 "Sitting in that hearing, I became aware of a disconnect between the
industry owner/operators and the community members," said Goldsmith,
a University of Illinois agricultural and consumer economist in the
College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences. "It
sounded like two different conversations."Through the Freedom of
Information Act, Goldsmith obtained the transcripts from public
hearings on proposals to site three different confined animal
feeding operations, known as CAFOs, in Illinois. In analyzing the
textual data, he coded 589 statements from people who attended the
hearings. Statements concerning the appropriateness or
inappropriateness of the proposal were coded into categories
relating to the legitimacy of the facility and according to themes,
such as children, property value, health, air and water pollution,
and animal welfare.
Goldsmith heard the community voicing their pragmatic concerns,
while the livestock facility owners and managers focused on the
eight criteria required by the Livestock Management and Facilities
Act to site a CAFO. Examining the actual words that were spoken at
public hearings clearly demonstrated that conflict arose because
each side saw the problems from different perspectives.
"The owner/managers must address the law. They're doing their due
diligence," Goldsmith said. "The problem is that the community has
different concerns -- concerns that may or may not always be
factual, but concerns nonetheless."
Goldsmith said that more and better communication will help both
the owner-managers and the community members reconcile important
issues. It requires validation from both sides, and being factual is
the key.
"There have been a number of cases of CAFOs bringing community
members onto their farm, or inviting them to visit other farms to
see their operation and the various technologies -- kind of an
educational field trip," Goldsmith said.
The reverse is extremely valuable as well. He recommended that
managers visit community members in their homes to experience
firsthand what it is like being a neighbor. In this way, common
experiences are built, communication expands and the conversation
becomes more factual so goals and objectives can be specified.
"The community is expressing issues relating to odor and health,
and it's important that businesses understand those and that the
community verifies those so that it's not an emotional issue that
becomes either exaggerated or understated. There are some examples
of this happening, but it needs to be built in as a routine part of
the process," he said.
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Goldsmith said that although the Livestock Management and
Facilities Act is an efficient and effective regulation for the
construction of livestock facilities, businesses and neighbors might
go the extra mile to get to know each other's concerns and see the
siting firsthand from another's perspective.
"There's too much at stake not to," he said. "What I realized is
that we need to work at consensus building, education, listening and
learning from both sides, to develop a good working relationship."
Goldsmith said some of the conflict that occurs at the public
hearings may be exacerbated by the fact that the community often
comes into the process late.
"The LMFA, based on good engineering practice, requires that
business managers do a lot of the work before the community is even
brought into the conversation," Goldsmith said. "With such a great
development opportunity, we should engage the community early and
say, ‘Let's work together on this.' I'm not naïve enough to believe
that this will solve everything. It's a very complex and emotional
problem, but I think it would at least help the process move in the
right direction," he said.
Although Goldsmith's research dealt with siting livestock
facilities, he recognized that these same problems can be seen with
proposals for shopping malls, schools, airports, wind farms and
other similar facilities that affect communities.
"This is part of a comprehensive research program that looked at
more than just the direct economic benefits of the livestock
industry in Illinois," Goldsmith said. "We had looked at the
economic impact and saw what a CAFO does for communities, taxes,
labor markets, input suppliers and lots of spillovers that are quite
good," Goldsmith said. "The research recognized that the industry is
very productive and efficient, but this study showed that it's also
about being a good neighbor."
"Outlining a Strategic Legitimacy Assessment Method: The Case of
the Illinois Livestock Industry" will be as published in an upcoming
issue of Agriculture and Human Values. Filipe Pereira was a
co-author. The research was originally funded by C-FAR and the
Illinois Livestock Development Group.
[Text from file received from the
University of Illinois College of Agricultural, Consumer and
Environmental Sciences] |
