If Iowa, is concerned at all about its small family farms, do not rely on Dean to protect them. Dean knows all of the talk and while talking about the importance of protecting family farms to the farmers and to Vermonters, he was behind closed doors manipulatinbg and changing zoning laws in Vermont to allow large businesses to like ADM to take these farms over, and allowing the rest to be turned into urban sprawl.
When Dean came to office 70 percent of Vermont Farms were small famiy farms, but 11 years later this shrunk to 56 percent or a 36 percent drop in the number of small family farms in Vermont.
It is next to impossible to get info on the direct causes, as Vermont Newspapers do not go back past 1999 on the internet, but the info thst Senator Kerry has put out about the Vermont Egg Factory is only the tip of the iceberg. ADM with its takeover of small family farms and Monsanto's introduction of its genetically modified foods division and their takover of small farms is part and parcel of the behind the scences changes Dean brokered with big business.
New England Enmentalist and Editor of Wild Matters has stated this about Deans Vermont:
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http://www.counterpunch.org/colby02222003.htmlOne must remember that Deans primary economic advisor for over thirty years has been Wall Sreet Inventment Banker, Harlan Sylvester. And it shows, Deans past shows that his philosophy is that what is good for big business and wall street is good for America: Check this one as well:
Interestingly, Dean told the Free Press last week that he wished the rest of the country was "more like Vermont." But it seems he's allowed Vermont to become more like the rest of the country.
Stephanie Kaplan, a leading environmental lawyer and the former executive officer of the Environmental Board, has seen the regulatory process become so slanted against environmentalists and concerned citizens that she thinks it's hardly worth putting up a fight anymore.
"Under Dean the Act 250 process and the Agency of Natural Resources (ANR) have lost their way," Kaplan charges. "Dean created the myth that environmental laws hurt the economy and set the tone to allow Act 250 and the ANR to simply be permit mills for developers."
Kaplan points to the "Environmental Board purge" in the mid-'90s that enabled the governor to set a pro-development tone. In 1993, the Board issued an Act 250 permit to C Grocers in Brattleboro with conditions that restricted the diesel emissions from its heavy truck traffic. After C execs cried foul and threatened to move to New Hampshire, Dean broke gubernatorial precedent by publicly criticizing the Environmental Board for issuing what he called a "non-permit."
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http://www.vtce.org/deanenvironmentomya.htmlTHIS ONE IS LONG, but it includes a long critical analysis of Dean's administration and its abandonment of supporting small family farmers and their neighbors:
Crisis in Agriculture in Vermont
A Special Report about Governor Howard Dean's Agriculture Department
Agriculture has been a mainstay of Vermont's economy and culture for centuries. The state of Vermont does and should take an active role in supporting agriculture. However, in recent years, support for agriculture has been twisted by our state government so that it no longer means what it once did -- support for family farms and sustainable way of life. Instead, support for agriculture has come to mean support for practices that generate the most dollars in the shortest time with the least concern about their impact on other Vermonters , present and future.
From Vermonters for a Clean Environment, Inc.
http://www.vtce.org/deanenvironmentomya.htmlPart I
The Breaking Point
“I do not appreciate your comments that suggest that my concern is based upon unfounded fear and stress. The only stress that I find hard to tolerate is the kind that is generated when I approach the people vested with the power to protect us and they act as if I am making the whole situation into something worse than it actually is.”
—Windham County mother of 5 to VT Department of Agriculture, Food, and Markets
In September, 1999, Vermont Agriculture Commissioner Leon Graves replied to Ashley Greene, an Addison County Vermont mother of two who had been calling and writing to Vermont’s Department of Agriculture, Food and Markets (DAFM) since 1992 expressing concerns for the health of her children due to their exposure to pesticides at a nearby orchard: “Your situation is unique, due to the proximity of your home to the orchard, and the fact that your property is surrounded by the orchard,” Graves wrote.
In July, 1999, Judy Ferraro, a Windham County mother of five children who had been complaining to DAFM since 1996 about pesticide exposure from her orchard neighbor wrote to Governor Howard Dean, “Our gravest concern is that we are being exposed to these toxic chemicals in the air we breath; inhalation of pesticides is the most dangerous kind of exposure, and it is the most difficult to monitor. Many days I have called to my children to come indoors and shut the windows to protect ourselves. We have experienced burning eyes and lips when standing by our front door. Our property is surrounded on three sides by orchards…Last year, after many phone calls and pleas for assistance, the head of the Agriculture Dept. came to our place to check things out first hand. He was clearly disturbed by what he saw.”
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http://www.vtce.org/deancrisisagvt.htmlThere is more available, but Dean has done much to try to cover it up.
But Iowans, look to lose your history, your patrimony and your family farms at the hands of Howard Dean.
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