8/31/25

New Mexico among states with polluting feedlots

South Dakota's socialized dairies are wreaking habitat havoc all along the state's border with Minnesota and like most of East River, southwestern Minnesota and northwestern Iowa are Republican strongholds where dairies, swine units and other concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) have devastated water supplies by contaminating wells with nitrates. 

An Earth hating South Dakota legislator from Madison wants to allow eminent domain and trespass for some pipeline operators but also wants to protect CAFOs from scrutiny. Casey Crabgrass Crabtree admits that the cases of criminal trespass at CAFOs don't even exist but ignores the fact that those operations are in fact agro-terrorists themselves

Now, a study published on 12 August in the journal Nature mapped more than 15,000 CAFOs and found that fine particulate matter is nearly 30% higher near cattle farms and nearly 11% higher near hog farms. Feedlot hotspots in Idaho, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Montana, Wyoming and South Dakota have high percentages of Latino workers who have no health insurance. Exposure to dust and manure stored in lagoons is linked to serious health conditions, including asthma, bronchitis, cardiovascular disease, and leukemia.

New Mexico pays 28% of Medicaid costs and the federal government funds the rest under provisions of the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare. Of the 342,000 patients who visited the emergency departments of the three biggest New Mexico medical providers in 2015 forty percent were Medicaid patients. Then during the Trump Virus pandemic New Mexico boosted its study of single-payer medical care. Now with the Orange Julius threatening healthcare again lawmakers expanded Medicaid and extended coverage to most New Mexicans under 65 providing insurance for an additional 80,000-85,000 patients and increasing reimbursement rates for medical providers. 

But in red states the fates of brown-skinned workers are sealed so it comes as little surprise that South Dakota is 49th in opportunity and fifth worst state for nurses but third best state for doctors.

2 comments:

larry kurtz said...

“'Over the last 10 to 15 years, I've probably had 150 people apply for a job here,' he said. 'Two of them have been Americans, and those two are just fulfilling a need for their unemployment to apply for a job.'” Harvest Public Median

larry kurtz said...

"From 1992 to 2022, South Dakota lost 6,622 family farms, including 2,745 dairies. Meanwhile the number of corporate farms has risen, and the number of dairy cattle has skyrocketed. This very plainly illustrates growing corporate control of our state’s ag sector. Now let’s factor in the amount of money the Governor’s Office of Economic Development (GOED) has invested (with our tax dollars) in corporate ag. Since 2016, the state has invested over $34 million in CAFOs - encouraging the very industrial, corporate-backed development that is gobbling up small farms, polluting our land and water, driving up land prices, and making it increasingly hard for new farmers to get started." Dakota Rural Action