FOOD OR FUEL?
Ostendorf, David L.
Food or fuel? The conglomerates dig for a new cash crop David L. Ostendorf We don V really look upon ourselves as mining this land; we're just plowing furrows eighty feet deep to recover our coal...
...So the energy machines moved in — and the food went under...
...One is the question of water supply for coal gasification plants, which are expected to provide a major source of future energy...
...Farmland in these counties is still of great value and importance...
...Though some $4,500 an acre was sunk into soil replacement and heavier-than-normal fertilizer was applied, the corn test plot yielded only 53 per cent of the production on undisturbed land nearby...
...But the corporate farming bill will be back...
...Five Midwestern states — Kansas, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin — already have laws restricting corporate farming and protecting the family farm base...
...Many of the citizens of these and other coal counties were instrumental in incorporating the prime agricultural land provisions into the Federal Surface Mine Reclamation and Control Act of 1977 — one of their most significant accomplishments to date...
...In Henry County, landowners drew up an agreement that for twenty-five years they would permit no stripmining activity on their property...
...In their hedge against the future, the energy companies and the mineral extraction industries are going all-out to get the best and the most of both resources — coal and agricultural land...
...It is still too early to know how successfully the coal companies can reclaim prime agricultural land, but the signs are not encouraging...
...The bank, of course, denied such intent...
...But the massive, expensive machinery of the coal operator could not sit idle even for a week or two...
...less well-known is the fact that several of these states — Illinois and Indiana, in particular — are major coal producers, and have huge coal reserves yet to be mined...
...AMAX Coal Company — part of the multinational operations of American Metal Climax — is involved in agriculture on an even larger scale in the Middle West...
...are going all-out to get the best and the most of both resources...' recently told of farm bank notes being bought up by oil interests, and there is growing concern throughout the nation over the influence of "foreign oil money" on land purchases and corporate agricultural operations in the United States...
...Last year, the Illinois Legislature was presented with a bill requiring coal companies to divest themselves of land five years after completion of reclamation, but the bill did not address the broader issue of land ownership by the energy companies, whose operations include deep mines and other land that has not been stripmined or may not be in the future...
...Even so, the bill was lobbied to death by business and corporate interests, including the Illinois Coal Operators, the Illinois Association of Manufacturers, and the Illinois Chamber of Commerce...
...For a number of reasons, its machinery was unable to operate in an area to be mined, and it decided to move on to a 160-acre parcel of land it had optioned from a local farmer...
...Historically, the heaviest mining in the state has taken place in the southernmost counties, where the soil is not as rich as it is upstate...
...Research conducted on test plots in Illinois and Iowa indicates that corn and soybeans can, indeed, be grown on reclaimed land, but there is no proof that the productivity of the land can be fully restored...
...In Illinois, the companies have had only three years to show that they can return most agricultural land to row-crop capability after mining...
...But any effective strategy to slow or curtail the takeover of agricultural land by the coal companies must go beyond the more limited efforts to stop strip-mining in the soil-rich central and northern counties...
...Before 1976, most reclaimed land went back into pasture...
...The agricultural prowess of the Middle Western states is well-known...
...Thus, even if the capital (and labor) intensive nature of prime land reclamation is pursued — as it must be now under the Federal law — every indication points to irrecoverable productivity losses...
...The long-range impact of this loss to agriculture has been given little thought...
...In many coal counties in Illinois, taxes on farmland are climbing as the coal companies inflate the value of all land, thereby intensifying the economic pressure on the family farm...
...Beyond the issue of direct ownership and control of land and coal, other issues bear upon the food and fuel relationship...
...Now the chickens are coming home to roost: Similar land use patterns are beginning to emerge in the United States...
...not in those places where coal is indisputably king — in Appalachia and the Southwest — but in the land between — the farmbelt of the Middle West...
...A new Federal stripmine law, with strong provisions for protecting and reclaiming prime agricultural land, will go even further in addressing this problem — if it can hold up under the heavy pressure of litigation already initiated by the coal companies, and if it is enforced by the Federal Government and the coal-producing states...
...Other legal battles have taken place in Fulton County and in Vermilion County in east-central Illinois, where residents of the village of Catlin are still fighting to stop AMAX from stripmining nearby agricultural land...
...But surface mining and reclamation of agricultural lands are only the most visible and familiar aspects of farm-belt coal production...
...Efforts to stop the encroachment of stripmining on prime agricultural lands have brought mixed results...
...Thus, it was conceivable that through the fund the bank could have controlled not only the surface rights to thousands of acres of farmland in the Middle West, but also the mineral rights to that land...
...These firms are becoming perpetual lords of the land, as coal miners today and as farmers tomorrow...
...To make matters worse, even the debts of farmers today are tied into energy dollars: a Great Plains farmer 'The energy companies...
...The eleven energy and mineral extraction companies that mine 97.5 per cent of the coal in Illinois are in a position to offer hefty prices for land and coal rights, but they have struck sharp bargains by playing landowners off against each other...
...With the historical concentration of mining in this region, though, some 207,113 acres of land in these counties are already under the control of the energy companies...
...The coal company takeover has been creeping up on us for years, but it is on the rise now as the energy boom intensifies...
...One such research project carried out on Midland Coal Co...
...A plant producing 250 million cubic feet of natural gas daily from coal would consume fourteen to twenty-eight million gallons of water...
...Strong efforts are being made by citizens and county officials to protect the agricultural land base and to assure that land will be available for farming by succeeding generations...
...Through its land-holding and agricultural subsidiary, Meadowlark Farms, AMAX controls more than 100,000 acres of land in Illinois and Indiana...
...It has been only two years since enactment of a Federal law requiring an operator to demonstrate, before mining, the technological capability to return prime land to the production levels of unmined land nearby...
...Today, the coal industry in Illinois controls at least 379,763 acres of land in just thirty-five of the state's eighty-six coal-bearing counties, a figure derived from county tax records which are seldom current with coal company land acquisition...
...The state's surface-mined land reclamation law, amended in 1975 to include strict measures for returning mined land to row-crop agricultural capability, reflects the rising concern in Illinois over the long-range impact of stripmining on agriculture...
...Much of Iowa is also underlain by coal, and research is being carried out to determine the extent to which mining could be conducted there...
...Annually, the state is losing 80,000 to 100,000 acres of farmland to a variety of other uses, including urban sprawl...
...The most effective strategy to stop this takeover of agricultural land by the energy companies is enactment of legislation strictly limiting corporate ownership of land...
...The company owns approximately 55,000 acres of land in central Illinois, and seems to be making good on its "commitment to the land...
...It was a foreboding sign of even worse to come...
...The conflict over the use of agricultural land for food or fuel is just emerging...
...A coal company manager...
...These facts lead to today's more subtle and disturbing aspects of coal industry production and expansion — the increasing control being exercised by the energy companies and mineral extraction industries over the land...
...The president of Midland Coal (a division of American Smelting and Refining Company) put it succinctly in a statement to an Illinois land reclamation committee in 1973: "Our investment in land is considered to be a long-term one, and we are committed to the land for a period which goes far beyond its mineral value...
...The ability of the coal companies to buy land at grossly inflated prices when they really want it has a marked impact on the rest of the farming community in a given area, for property taxes rise proportionately with the value of land purchases...
...Knox County has imposed land-use planning, zoning, and reclamation regulations stricter than those of the state itself...
...The bank also had three direct and twenty-six indirect corporate interlocks with coal-producing corporations...
...Some six million acres of prime agricultural land in the state are said to be underlain with strippable coal, and some 5,500 acres — not all of it prime — are being lost each year to stripmining...
...Soybean test plots on the reclaimed land yielded about 18 bushels per acre — no more than soybean yield from the nearby stripmine tailings...
...In the Third World, industrial and agricultural exploitation of land and other natural resources has long been coupled with the exploitation of people...
...Illinois — the nation's leading corn and soybean producer and its leading exporter of agricultural products — is the fourth-ranking coal producer in the United States...
...Strategies to reverse this trend of land ownership and control by the energy companies are still in the embryonic stage, particularly since the data on land control have only recently come to light...
...land in north-central Illinois underscores the seriousness and expense of the problem...
...The water would not be returned to the source of withdrawal...
...They produce a variety of cash crops — sugar, pineapples, strawberries, tomatoes — for export while sacrificing the food requirements of indigenous populations...
...Given the current rate of acquisition of coal and surface land throughout the state, the documented acreage is undoubtedly well below the real total...
...David L. Ostendorf is a staff member of the Illinois South Project, a nonprofit organization which has been studying the economic, environmental, and social impact of coal development...
...It is not widely understood that new deep mines normally require some 1,000 acres of surface land for operation, and that coal companies do not tend to relinquish ownership of the land after surface mining...
...Several months ago, a large coal company ran into some problems in its stripmining operations in one southern Illinois county...
...Of some 10,000 acres of Illinois land already controlled by the bank when the fund was proposed, 2,800 acres were found to be contiguous with coal company land — and some 1,500 acres of the contiguous land were owned by a major coal producer controlled by Ashland Oil, in which the bank held 3 per cent of the stock...
...The land already held a good crop of soybeans and corn almost ready to harvest...
...The land in 1977 produced 1,344,000 bushels of grain and 1,388,000 pounds of meat...
...It was also conceivable that through that control, the bank would work with the coal industry to exploit the more immediately profitable natural resource, coal...
...It contains more bituminous coal than any other state, with total coal resources estimated at 161 billion tons...
...Landed elites and multinational corporations exact their toll in oppressed and hungry lives...
...The vulnerability of the family farm to well-capitalized interests in pursuit of land control is perhaps best illustrated by the widely publicized efforts of the Continental Illinois National Bank to establish its "Ag-Land Fund I" in 1977...
...It is not uncommon for the use of land to be determined not by human needs but by corporate appetites...
...Now that individual and family landowners have begun to organize and bargain collectively, the coal buyers are paying fairer prices, but in this day of extraordinary economic pressure on the family farm, the incentive is often greater to sell coal rights or surface land to pay off debts than it is to maintain traditional ties to the farm and the land...
...The conflict centers in the coalfields...
...But the object of this growing conflict between human needs and corporate profits in agricultural America is not the food or fiber that can be harvested from the land — it is the "cash crop" that lies underneath...
...eleven counties in this region produce two-thirds of the state's coal, and four-fifths of its strippable coal...
...The Galesburg Register-Mail says researchers anticipate yields as high as 75 to 80 per cent of normal over the long run, but nothing much better...
...we're just plowing furrows eighty feet deep to recover our coal crop...
Vol. 43 • April 1979 • No. 4
