We just returned from one of the formal hearings before the EPA designates our county as a nonattainment area for dust. Oddly, even though everyone in our county will be effected by another layer of regulations and fines for noncompliance, the audience was made up of 90% farmers and ranchers. For the most part the meeting was about how this will effect all of us and trying to reach attainment while doing the least harm to our county.
However, one lady used her comment time to tell all us aggies in the audience how we are dirty, our cows stink and we kill children for profit. That none of us should be allowed to farm here since people from other states have moved here and now they cannot even go outside because of all our dirty farmland. I saw her light up a cigarette after the meeting, BTW.
While we have come a long way technologically, we still have to use dirt to produce food and fiber. Grocery stores don't make the food they sell. Most of us actually like children alot. We donate school sites, run 4-H clubs, serve on school boards and raise healthy children - even in the dirt and farm doo. Dirt don't hurt.
Anyway, after being just hammered by this woman's rant, no one interrupted her, no one was rude to her, they just let her say her peace. I cannot think of another group who takes such abuse and turns the other cheek. I did notice a bit of sadness and disbelief in the audience though.
I have worked in the ag industry as a woman, a farmer, and an attorney and I can say that farmers and ranchers as a group are the truest gentlemen/gentlewomen I have ever known. They are decent and hardworking, and if protecting their way of life, which believe me is not about the money, makes them bad then we really need to rethink our priorities in this country.
I thank God that the food my family eats is produced by trustworthy, steady, intelligent American farm families and not politicians and misguided urbanites who try to live in germ free bubbles that are not based on any reality. It is awful easy to criticize those whose hands do the dirty work that makes a clean and sterile life possible.
It will be a challenge to meet the guidelines handed down by the EPA for Pinal County. In a nutshell we must all work together to make our air as dust free as is Maine's and Manhattans. No problem. Will do.
This was taken during a dust storm in which dust travels from 100s of miles away and lands on us. Ever see that in Manhattan?
Well, if all else fails and we still have dirt in the desert we can just pave over the ag land and write more tickets.