Roadmap to a bleaker future

I read Laura McPhee’s article (Cover, “Factory Farms,” Aug. 23-30) and felt disheartened. I grew up on a farm in Greenfield. My father raised hogs and as I grew older the farm techniques crept towards greater and greater confinement. My father told me he was glad when he retired because he felt increasingly uneasy with this style of farming. Indeed, at this point in our history, this is not farming. I received a degree in sustainable agriculture in the early 1980s. The subject is not foreign territory for me.

As I read this article I realized it identifies a vision that illustrates a narrowness and a kind of stupidity about our connection to what we consume that is at this point in our history irresponsible.

Mitch Daniels’ ideas for putting Indiana on the “Roadmap to an Indiana Comeback” represent a failure of imagination about a better long-term agricultural future for our state. Long after he is gone, this kind of legacy will affect the lives of citizens in terms of their health and well-being, of the land and of communities in a destructive way. It is too bad that Daniels cannot move towards greater innovation and care, both of which are more easily accessible than ever by creative minds in universities, local communities and trailblazers like Wendell Berry, Wes Jackson and many others.

Surely there exists someone brave enough and powerful enough to challenge this course. This is the roadmap to a bleaker, not better future. I, for one, am disheartened.

Kathy Harting
Indianapoli