock waste lagoon overflows in South Carolina. South Carolina has had tough livestock regulations on the books for more than 30 years. Those laws include regulations to maintain a high level of on-farm water and soil quality. Last year the General Assembly made those regulations the toughest in the country. Many public officials (and reporters) continue to stop short of checking the sources of the hogwash they are being fed – they have obviously not checked the facts before repeating inaccurate information to incite high emotional debates against agricultural operations. South Carolina’s family farmers, like Americans everywhere do not like to compromise on quality –including environmental quality. Many people have willingly let the pigskin be pulled over their eyes and have ignored current sound scientific evidence, statistics of record, and fact.
# # # David M. Winkles, Jr. is President of the South Carolina Farm Bureau Federation, a non-profit agricultural advocate organization with more than 130,500 member families statewide. |
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