Attorney Stephen G. Jeffery has been defending farm families and farm communities since the 1990s when the first incursions into Missouri from industrial interests began. In those days, the corporate takeovers came from ag-related industries like concentrated animal feeding operations (cafos) that stole markets while polluting aquifers and waterways. Fast forward to the 2020s and we find industrial organizations backing data centers with thousands of computers that constitute "the cloud" where data is stored and manipulated. These centers create abnormal amounts of heat and are cooled by pulling water from aquifers, stealing it from traditional towns and farms that need it. In part 1 of this 2-part series, Mr. Jeffery outlined the threats to independent land ownership and to food security. In part 2, he details some of the strategies that landowners can use to fight the incursion by restricting the uses of privately-owned land to uses by farming or home ownership rather than industrial buildings.
What is Farm and Fiddle?
Farm and Fiddle is the world's oldest radio program covering sustainable agriculture and local food systems. We air every Wednesday evening from 7 to 8 p.m. central time, from KOPN 89.5 fm, Columbia, Missouri. We speak to the best experts in regenerative agriculture, agroforestry, animal husbandry, and cover topics like how to resist factory farms in the neighborhood and what to do if your crop is knocked out by too much or too little rain, or by a neighbor's sloppy poison application.