Tag: big business

Rooster Becomes Symbol in Sprawl Battle

  • Matt Lehner owns a farm that sits between two condominium projects. His rooster has become a symbol for his community's fight against rapid development in the area. (Photo by Adam Allington)

Some communities are struggling to find the right balance between new development and preserving the farms and natural areas surrounding them. Some towns feel as though rapid development is out of control. Local residents sometimes feel as though they’re fighting big business to preserve their community’s way of life. Every once in a while, a champion for their fight emerges from the least likely of places. The GLRC’s Adam Allington reports:

Transcript

Some communities are struggling with finding the right balance of new
development and preserving the farms and natural areas surrounding
them. Some towns feel as though rapid development is out of control.
Local residents sometimes feel as though they’re fighting big business to
preserve their community’s way of life. Every once in a while, a
champion for their fight emerges from the least likely of places. The
GLRC’s Adam Allington reports:


Matt Lehner is a mechanic and a small scale farmer. He lives on his
family’s homestead built by his great great grandfather in the late 1800’s.
These days the only animals on the farm a few chickens and geese that
Matt raises as a hobby.


“I’ve got bard rocks, I’ve got Rhode Island reds, I’ve got mini chickens
called banties.”


In a strange twist of fate Matt’s rooster has a become a local icon of sorts
by simply doing what roosters do best.


(Sound of crows)


Located just in northern Michigan near the Village of Suttons Bay, Matt’s
farm sits smack between two big condominium projects sitting on the
Bay, a scenic area off of Lake Michigan. Developers have tried to buy
the farm for years, but the family is not selling.


The new residents of the condos didn’t appreciate the early morning
crowing of Matt’s rooster… or their crowing any other part of the day for
that matter. Rather than an audible reminder of the rural character of the
area, the rooster crowing was a perceived as a problem by the
management of the Bay View Development. So they tried to get a no-
farm-animal ordinance passed by the village council.


“They tried to go to the village meeting to get an ordinance against
chickens without even notifying me they were doing this and the village
told them that this farm is 150 years old and it precedes their jurisdiction
by at least 50 years.”


In other words, Matt’s farm was not only there before the condos… it
was there before the village, and that wasn’t the end of the story. When a
small article about the dispute was published in the local newspaper, the
Leelanau Enterprise, locals rallied around the roosters with
surprising tenacity. Letters poured into the Enterprise. Most of which
were critical of the condominium’s attempt to get a crowing ban. It was
almost like the chicken scratched the surface of a tension that had been
simmering for years. Some residents of the county have the feeling that
their home is gradually becoming swallowed up by developers with no
connection to the land or its communities.


Ashlea Walter is a business owner from the nearby town of Empire. She
says that the rooster issue represents a kind of irony that she sees
happening every day.


“Yeah, I think the sentiment is that there is a lot of development all over
the county that we see and I’m not anti-development at all, but what I’m
seeing is the irony of the development. The great thing about this area is
its agricultural history, it’s picturesque towns and its natural beauty but
then what is so wonderful about the area is what the developers want to
get rid of.”


The developers didn’t think it was that big of a deal. They weren’t trying
to change the community. They just didn’t want the rooster waking up
everyone.


Todd Demock is the construction superintendent for the Bay View
Development. He says that as far as the chickens are concerned he never
thought it would go this far.


“Apparently the roosters that were next door were making a bunch of
noise. It didn’t bother me I wasn’t paying much attention to it. One day
I came in and seen an officer here and Karen told me that she had to file
a complaint against it. So we kind of laughed it off and didn’t think it
would become a big deal.”


But it did become a big deal. As word traveled around the county, the
Suttons Bay rooster has become the hot topic at every local coffee hour,
beauty salon and town meeting. Most people just shake their head and
laugh, others are more animated.


And the chickens, well their life hasn’t got any easier. With their right to
crow already at risk, a fire recently claimed one of Matt Lehner’s coops.


Police Officer Burt Mead was assigned to investigate.


“My initial reaction was, due to the history and the problems that we had
investigated there before that there could be some kind of criminal
involvement there.”


Turns out, no one had in fact put a hit out on the chickens.


“The principle reason it burned was that he had put a heat lamp in there.
Some of the chickens were in there nesting and he thought they would be
more comfortable, because it had been cold the previous two nights. So
he put the lamp in there and it was a temporary fixture. We think that it
probably fell over, the fire started precisely where he had placed the
lamp and the damages spread from there.”


As far as the dust up between the Lehner Farm and the Condo
development, the two parties have smoothed things over a bit. Matt will
keep his chickens but has agreed to slaughter some of the noisiest
roosters…and the developers they’ve offered to replace his coop with a
custom built “chicken condo”.


But the roosters won’t be forgotten. They’ve become a symbol for what
some people see as their threatened way of life… and a bumper sticker
battle cry for keeping the developers’ influence on the community
cooped up.


For the GLRC, I’m Adam Allington.

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Raw Milk Advocates Petition Small Farmers

For decades, a small number of people have believed milk is more nutritious if it’s not pasteurized. Modern science doesn’t support that claim. And the idea of milk going right from the cow to the breakfast bowl is unthinkable for most doctors and food safety experts. But advocates are finding a new audience for their message: Small farmers trying to compete against large dairy companies. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Peter Payette reports:

Transcript

For decades a small number of people have believed milk is more nutritious if it’s
not pasteurized. Modern science doesn’t support that claim. And the idea of milk
going right from the cow to the breakfast bowl is unthinkable for most doctors and
food safety experts. But advocates are finding a new audience for their message:
Small farmers trying to compete against large dairy companies. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Peter Payette reports:


A thick white blanket of fresh snow covers Chris Halpin’s small farm in northern
Michigan. All his goats are in the barn this morning munching on hay.


“These girls in here are all in here with a billy goat and they’re all milking
right now and they’re waiting to get bred. That’s the billy there.”


Halpin hasn’t sold much milk, even though he’s been raising goats for a number of
years. He says small farmers must cut out the middleman to make a living and
he’s exploring options to sell milk products without going through a big dairy
company.


Pasteurization equipment is too expensive for his small farm. So, for the last two
years he’s sold un-pasteurized milk to a small number of people.


“The demand for raw milk is huge. Pasteurized milk is a dead product. It’s
dead. It’s heated up to temperatures that kills not only any the bacteria that
could be in the milk but it kills all the enzymes in the milk and so there’s nothing
in there that could promote the body to digest the milk.”


It’s not legal to sell the raw milk in Michigan. A few other Midwest states and
Canada also ban such sales. Health officials say that raw milk can carry food-
borne illnesses. But Halpin says his animals are clean and healthy and he has no
concerns about the safety of the milk.


“That’s not my concern at all. We have five children and my wife makes yogurt
and cheese and we drink raw milk and I have no concerns at all and I don’t have
no concerns for my own family. If I guy has concerns it seems like it’d be for his
own family.”


Food regulators say the dangers of raw milk are well documented. In 2001, for
example, an outbreak of a bacterial infection in Wisconsin sickened 19 people.
The state says 17 of them reported drinking raw milk.


And raw milk advocates have not been able to convince regulators that raw milk
has any nutritional benefit over pasteurized milk, as is often claimed.


The legislative liaison for the Michigan Department of Agriculture, Brad Deacon,
says opponents of the pasteurization requirement weren’t persuasive when his state
updated its dairy laws in 2001.


“There haven’t been any credible studies that we’ve been able to find. Our minds
are not closed on the matter. But we’ve been yet to be given any credible studies
that pasteurized milk has fewer nutrients than unpasteurized milk.”


Raw milk advocates point to older studies, mostly done in the first half of the
twentieth century. Those studies did suggest health benefits from drinking raw
milk.


And they have anecdotal stories of people overcoming health problems by
switching to a diet that includes raw dairy.


They say the scientific community’s view is entrenched and influenced by the
interests of big agribusiness and big dairies.


But with modern science against them, raw milk activists are taking their message
directly to farmers.


And they’re finding receptive and occasionally large audiences.


The President of the Weston A. Price Foundation — the national group leading the
campaign for raw milk — was recently the keynote speaker at a small farm
conference in the Midwest that attracted 600 people.


Sally Fallon told the farmers they’re up against corporations that want squeeze the
little guy out.


“For this to happen, she says the big companies must make sure all food goes
through the corporations on its way from the farm to the table.”


“The farmer who adds value by farming organically by making cheese or butter
or by simply selling directly to the consumer, he is the enemy to this system and a
whole battery of laws, health laws, licensing laws, even environmental laws, is
used against us. We need to get rid of some of these laws.”


Fallon says raw dairy products are good for the consumer and the bottom line of
the farm.


For instance, she says raw butter made from cows free roaming on fertile pasture
is “the number one health food in America.”


The farmer making this butter should get at least five dollars a pound for this
product. In Washington D.C., we’re getting ten dollars a pound for the beautiful
Amish butter. Now that kind of income will pay for lots of improvements on the
farm.”


But the plight of small farmers doesn’t change the facts, says Dr. Stephen Barrett,
a retired psychiatrist and journalist who operates the website quackwatch.org.
Barrett says small businesses are having trouble everywhere.


“One have to ask rather cynically, if a company isn’t viable in the marketplace,
they either better do something or they’re going to perish, and if doing something
means putting the public at risk, that’s not good.”


Good or not, activists will continue to push for what they see as a fundamental
right to drink and sell milk without interference from the government.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Peter Payette.

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Study: Green Groups Should Target Big Institutions

A new study indicates environmental groups could help conserve resources faster if they’d spend more time trying to change the buying habits of big institutions instead of individuals. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

A new study indicates environmental groups could help conserve resources faster if
they’d spend more time trying to change the buying habits of big institutions instead of
individuals. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:


We’re often reminded to buy environmentally friendly products… re-use… recycle.
But a new study reveals that a lot more progress could be made if environmental groups would
spend more time trying to convince big business, big institutions, and government to buy green…
recycle… and implement more environmentally friendly practices. Lisa Mastny is author of the
study from Worldwatch Institute.


“We don’t really think about the places we work and the supermarkets we shop at, places like that
do their own buying and in much, much larger quantities than we would do in a household. So,
larger changes can occur and on a larger scale if you approach institutions rather than simply
individuals.”


And Mastny argues many of those changes can benefit the institution… such as more energy
efficient lights that save on the power bill. Mastny adds green buying is not a solution to what
she calls the “world’s rampant resource consumption,” but it can lessen the impact.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.

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