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Thomas Brown

Hershey, Nebraska
Membership Chair
Platte Valley Group

A lifelong farmer/rancher and a 30-year veteran "down in the trenches for the Nebraska Chapter" -- he was chapter treasurer for 25 years -- Tom Brown has strong opinions on the things he holds dear.

Brown, pictured above holding up part of an old rotary hoe, says of factory farming: "If you don't live next to one of these places you can't smell it, and people aren't yet concerned about the effect on groundwater. But there's a huge national audience concerned about animal welfare and abuse. Remember the photo of the sick, dying veal calf lying in a narrow stall? That photo made some changes. Hogs swimming in their excrement isn't pretty, either. We're not going to win by playing nice. The agribusiness industry will do anything to protect its bottom line."

Environmentalists should lobby to reverse the trend of agribusiness getting bigger and bigger, Brown says. "Agribusiness relies on subsidies, and big farmer welfare payments destroy the structure of agriculture and put small farmers out of business. If the public wants more farmers out here, which they should, we should enact public policy that supports entry-level farming and livestock operations."

Brown says federal grazing leases are so cheap that public land graziers are basically being subsidized as well. "The wise use movement, which embraces a broad spectrum of public land uses that are united in opposition to environmental ideas, might fall apart if all environmental groups temporarily united to push for legislation that subjected grazing leases to competitive bidding. Getting fair market value for grazing fees and directing the income to the U.S. treasury in an era of huge federal deficits should be a no-brainer."

Published: May 30, 2007