CAFOs: Polluting Our Sense of Reality and Our Environment

Peninsula Pride is a local nonprofit organization, where most of the area’s CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations) hold events, speak about farming practices, and largely attempt to explain why their industrial farming practices are somehow environmentally beneficial to northeast Wisconsin. One of their main tenets of truth is that using cover crops (plants that cover the soil, before, during, or after their intended harvested crop), makes their industrial farms eco friendly.

It is true that planting cover crops like rye, oats, clover, sorghum-sudangrass, or even better, a mixture of many species, can do wonderful things for our soils and our environments. Improving soil organic matter, increased water infiltration, sequestering carbon, and cycling nutrients can all be potential positive outcomes of using cover crops.

With that said, the context of using cover crops in CAFOs’ standard practices reveals a much more sinister story.

There’s not a cover crop in the world that can absorb 27,000 gallons of toxic, anaerobic, liquid manure per acre, annually. Any benefit you may have had from your cover crop is now lost because your soil is now incredibly saturated with liquid manure.

Many Wisconsin state codes declare that in order to spread the vast quantities of liquid manure that CAFOs intend on spreading, they MUST have an established cover crop. In other words, they’re not being innovative stewards of the land by planting cover crops; they’re simply doing their best to stay compliant with state law. This is especially the case when they are spreading over Silurian bedrock (See Wisconsin NR 151 Silurian bedrock performance standards).

Additionally, if you look at the publicly available Nutrient Management Plans of each of the largest producers of manure in our area (S&S, Brey Cycle, Pagel, Kinnard), they intend to increase their manure production dramatically. To put the amount of increase into perspective, the four of these producers have new DNR approved Nutrient Management Plans that allow them to collectively increase their manure/waste application by over 100 million gallons by the year 2027 from what it was in 2021.

Furthermore, these plans have detailed outlines of how much manure will be spread on each individual field. It is not uncommon for these plans to reveal that some fields will receive 27,000 gallons of liquid manure spread per acre, annually. Or put in another way, imagine a small 12 acre field receiving over 340,000 gallons of liquid manure, every year.

What makes matters worse is that many of these fields are often only 2-5 feet over cracked Silurian bedrock. Many of the historically known karst features that exist throughout Door County are now regularly disputed by CAFOs. Door County’s Soil and Water Conservation Department is now reversing soil maps, stating that the cracks in the bedrock now no longer exist. This reversal now allows CAFOs to spread in extremely vulnerable areas, putting our community’s health even more at risk.

So what can we do?

DCEC is working hard to come up with solutions so that we can advocate for responsible farmers that help feed our communities, while holding irresponsible and ecologically reckless farmers accountable. One of the biggest things you can do right now is to become educated on more sustainable agricultural practices and avoid becoming a person who gets manipulated into supporting reckless polluting activities. We really do appreciate any support you can give us in order to further educate our community and help us conserve the county that we’ve always loved.