I was looking through the Bozeman Chronicle and was astounded to see a number of local businesses are supporting a film full of propaganda with a distinct anti-agriculture message. As a fifth-generation cattle producer from White Sulphur Springs, I find it ironic that Bozeman businesses are seeking to undermine the state’s farmers and ranchers by supporting the film “Food, Inc.” Not only do the state’s farmers and ranchers—from small family to large family operations—have enough challenges these days with the weather and the economy, they now have to face hostility from people who have no real idea about how ranches and farms operate.

Some producers can make slightly more money selling products locally than their conventional agricultural counterparts, but the truth is the majority of Montana producers need to sell their livestock or grains on the open market. And those are exactly the people who are being hurt by the propaganda of movies like “Food, Inc.” Individuals like Eric Schlosser (“Fast Food Nation”) and Michael Pollan (“Ominvore’s Dilemma”) are saying that all commercial agriculture is bad. Nothing could be further from the truth. Maybe with their movie and book royalties they can afford to spend their income on the 3 percent of all food sales in the U.S. that are organic foods and beverages, which costs more because they cost more to produce. The other 97 percent of our agricultural products are raised by conventional means because it is cost effective and the vast majority of hard-working Americans and people across the globe need affordable food.

If all consumers tried to grow their own food, or at the very least bought it from only local farms with limited capacity, it would result in drastically lower levels of food production than we experience now; thus making our food more expensive without any increase in its nutritional value or improvement in its safety. It would result in fewer food choices for consumers and possibly lower nutrient intake, as many store-bought foods are fortified with necessary vitamins and minerals due to their low availability in the diet. Consumers would also likely have to quit their jobs in order to grow and harvest their food, taking us backwards in the United States’ progress as a leading innovator and technologically forward-thinking nation.

I am always amazed that segments of our American society who want the most technologically advanced products, like cell phones, computers, Kindles and GPS systems, have the audacity to complain about the modernization of agriculture. They rush to buy the latest technology, yet want to see agriculture backslide to small gardens, backyard chickens and hand-tilled soil.

Those attacking modern agriculture would have you believe that your food supply is unhealthy and traditional agriculture is to blame for “environmental crimes and the bleeding of jobs from rural America.” Take a look around Montana and you will see modern American agriculture, which provides the safest, most nutritious food supply the world has ever known. Agriculture has been the backbone of this state for hundreds of years, contributing to our economy and protecting the land our farmers and ranchers live and work on and is still our largest industry by far. Nationwide the industry directly or indirectly employs approximately one out of six American workers.

The land in Montana that has been protected and maintained by farm and ranch families for generations is what attracts countless numbers to visit our great state and thousands to move here each year because they love our open spaces, golden fields and green meadows. When you go to your local grocery I hope you enjoy the bounty that modern agriculture produces whether you pick up a juicy steak or a made-in-Montana loaf of bread. When you look around the Last Best Place, do you see environmental crimes or do you see indescribable beauty? Give modern agriculture some credit for the view along with your full belly.

I don’t believe many people truly want to go back to the days of 40 acres and a mule. It sounds idyllic at first, but the reality would be long days of backbreaking work and eventual starvation for many. I expect that the long-suffering folks in Haiti, like countless other in countries around the world, are awfully glad that the miracle of modern agriculture allows Montana farmers and ranchers to ship a third of the food we grow overseas.

Letters to the Editor

Unconvinced that septage dumping is safe

Dear Editor,

How many people would it take to protest one of your ideas before you would be convinced to change your mind? In business, it doesn't take as many as an individual, I suppose. The meeting on the septage open field sludge dumping has me wondering about a lot. I went to the meeting with the DEQ. I heard the arguments about how few laws govern this practice – taking sludge that is emptied from my own, community or neighbors’ septic tanks and area restaurants’ grease waste, then spreading it on an open field.

The DEQ was telling all of us gathered at St. Mary's Family Center that by adding lime to the septage the smell won't be noticeable. This waste is a growing problem... there are many, many tanks being emptied. There was a field recently closed in Ravalli County that six pumper trucks like Brown's Septic Service used, but now cannot, because it was too fouled. I honestly came away with more questions that I went with. I found that human sludge is banned from organic growers fields. And, Eco Compost uses the more dangerous sludge produced from the municipal sewage plant sludge, packages it together with tree compost and then sells it. That waste is purported to have heavy metals in it. I read how the Department of Environmental Quality has renamed sludge into Bio-something-else, so it sounds nicer.

I went home and did a little more research. I found some best practices are available. Sub-field injection, for one (burying the waste into the ground) so we don't smell it or have it just lying around. This practice actually sounds worse or similar to bringing back outhouses. 2. By refusing to field dump restaurant grease is another good choice. Many municipal waste systems do. And, 3, measuring the darn water table during high water, just like we do individually when we build a house. That area has water table issues and it is common knowledge.

I heard the woman who spoke and addressed Ed Cummings himself about his decision to use the land for this purpose. She was angry. She said so and asked him to defend his position. He chose not to talk. Some people may have thought her rude for making it about Ed. But, the more I research this matter, the more I think she has the right idea. She was respectful, angry, and spoke up. We can all do a little of that.

The field is right next to the bike path at the north end of Stevensville. The pumper is Brown's Septic Services, and the landowner is Ed Cummings. It is about him and our community. Do we all have the right to be little dictators, or bullies, or just loudmouths? How far do our realms extend? My house, my street, my town? Another friend said we don't have the right to tell him how to make money on his ranch. If it's about money that would be true to a small degree. But that was the argument that cost so many millions of people their jobs, retirement accounts, and lack of healthcare, I believe. If it's about rights... well, we all have them don't we? So ask yourself, how many people would it take to stop a bad idea... or promote a good one, for that matter? How many people make up your community of peers, people you respect, look out for, hope for the best for?

This is personal. This is where we live. Sludge is going to smell... because everyone know that shi.., sludge stinks. And nobody wants to wake up to that everyday. And we do have valid concerns about home values declining even more, about illnesses, like staph infections, about airborne lime floating into our eyes, mouth, waterways.

The field happens to be uphill about 1/4 of a mile from the Bitterroot River, a little less distance away from the neighbors on my street. I consider even more treacherous and dangerous, restaurant grease that will be mixed in with the septage. I researched how controversial these practices are online. There are studies, very few, that mention potentials for illness in people living nearby. I live nearby...

How many people would have to oppose an idea of mine before I chose not to do it? I don't know. But the next time I call to have my septic pumped I think I'll be sure I know where it's going. And maybe I'll keep researching this topic and see more bad news that I care to tally. Or maybe Ed Cummings and Brown's Septic and every other pumper will come up with a better idea, by studying solutions that aren't necessarily the easiest, but hopefully will be the easiest to live with, for all of us, or at least for more than one or two of us.

By the way, yes, this definitely affects home values in the area... and I'm not a rocket scientist... who wants to live next to this site? Please call me... I am a real estate broker after all.

Celia Grohmann
Stevensville

Alcoholism factor in lack of civil discourse

Dear Editor,

One of the reasons why it is so difficult to have civil discourse – courteous, respectful and rational conversation – in the Bitter Root valley is because of the epidemic of alcoholism here.

Alcoholism is a curable disease that causes physical damage by poisoning body organs - especially the liver and brain. This physical pain results in extreme irritability and anger and, therefore, an inability to think and speak without experiencing and expressing these poison-exacerbated emotions.

Spiritually, alcoholism can destroy compassion and imagination.

Some of the causes of alcoholism include childhood physical, emotional, mental and/or sexual abuse. Post traumatic stress disorder generated by combat and other injuries is another disease source.

Until Montanans stop denying this epidemic of alcoholism and heal its sources and symptoms, it will continue to be difficult to have civil discourse here.

Laura Craig
Hamilton

Living ‘close to the bone’

Dear Editor,

This morning the phrase "close to the bone" came flying out of my mouth during a challenging conversation with my partner about money. Now I am distracted from my morning's plan, and hear it rolling through, like a mantra, over and over.

I imagine the phrase came from butchering. One wants to get the meat close to the bone for its added nutrition, and to avoid waste. I can see the

shiny white bone, the clinging muscle, it's long strip waiting for the sharp boning knife's graze.

And I also assume the phrase took special meaning during the Depression. As many of us in my generation, I heard about the depression throughout my childhood, while my family lived in the lap of luxury. Increasing numbers of us now are looking at "getting by," turning to food bank assistance, more carbohydrates and less protein, and scouring the food that's been shoved in the back of the cupboard to create a meal or two.

Yesterday, for example, I found canned pumpkin from 2006. It smelled okay, and I was going to cook it anyway, for a Thai soup with winter spices. (Yes, I sprang for coconut milk.) While in the recesses of the garage food storage, I found dried kidney beans, long overlooked. (I hope not so long that they won't soften in the crock pot today.) I'm accessing recipes from living on welfare in the seventies: making a chicken last for four meals, homemade breads, potato dishes (still some from the CSA). Since I'm home nearly every day, it's all coming back to me, including the fond memories of toddlers in the house, and ironing!

Close to the bone includes washing dishes by hand, resisting two-hour drives, closing drafty doors to preserve heat, entering the grocery store with a specific list and promising myself to adhere to it. It means cooking breakfasts for the teenager rather than letting him scarf up on expensive cereals, buying frozen juice rather than juice in cartons for the same reason. It's thinking ahead a day or two about menus. It's listening to my very frugal friend who keeps me alerted on special sales. It's taking on a few hours more a day of household tasks that had been let go when I worked full time. I'd gotten pretty spoiled.

"Close to the bone" is not going without food, however. Recently I heard a thoughtful description of a day in Haiti when U.S. troops were handing out food, not enough food for the hundreds that were standing there hoping to eat. The soldiers were working without any weapons, dressed in their uniforms without headgear or even nightsticks. When the coffers were empty, they formed a line and sat down. Then they announced the food was gone. The Haitians turned away, resigned, many still unfed, to come back the next day. Someone thought that gentle plan out ahead of time. I appreciated that.

My "close to the bone" is still privileged. I still have varieties of sale food to choose from, I've still got electricity to cook and hot water to wash in. I have financial support coming just around the bend. But I might just stay with these frugal practices. I see another financial collapse on the horizon, and I want to be ahead of the game. That would mean more planting in the spring, putting more food by in the fall, and being glad I was on welfare 'way back when. It taught me a lot. Gratitude, most of all.

Star Jameson
Hamilton

Haiti’s debt should be cancelled

Dear Editor,

As reported, hunger, thirst, lack of shelter and healthcare must be our primary concerns in Haiti. Already nations have mobilized resources to help in the rescue. Another effective and concrete way the global community can help is debt cancellation.

Though much of the country's debt was cancelled in 2009, Haiti still owes $1 billion. Over the next five years, without taking on any new debt, the country will have to pay more than 100 million to the IMF and the Inter-American Development Bank. This is precious money that could – and should – be used to help to rebuild the country.

I welcome the news that the International Monetary Fund has committed to debt cancellation and urge them to act fast. The Inter-American Development Bank is considering canceling and should do so immediately.

Across the world, debt cancellation has allowed countries to direct money to education and health care. The last thing Haiti needs is to spend the little money it has paying past debts instead of on reconstruction.

For more information, go to www.jubileeusa.org.

Pamela Brigham
Stevensville

Prepare for more pain at the pump

Dear Editor,

Consumers’ chronic pain at the pump is returning with gas prices 67 percent higher than a year ago and probably heading back toward $3 a gallon soon. While you can’t control the price of gas, you can control how much gas you burn by performing proper maintenance and how you drive. Performing simple and inexpensive maintenance can save as much as $1,200 per year in gas costs.

The Car Care Council offers these gas-saving maintenance and driving tips:

Keep your car properly tuned to improve gas mileage by an average of 4 percent.

Keep tires properly inflated and improve gas mileage by 3 percent.

Replace dirty or clogged air filters and improve gas mileage by as much as 10 percent.

Replace dirty spark plugs, which can reduce mileage by two miles per gallon.

Change oil regularly and gain another mile per gallon.

Observe the speed limit. Gas mileage decreases rapidly above 60 mph.

Avoid excessive idling. Idling gets zero miles per gallon. Warming up the vehicle for one or two minutes is sufficient.

Avoid quick starts and stops. Aggressive driving can lower gas mileage by 33 percent on the highway and 5 percent in the city.

Consolidate trips. Several short trips taken from a cold start can use twice as much gas as one longer multi-purpose trip.

Don’t haul unneeded items in the trunk. An extra 100 pounds in the trunk reduces fuel economy by 1 to 2 percent.

To help you drive smart and save money, visit www.carcare.org and check out the free digital Car Care Guide.

Rich White, Executive Director
Car Care Council
Bethesda, MD

Saving ecosystems makes economic sense

Dear Editor,

Senator Tester’s Bill is called the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act, a misleading name for a bill that mandates logging 100,000 acres in our bioregion over the next 10 years and proclaiming over one million acres of inventoried roadless wildlands timber suitable and open to harvest.

I’m confused. I thought our ecosystem already had forest jobs. From microbes to landscape processes with local to global ramifications, Montanan forests are busy providing non-timber forest products, game habitat, wildlife corridors, carbon sequestration, pollination, natural pest control, water purification, flood control, erosion control and human recreation.

With over-population, the services our intact forests provide are even more essential, while fragmentation renders their services less effective. Does Tester, a farmer, understand the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem stability? Does he recognize that the Northern Rockies ecosystem is the only ecosystem in the lower 48 states that still has all its native species, although not in all suitable locations and healthy numbers?

The ethics in recognizing the intrinsic value of biodiversity, our communities’ species right to exist, may be beyond Tester but commercial value seems to grab his attention. What are the costs incurred in the absence of ecosystem services such as human health costs due to flooding or loss of waste treatment or replacement costs for water purification plants? Ecosystem services provide for the enhancement of incomes through healthy fisheries and hunting opportunities and the demand for services related to ecotourism travel and associated goods. What will we do when they disappear? At what point does an ecosystem’s ability to provide services breakdown?

Elected officials and resource managers need to be certain how their actions affect our region’s health and economy. Isn’t this more critical than subsidizing private timber mills with public lands while touting “local collaboration” credentials?

Marilyn Olsen
Emigrant

Global warming hoax

Dear Editor,

The more you look into global warming the more you find it is at the heart of international corruption and greed. The world’s most powerful people both politically and economically are wrapped around this hoax for their own selfish gains. The industrialists (T Boone Pickens) are in it for the profit as were the pseudo scientists for their grants. The main target of this crime is coal, which makes us the big losers.

Back in the mid-90s a major Democrat fundraiser, Ken Lay of Enron fame, and “Algore” began looking for ways to enrich themselves while weaning themselves off their oil fortunes. Enron was the Bernie “Madeoff” of its time for running an energy Ponzi scheme. Prior to that, Enron was a major investor in natural gas and was looking for a way to drive up the price and demand. Lay and Algore began their carbon credit scams to offset pollution from coal plants that supposedly caused acid rain.

This was a pretty good source of profit selling credits from air, when they began to expand it into making all carbon production needing a credit and how massive a market that would be. Ken Lay became an author of the Kyoto Agreement where he estimated there would be a $trillion world market in carbon trading per year. They brought in Goldman Sachs as one of the major trading houses and the oil companies as investors for their newly formed research facilities in East Anglia, England that would make CO2 a pollutant.

Coal burning power plants have installed more powerful scrubbers to the point where they have become the cleanest practical form of energy, only emitting steam and CO2, a harmless gas. The problem w/coal for the power companies is that it is too cheap. A coal-fired plant is basically a boiler and steam engine right out of the 1900s. Coal is unlimited as well as easy to produce and transport. Companies like GE and Westinghouse need more complicated plants like nuclear, gas or windmill to generate more profits, so they needed a way to limit coal production.

The oil companies were a late arriver when they began to see the writing on the wall w/the enviro thugs trying to shut them down through protest and legal harassment. They also believed that they were at their peak oil production and were looking for more profitable sources of income as the oil began to drop off. They know that their wells were going to dry up by 2020 so the carbon credit market looked like a very profitable source as well as the development of natural gas. If they could force out cheap coal they too would be at an advantage along with Algore who was still heavily invested in Occidental Oil.

Their main problem was to make carbon or CO2 as big an energy leper as nuclear and oil. How in the world would they sell people on the fact that the very air they exhale is going to kill you, ridiculous! They realized that people believed that acid rain was caused by industry and had motivated the enviros, who were darlings of the media, but the acid rain had been solved. In came global warming and its connection to man. They listened to the theory and massaged those manipulated formulas to hatch the world’s largest crime.

That's when Algore and his movie "Incoherent Lies" came onto the screen. They knew the power of Hollywood so they made a scary movie in the vein of Three Mile Island with the same fabrications to scare the people into believing that there was a connection between CO2 and global warming. Gore knew it worked for Michael Moore and 911 so why not CO2? The goal was to make energy production and especially coal so expensive they would have to use natural gas, nuclear, sun or wind. Not sure how they could convince America to use nuclear, perhaps Gore could sell us on that, yet they were pretty sure that the enviros could push the shutting down of coal which they did. Cap and Tax is pointed directly at coal and is more favorable to the other more expensive sources of energy.

Meanwhile our taxes pay five times what you should be paying for coal power, since we're funding expensive solar and windmill energy production that only woks part-time. Today's coal is cheap, clean and efficient. The scrubbers today remove all the airborne pollutants making it an ideal energy source. It is easy to produce, all you have to do is mine it or dig it, crush it, then ship on rail cars. You’re turning rocks into power with no fear of spills or mess, yet is by far the simplest form of energy ever devised.

The audacity of man to claim that we can effect change of the weather is contrary to reason, nature, common sense and sound scientific research. But where DOES global warming and cooling come from? Read a 6th grade geography book. Try the SUN.

So please, stop drinking the coolaid and wise up.

Michael Lesnar
Sula

Don’t shoot the (global warming) messenger

Dear Editor,

A recent opinion of Mr. Dan Tomlinson leaves me unconvinced. His distrust of science is apparent. He suggests that “legitimate scientists” may be lying about global warming. To avoid this possibility the results of scientific inquiry are published for peer review. The method used and the analysis of the data collected must withstand the careful scrutiny of other well-educated minds.

It’s possible that our society gets in trouble by asking the scientist what to do about an identified situation. That’s simply not his job. The scientist can investigate and report on the extent of global warming, and even use his findings to predict the future effects, but he can’t tell us what to do about it. That task lands on our shoulders, as it should, since we all have to live with the results of our actions or inactions.

It may not be important to you that Christmas Bird Counts indicate that the wild turkey now winters over 400 miles further north than it did forty years ago, or that glaciers are rapidly receding in many parts of the world, or that rising sea levels may soon make the Maldive Islands uninhabitable. It might, however, get your attention if warming winters result in less snowpack in the Bitterroot Mountains, a snowpack which will melt earlier, leaving our valley rivers too warm for cold water fish, or that drier mountain forests will burn earlier, longer, and hotter. Minds younger and sharper than mine suggest that these things may not be far in the future.

You don’t blame the journalist for the traffic accident he writes about, no more than you blame the officer who investigates it. Neither should we blame the scientist for his findings. The results are not up to him; they’re up to us. We can try and make your own lives ‘greener,’ and we can let our senators and congressman know our expectations.

Peter Allen
Hamilton

Thanks from Stevi Main Street, again

Dear Editor,

Last week, I wrote to thank the many volunteers who support our community and give it life. I would like to follow that up by sending a huge thank you to the businesses that are such an important part of our community.

There is no doubt that this has been a tough year in many ways for our business neighbors. We have lost a few but, through it all, most have hung in there and continued to provide services and materials and to support the community and its needs.

We are a small community. Because of that, our business owners are friends, neighbors and fellow citizens. It is critically important that we not take them for granted and that we understand that every dollar spent in the community stays in the community and makes us stronger. When you use a local business, please thank them for being here in Stevensville.

Serve and shop locally…it is the best thing we can do to keep our community strong.

Mel Walters, President
Stevensville Main Street Association

What would Jesus do?

Dear Editor,

There has been a lot of ink in local newspapers regarding two recent public meetings at the commissioner’s chambers in late December. The author of a GranPlan for Ravalli County was thoroughly chastised by irate citizens who disagreed vehemently with his ridiculous manifesto.

Defenders of the GranPlan author have cried “foul” in the press, citing the emotion, anger, and personal attacks expressed by the public at those meetings.

It is human nature to object, in varying degrees of intensity, to unacceptable proposals and actions. Christians among us might ponder, “What would Jesus do?” That is well documented in St. Matthew 21:12 and St. John 2:15. When confronted with an unacceptable situation, He threw a major fit of His own on the steps of the temple. Look it up. Atheists need not bother.

Dave Hurtt
Florence

‘Civil discourse’ group hypocritical

Dear Editor,

Concerning recent articles about civil discourse: those who are so concerned about "civility" and name calling in Ravalli County should be careful of the names they call those they are accusing of name calling! Morrissey called those who were critical of Ben Hillicoss and his report "property rights extremists" and said they were "extremist fringe."

The two applicable meanings of "extreme" from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary are:

1. Situated at the farthest possible point from a center.

2. Exceeding the ordinary, usual, or expected.

Looking up "fringe" I found this definition: "A group with marginal or extremist views.” Since those who favor property rights outnumbered, quite easily, those who want to force us to live in underground houses and require us to buy a permit to put in a fence post, and our Founders were all for property rights supporters, I would say that this "civil" group's name calling is not only false but also hypocritical.

Dallas D. Erickson
Stevensville

Darby Superintendent hypocritical about pay raises

Dear Editor,

A short time ago my "score" as a legislator was published in a local newspaper. The rating was assigned by the teacher's union. I said that one of the reasons that I did not vote for more money for education, and that was what the rating was about, was that the money did not reach the class room and was spent on administration. An example of this waste of money was the fact that we did not need seven superintendents in this county, one would do.

Superintendent Tim Bronk of Darby received a 5% pay raise while the unionized teachers and staff agreed to no "increase" in pay. The part time people, again, received no increase. Actually, the teachers did receive their longevity increases and pay for graduate credits ($60,000 for all of the teachers combined) so they received a small raise; perhaps 1%, or a little more. All hands got the benefit of a 14% increase in health insurance costs.

In negotiations on the certified and non-certified employees’ contracts Mr. Bronk had represented that there was no money for raises to Darby school district employees. However, when his contract came up he asked for a 7% raise, got a 5% raise, and was quoted as saying: "I don't think that I was dishonest, I don't think that I gave them any false information.”

In part, the Superintendent's job is about leadership. The taxpayers' income is down. People cannot sell their houses for what they paid for them, property taxes are up, the state is cutting support to the Darby School District by $80,000 due to falling enrollment, and inflation is essentially flat. No employee should have gotten a raise. When the taxpayers get a raise, their employees may get one.

Jim Shockley
Senate District 45

Shame on those Democrats

Dear Editor,

Let’s examine this sorry record:

- FDR introduced FICA (Social Security).

- Lyndon Johnson pushed through “The Great Society” replete with massive welfare programs

- Jimmie Carter, helped by the National Education Association turning out Democrat voters, rewarded them with a new bureaucracy: Department of Education

- Bill Clinton traded military technology to Communist China for election funds

- Al Gore dreamed up the massive boondoggle of “Global Warming.”

- Barack Obama is trying to force “change” on us by bankrupting the USA, leaving us weak against Al Queda, and eliminating capitalism for European socialism

Think about it – all of this has happened with Democratic administrations!

Bruce King
Hamilton

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