Family-farm advocates in rural Wisconsin are pushing back on Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, or CAFOs, as the livestock industry becomes more concentrated. They have met with resistance from local officials. Hundreds of residents of Pierce County, nestled along the Wisconsin – Minnesota border, are concerned about a proposed expansion of CAFOs in the county. Danny Akenson, with a group called Grass Roots Organizing Western Wisconsin – or GROWW – asked county officials to put a moratorium on CAFO expansion.
Similar efforts at halting CAFO expansion have failed in other Midwest and Plains states, where advisory groups have also been formed, and where CAFOs have the potential to pollute groundwater. Large, corporate-owned farms say their operations are more efficient than small family farms, and are simply meeting a growing demand.
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