agricultural runoff poisons northern wisconsin

I am way pissed:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/18/us/18dairy.html?pagewanted=2&em

Cow shit is contaminating the water table in northern Wisconsin. Why? Because there are so many goddamn cows crammed into unnaturally small areas that there is no way the ecosystem could possibly absorb that much waste.

“One cow produces as much waste as 18 people”... In Brown County, part of one of the nation’s largest milk-producing regions, agriculture brings in $3 billion a year. But the dairies collectively also create as much as a million gallons of waste each day. Many cows are fed a high-protein diet, which creates a more liquid manure that is easier to spray on fields.

Leeeet's take this apart, shall we? Who exactly has the power to make an industry that brings in 3$ billion a year in a place like Brown County (whose other major industries include paper mills and the Green Bay Packers and not a whole lot else) do anything but what they want to do? It's the backbone of local production, probably the most lucrative thing to come out of that area since French-Canadian fur trappers took all of the beaver pelts back to French-Canada. It's major industry, major agribusiness, and major agribusiness does what it wants with its shit. The other major problem here is that nobody knows what ELSE to do with the shit.

To fix the problem of agricultural runoff, “I don’t think there’s a solution in my head yet that I could say, right now, write this piece of legislation, this will get it done,” Ms. Jackson [head of the EPA] said in an interview.

Despite the fact that "Agricultural runoff is the single largest source of water pollution in the nation’s rivers and streams," there is no solution in the current system, because the current system demands enormous amounts of dairy and beef for a populous convinced that milk is absolutely necessary for both young and old alike and that beef is inevitably What's For Dinner. (You can, of course, replace beef with chicken or pork in this context--all of the agribusiness surrounding animal products creates unmanageable amounts of waste. Cows just happen to be the biggest and gassiest.) Nobody is addressing the actual underlying problem: our food system is unsustainable. The evidence is everywhere: eastern tomato crops failing from the effects of monocropping, skyrocketed obesity and diabetes rates tied to cheap food made from government-sponsored and -encouraged overproduction of corn and soy, constant panic over food poisoning outbreaks linked to huge production plants, and (largely overlooked) scandalous conditions for the living, thinking, feeling creatures we cultivate for food.

Of course there's no ready solution.

And can we go back to that first quote? I'm not done yet:

Many cows are fed a high-protein diet, which creates a more liquid manure that is easier to spray on fields.

When was the last time you, yourself, produced a "liquid manure"? Was it because your body was happy and feeling great? Or was it because you ate something poisonous or unhealthy, or were otherwise ill, and your body was cramped and burning inside? Think for a moment how these cows producing the "liquid manure" felt about their "high-protein diet", they being animals who can't even digest corn, but evolved multiple stomachs so they could digest grasses?

Other farmers receive fees to cover their land with slaughterhouse waste and treated sewage.

The article doesn't state who pays the fees to cover land with slaughterhouse waste and treated sewage (need I point out that these people are growing your food in this slop?), but it's safe to assume that it's either the powers behind the production of the waste and sewage, or the government, which is cowed (no pun intended) by the financial might of an industry that is poisoning human and animal bodies, as well as the earth, water, and air around it.

End rant. I'm going to go smother myself with my cats and hope I wake up in a different universe.