Jeanne Gramstorff

Region: Panhandle

Topics: Cotton, Farming, Hogs, Confined Feeding Operations, Non-Profit, Agriculture

 

Jeanne Gramstorff is a farmer and banker in the north Panhandle town of Farnsworth, Texas, who has helped organize and operate the non-profit group, ACCORD (Active Citizens Concerned Over Resource Development). ACCORD has been seeking to improve operations among the region's confined feeding operations (CAFOs), chiefly hog facilities. Mrs. Gramstorff and other ACCORD members are concerned about wastewater runoff, aquifer contamination, nuisance-level odors, increased flies, and airborne diseases emanating from these facilities. Also, given their large size (handling as many as 250,000 hogs), efficiencies of scale, vertical integration, and remote ownership, these new facilities threaten many family-run, locally-based businesses. Finally, Mrs. Gramstorff and others within ACCORD are concerned about the erosion of due process rights to protect their communities' health, the local ecosystems, and their land values from the effects of these facilities under recently streamlined administrative procedures, which largely eliminated CAFO permit hearings. 

Interviewed

October 5, 2002
Farnsworth, Texas
Reels 2219 and 2220