Gabe Meline [00:02:53] Locals will tell you about the “Sonoma aroma,” which is on certain days when the weather conditions are right, there’s a waft of manure smell all over the valley.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:03:09] Gabe Malin is senior editor of arts and culture for KQED. He’s based in Sonoma County.
Gabe Meline [00:03:16] Any drive out to like the coast or on Petaluma Hill Road or between Petaluma and Point Reyes – just cows on the hills everywhere. Cows. Sheep. Goats. And there are some big dairy brands up there too, that everybody knows. Clover Farms and Strauss Creamery.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:03:36] I’ve never actually heard that idea of the Sonoma aroma. Yeah.
Gabe Meline [00:03:41] It’s like our version of the Santa Ana winds or something.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:03:44] Yeah. Yeah. And I feel like that smell is actually something I associate with a place like the Central Valley, which Sonoma County is not, right? Like, at the end of the day, it is still in the Bay Area and is therefore also still a liberal place compared to maybe an Iowa or a central valley.
Gabe Meline [00:04:05] It is really interesting in Sonoma County because it is this progressive liberal place and then you think of farming or animal farming as like, the heartland, the old way of doing things, the more conservative way of doing things. I think we coexist pretty well up there. There is a history of support for animal welfare in Sonoma County. There are a number of propositions on the ballot recently, Prop 2 and Prop 12 that Sonoma County voters were in favor of. And proponents of Measure J are saying, hey, Sonoma County, you voted for these animal welfare props before. Why wouldn’t you also vote for this one?
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:04:44] Yeah, let’s get into Measure J. How did this get on the ballot, Gabe?
Gabe Meline [00:04:49] A measure J was put on the ballot by a group based in Berkeley called the Coalition to End Factory Farming, and that is a group of advocacy organizations and activist organizations and animal welfare organizations. They got the signatures and they put it on the ballot. So Measure J would ban concentrated animal feeding operations, CAFOs for short. The Yes on J people like to refer to them as factory farms, and the No on J people refute that. It’s a EPA designation. It’s a water permit requirement, but it does set numbers for the amount of animals that can be held at a farm before they are considered a for. Large CFOs are defined as having 700 mature dairy cows or 85,000 egg laying hens or 25,000 meat producing chickens. The numbers are a little bit lower for medium CAFOs, but one of the designations of a medium CAFO is if it has a manmade ditch or pipe. Transferring waste to surface water. There’s some debate about how what that would actually apply to in Sonoma County. This measure would ban or it would force large farms to curtail operations to be under these limits. It would affect at least 11, very likely, 21 of the largest farms in Sonoma County.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:06:23] Who are the proponents of Measure J, Gabe?
Gabe Meline [00:06:27] Supporters on the Yes on J site are Coalition To End Factory Farming and all of the people that make up that coalition. The Peace and Justice Center, a very lefty liberal group in Santa Rosa, the Green Party, which some people may scoff at. But Sebastopol at one point had all Green Party members on it, City Council in Sonoma County. So the Green Party does have influence in Sonoma County in defense of animals. Other animal advocacy organizations.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:06:59] And also notably this group, Direct Action Everywhere. Yes. Tell me a little bit about them.
Gabe Meline [00:07:06] Ah yes, the boogie man. Direct action everywhere has been brought up so many times in relation to Measure J. Some people think that they directly put it on the ballot. I direct action Everywhere is a is an activist group based in Berkeley.
Footage [00:07:22] (sound of ducks) Put down that gate. Yeah, you can run.
Gabe Meline [00:07:26] In Sonoma County. They’re best known for breaking into farms in the middle of the night and filming operations, you know, unannounced, which they say is the only way that the public can get a true picture of how animals are treated in these farms.
Lewis Bernier [00:07:43] We have a right under California penal code 597 E to enter any facility where we know animals are sick or injured or do not have access to food and water.
Gabe Meline [00:07:52] Some people think that they’re operating in the shadows with marionette strings. But it is true that there is a lot of overlap between direct action everywhere and Measure J.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:08:04] And what are the arguments for Measure J?
Gabe Meline [00:08:09] These people believe that animals feel emotions and they feel things like stress and fear and that they are being mistreated as a as a result of some of these exposes by direct action everywhere.
Kristina Garfinkel [00:08:21] The CAFOs in Sonoma County have been exposed for rampant animal cruelty, including birds that have been left sick and injured to just starve to death.
Gabe Meline [00:08:31] Kristina Garfinkel is a lead organizer of the Coalition to End Factory Farming. She spoke at a KRCB town hall at a local library recently.
Kristina Garfinkel [00:08:41] They’ve also polluted our local water sources with key waterways like the Petaluma River, Laguna de Santa Rosa being impaired with nitrates and phosphates, which are key indicators of CAFO waste pollution.
Gabe Meline [00:08:56] Her support of Measure J is about animal welfare, is about environmental protection. It’s about public health and this perceived threat to small farms in Sonoma County.
Kristina Garfinkel [00:09:06] But over the last few decades, large companies have been coming in. They’ve been consolidating and they’ve been taking over the market. And they’ve done so at the cost of small farms, of animal welfare, of the environment and the health of the residents.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:09:26] Why are there eyes set on Sonoma County though?
Gabe Meline [00:09:30] Gabe I think because Sonoma County is more likely to vote for it than say, Tulare County or San Joaquin County. Like there’s enough of that progressive mindset in Sonoma County that might say, ban factory farms. Of course, they think it has a chance in Sonoma County. It’s also really seen as a bellwether measure. Like if it passes in Sonoma County, they’ve essentially said we’re going to try it in other counties as well.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:10:03] And who’s coming out against Measure J and what are their arguments?
Gabe Meline [00:10:07] Well, Ericka, can you read the tiny, small print on this mailer that I got in the mail the other day?
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:10:14] That is a long list.
Gabe Meline [00:10:16] I didn’t count, but it looks like hundreds and hundreds and hundreds. A funny moment in this measure. History is when the the board of supervisors has to rubber stamp it and say, okay, it’s going on the ballot. And they did so plugging their noses. They almost protested in place while they were doing it. Similarly, in just about every city council in Sonoma County, except for Cotati, which was neutral, but all the other city councils in Sonoma County have passed resolutions against it. You know, there are some obvious ones like the Marin Agricultural Land Trust, the Sonoma County Farm Bureau, both the Sonoma County Republican Party and Sonoma Valley Democrats are against it. Sonoma County Conservation Action and the Sonoma County Farm Bureau oppose it. When you have in Sonoma County, you know, those are strange bedfellows. North Bay Labor Council are recognizable businesses like Dellinger Winery, Freedman Brothers, Martinelli Winery, and the list goes on and on and on and on. They’ve really gotten a lot of people to sign up against this.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:11:18] What is the main argument, you would say, Gabe, that they’re making against Measure J.
Gabe Meline [00:11:24] The argument is that it would put out of business, you know, these family owned farms that have been around for over 100 years, some of them that it would create higher food costs and have less locally sourced food. They’re saying that it comes with certain mandates with no plan for funding them, so it would cost taxpayers millions of dollars. They cite a University of California study that has estimated the damage to the economy in Sonoma County at $500 million. The details of that are a little bit in dispute. Really, you know, making a major, major devastating impact on farming in Sonoma County and the economy as a whole.
Mike Weber [00:12:07] Well, it’s it’s pretty clear that the measure is designed to ban farming in Sonoma County.
Gabe Meline [00:12:13] Mike Weber is the owner of Weber Family Farms Poultry Farm in Sonoma County. One of his big points is you can’t do this regulating size.
Mike Weber [00:12:24] Size doesn’t matter. This has got to be about merit. If you’re doing something wrong, if you’re breaking the rules, then you need the punishment. Otherwise, it’s on merit. And this has nothing to do with merit.
Gabe Meline [00:12:34] Farms are already under audits and investigations and county, state, federal regulations. You know, these auditors and regulators come and show up and do very, very in-depth inspections of their farms. And when there’s a bad actor, they get penalized or they get sued. So if you have a good actor, what’s the point of reducing the size of their operation if their operation is operating within the regulations that have been set?
Mike Weber [00:13:01] This measure will go to put us out of business. We won’t have milk, eggs and other fresh produce from this community. We’ll be left with nothing.
Gabe Meline [00:13:10] There’s some interesting language in this measure. One of them is about authorizing citizen enforcement. But there’s another one about job retraining program for people who would lose their jobs. People who work at these farms who would lose their jobs. The county agricultural commissioner would have to develop and execute and manage a job retraining program for people who lose their jobs on farms. That would close. The No on J. Crowd is saying it’s not just the people who work at the farms. This is going to cause exponential job losses. You know, everyone down the food chain, the truckers, the grocers, the suppliers.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:13:48] It seems like the yes and the no sides are not quite on the same page in a lot of ways, even just in the language that they’re using around this measure, around what to call these farms, whether they’re factory farms versus family farms. I mean, those mean very different things.
Gabe Meline [00:14:09] They do mean very different things. I mean, this is not new in politics, but the. Yes. Underside prefers the term factory farms, I think because it has that resonance with people when you hear factory farm. I think most people in the Bay Area think of Harris Ranch, which is on I-5, halfway to L.A. You know it because you smell it before you see it. It is a gigantic, gigantic factory farm. It’s a really big there’s no farms in Sonoma County that are even remotely close to Harris Ranch. A lot of them that would fall under this ban are pasture grazing farms, which means that cows can roam the hills. They’re not confined in these like, dirty, smelly warehouses. But the No and J crowd loves to say family farms. And yeah, they’re definitely family farms. They’ve been in the family for a long time. Does that mean that they’re inherently good or bad? I mean, the Koch brothers is a family business, technically, Right? So but I think that’s all just about resonance with voters. You know, family farms, good factory farms, bad.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:15:18] You brought into the studio, these large mailers that you got in your man box. I’m curious how they fit those in there. There seems to be a lot of campaign spending. What do we know about how much has been spent?
Gabe Meline [00:15:31] There’s been at least it might be more by now, but there’s been at least $2 million in campaign spending that has just poured in, a lot of it from outside the county. Because like I said, this is seen as a canary in the coal mine for other counties to face bans on their ballots, too. Most of it is no longer spending, but $2 million is a lot of money, especially from Sonoma County.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:16:02] You’ve lived there your whole life. I’m curious what the last couple of months have been like in Sonoma County. How do you see Measure J in your community and how it’s sort of being received? And have you ever seen anything like it?
Gabe Meline [00:16:17] I’ve never seen this much money poured in for a county measure, and I’ve never seen this many billboards for and against it. But I’m also not seeing like fistfights at the soccer game, you know, on the weekend .
Protesters [00:16:31] Protect our water, Yes on J!
Gabe Meline [00:16:36] There, there have been large protests. And in downtown Santa Rosa, we’d like to protest one side on one side of the street and one on the other. So there’s been, you know, large. Yes on J people and large no on J people. The No on J crowd has been bigger and louder.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:16:58] This ballot measure, should it pass, would be the first of its kind in the country. Really, Gabe, what do you think this story tells us about, I guess, the broader struggle between. Animal rights activists and the agricultural industry. It’s sort of feels like a very Bay Area struggle to me.
Gabe Meline [00:17:20] It does. It’s a little bit of a generational one, too, I’ve noticed. Have you ever heard of Clo the Cow?
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:17:26] I have heard of Clo the Cow.
Gabe Meline [00:17:28] The cow is like our mascot. Clo the cow is the mascot for Clover Stornetta Farms. Clo the cow gives out free ice cream and free chocolate milk to kids at the fair. Clo The cow is that Wednesday night market at every single street fair like. And there’s a billboard right near Rohnert Park that says Save Clo, Vote No.
