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Facts About H-3555 Not Presented Accurately
By 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 are no exception and I feel compelled to set the record straight with some of the facts. Contrary to information in today’s (Friday, May 9) Post and Courier editorial, a poultry grower in Greenwood county met the nation’s toughest livestock environmental regulations and received a permit from DHEC to build a poultry house, only to be denied by Greenwood County. We don’t need 46 mini-DHECs around the state arbitrarily acting on emotions rather than basing their decisions on sound science. H-3555 is purported by opponents of the bill 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. The “Right to Farm” bill does not intrude on Home Rule. Under H-3555 counties still have the right to zone land, just as they have done in the past. If a county chooses to zone a plot of land for “agricultural use,” then that land will uniformly be subject to the same strict statewide permitting standards and regulations established by DHEC and passed by the General Assembly. Debate over this bill has 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. Under current regulations, South Carolina cannot site hog farms in flood plains. Municipal waste treatment systems discharge effluent into South Carolina’s public waterways routinely, not livestock operations. 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. Under the livestock regulations passed last year by the General Assembly, it is impossible to locate a hog farm over one million pounds anywhere in the state. It is nearly impossible to locate a farm the size of a half million to a million pounds. That leaves the smallest unit of hog farms, which the family farmer needs as an option in order to maintain his family’s livelihood. 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. Rather than sitting on H-3555 in the Senate and tying it up in committee, the Senate has a great chance to show that it is in favor of the small businessman – the family farmer. It’s also a great opportunity to stand by the General Assembly’s actions of a year ago and boast of its successful efforts to pass the nation’s toughest livestock regulations, which given a chance to work will prove to protect our environment while allowing the family farmer an opportunity to provide for his family.
# # # 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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