The factory feedlot industry is looking for a tax break! Coming before House Agriculture (and Natural Resources) tomorrow is House Bill 1188, which seeks to allow Confined Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) operators pay even less for the externalities of their factory food operations.
Under existing statute (SDCL 38-19-10) and rule (ARSD 12:44:06:01), commercial fertilizer distributors pay an inspection fee to the state Department of Agriculture of 65 cents per ton. Manure spreaders get a ten-cent break on that fee, paying 55 cents per ton inspected. All fertilizer, chemical and organic, was subjected last year to a new inspection fee (not a new tax, mind you, just a fee) of 25 cents per ton to pay for that nice new precision agriculture facility at SDSU.
{Quick math by a non-farmer: given guidance that one should not apply more than five tons of manure per year per acre, a CAFO operator spreading maximum manure on a 640-acre field would pay (640 acres × 5 tons/acre × [$0.55+$0.25]/ton = ) $2,560 in inspection fees.}
Nuts to that, says the CAFO caucus! HB 1188 says that no matter what fertilizer inspection fee the Department of Agriculture sets, folks selling pure manure pay only one-fifth of that rate.
Boy, some fellas really do think their poop doesn’t stink.
This inspection fee doesn’t just cover the cost of developing precision ag or sending the state manure inspector (please, someone, tell me who has that job title!) coming to take a sniff of your honey wagon. Fifty cents of each fee collected also goes into the nutrient research and education fund, which the Legislature created in 2016 to study fertilizer and nutrient impacts on water quality. CAFO waste has as much impact on water quality as any chemical fertilizer. CAFO waste distributors should keep kicking in to that research fund as much as their less organic competitors.
CAFOs benefit right along with the rest of the agriculture industry from state investments in research. I’m open to arguments that cow poop should be placed on a different fee-footing from other commercial fertilizer, but I’m not seeing those arguments yet to justify this tax break for one segment of South Dakota’s factory-food industry.
Maybe we journalists should get to charge a manure inspection fee.
$.25 per at 10,000 lies in 2 years….
$.25 per at 10,000 lies in 2 years….t