Reference no: EM133310542

Question 1. In light of the Bayfield example, how would you suggest that Bayfield (community) balance the quest for profit, innovation and economic development with the social, political, and cultural changes that accompany development?

Question 2. What practices or legislation could be adopted to reconcile these competing interests?

Question 3. What problems could arise as a result?

Nicholas Theis

In my undergraduate Environmental Justice course, learning about the environmental degradation and poor human health outcomes created by hazardous facilities captivated me. Excitedly, I asked my professor if any help was needed on a current environmental justice research project. We had both heard about a local struggle going on in Bayfield, Wisconsin, where community activists were resisting an out-of-state corporation that was attempting to site a large-scale industrial hog farm just upstream from Lake Superior. After reading newspaper articles to grasp the general background of the case study, we decided to interview local community residents to better understand both sides of the conflict.

Bayfield is nestled on the shores of Lake Superior, the world's largest remaining source of pristine freshwater. Given its beautiful natural aesthetic and geographic isolation, Bayfield has a bustling tourism industry, providing a bucolic destination for tourists looking for a place to "get away from it all." In early 2014, a hog producer from Iowa purchased land in Bayfield County and began the permitting process to site a factory farm there. If their plans came to fruition, 26,000 hogs and their waste (about 100,000 gallons a day), would be 5 miles upstream from Lake Superior. Upon hearing the news, residents were alarmed. While we often don't think about it, the manure from 26,000 hogs needs to be stored somewhere! Manure storage systems temporarily hold manure, but over time farmers spread them on fields, leading to runoff and water pollution. And if the storage systems were to leak or malfunction, the drinking water of Ashland, a nearby town, along with the area's many aquatic recreation opportunities, would be threatened.

Much of the local community did not want the farm located in Bayfield County, and some dedicated local leaders organized to fight off this unwanted environmental hazard. We interviewed local activists, residents, and government officials, asking questions about the motivations, tactics, and goals of the actors involved in the movement. In these interviews, local activists spoke passionately about their community and how their values and identity were linked to the local environment; the proposed industrial farm posed an ominous threat to them.

I put my understanding of qualitative data analysis attained from a course in research methods into practice by transcribing and coding the interviews to classify and identify the major themes of the struggle. Through the process of data collection and analysis, I discerned that, to the community organizers, the out-of-state Iowa hog producer did not understand that locating a factory farm next to Lake Superior was not only potentially harmful to their tourist industry and natural aesthetic but also violated their very sense of community. That is to say, the economic rationale for the siting of the farm did not take into consideration the cultural significance placed on environmental sustainability in Bayfield.

In defense of their community, the activists engaged in local politics, making the proposed operation the deciding factor in local elections and writing letters to local government officials. In turn, Bayfield's newly constituted county board passed ordinances designed to protect the area from any large-scale farming operation. After the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) ruled that the county board had overreached its local government power, local officials and DNR representatives began negotiating outside the court system. To date, the farm has not been sited in Bayfield County. The community organizers have successfully defended their sense of local identity, water quality, and tourist industry. This research demonstrates that small, rural communities like Bayfield can use local politics and activism to successfully defend their environmental interests and provides a road map for communities with similar environmental issues to do so!

Nicholas Theis is a graduate student in the Sociology Department PhD program at the University of Oregon.

The struggle in Bayfield County provides a small snapshot of a larger environmental issue between local communities that value ecological sustainability and corporations that have economic interests.

Industrial agriculture has allowed us to increase food production rapidly, which helps meet a growing demand for food as our world population has ballooned. Industrial agriculture also makes more expensive foods, like protein-rich meat, more readily available to people who may otherwise not be able to afford it. In addition, new technologies have allowed us to develop genetically modified crops that protect against vitamin deficiencies in vulnerable, low-income populations. At the same time, the environmental and social costs of industrial agriculture are high. Industrial farms, especially livestock farms, require massive amounts of resources like water and grain for feed. Methane produced from livestock manure is an increasing contributor to greenhouse gases. And increasing demand for pesticides puts workers who harvest crops at risk of exposure to dangerous chemicals. Module 8 lecture also examined issues that surround "factory farming."

In Chapter 11, you were exposed to two perspectives on development: the developmentalist perspective and the world systems theory. Developmentalist perspectives assume that the development process in developing countries will take place roughly as it did in the original modernization of developed countries. They assume that close contact with the Western nations will produce self-sustaining economic growth, a reduction in material inequality, and an increase in social and individual welfare in the developing nations. WST was better at explaining why development often failed. Its central tenet is that close contact with the West has produced underdevelopment and dependency, growing inequality, and a decrease in social welfare. Development perspectives had elaborate-if flawed-understandings of the internal social, political, and cultural changes that accompany development. These analyses are notably lacking in WST. The conflict between the two perspectives is not only about the consequences of contact between the core and the periphery, but also, more abstractly, about how much weight to give internal national factors (for example, resources, population growth, political factors, literacy), and how much weight to give external ones (the nature and state of the world market system).