Are our CAFO regs all wet?

During the past several days, we've had a chance to see severe flooding affect parts of China, England and the U.S. Meanwhile, a multitude of wildfires are burning in Canada and the western U.S. It's obvious, if we stop to think about it, that our built environment, and much of our "managed" natural environment, are neither constructed nor operated to minimize the climate and weather related hazards to which we are now exposed.

storms get more intense even in farm country

Photo by J. Harrington

This would be of less concern if we had the slightest idea what should be used for new or improved design standards or building codes. But, if what once was a 1,000 year storm now has a return frequency of a couple of decades, due to increased weather and storm volatility and other climate crisis related factors, when and under what conditions should floodplain identification be modified; setbacks be expanded, pipes and lagoons be oversized, etc.? Shouldn't these kinds of questions be raised and answered before new or expanded confined animal feeding operations [CAFOs] be allowed? The Environmental Working Group, five years or so ago, released a report on North Carolina's "fields of filth." To my knowledge, there hasn't been a comparable evaluation of Minnesota's requirements, despite the growing impacts of climate breakdown. Would we not be better served to have a review before the situation gets much worse? In the climate change world, I believe such  an approach is referred to as adaptation. For most of US it needs to become common sense, especially in the Midwest, where, according to this data, both Minnesota and Iowa rank ahead of North Carolina in hog production.

Frogs Eat Butterflies. Snakes Eat Frogs. Hogs Eat Snakes. Men Eat Hogs.

Wallace Stevens - 1879-1955

It is true that the rivers went nosing like swine,
Tugging at banks, until they seemed
Bland belly-sounds in somnolent troughs,

That the air was heavy with the breath of these swine,
The breath of turgid summer, and
Heavy with thunder’s rattapallax,

That the man who erected this cabin, planted
This field, and tended it awhile,
Knew not the quirks of imagery,

That the hours of his indolent, arid days,
Grotesque with this nosing in banks,
This somnolence and rattapallax,

Seemed to suckle themselves on his arid being,
As the swine-like rivers suckled themselves
While they went seaward to the sea-mouths.

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