Morning Book Club: In October, we read Dodge County, Incorporated, a firsthand account by attorney Sonja Trom Eayrs detailing her family's decades-long legal battle against the corporate takeover of farming in rural Minnesota. Using her family's inter-generational farm in Dodge County as an example, Eayrs exposes the devastation wrought by Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), or "Big Ag." This book tracks how industrial hog production not only leads to environmental disaster—including severe pollution, waste, and the threat of cancer clusters—but also corrupts local governance and erodes the economic and social fabric of small towns. Eayrs argues that this corporatization of agriculture is a direct threat to democracy and independent farming. It serves as both a memoir of her family's fight for their land and a demand for immediate reforms to curb corporate lawlessness in the American food system.
We were fortunate that the author could join us for our discussion! Sonja covered a lot of ground:
- She is an attorney in Minneapolis and the Business Manager of the family farm.
- The farm has been in the family for 100 years.
- Dodge County used to be a tight knit neighborhood of family farms.
- The first CAFO arrived in 1993.
- Because of her work fighting against the takeover of family farms, they now receive daily harassment from the contract farmers who signed on with Big Ag to run the CAFOs.
- Now, even at church no one will talk to her.
- Family farms have mostly disappeared in the county and across several states. Family farmers can no longer get financing; only factory farms can receive it, so family farmers are giving up.
- Contract farmers have infiltrated township government as well as county and state governments, so decisions are made to benefit Big Ag.
- A large CAFO can have over 1,000 heads of cattle; small CAFOs can have 999 or fewer heads. Between the cattle, pigs, chickens, and turkeys, there is a huge amount of manure that needs to be addressed. Oftentimes, it is spread on nearby farm fields.
- Many organizations support factory farms, like the Farm Bureau and the National Pork Producers Council.
- What we can do:
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- Know your farmer and where your food comes from.
- Buy Minnesota Grown, buy from CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture)
- Ask your favorite restaurant where they get their meat from.
For more information:
Book by Sarah Vogel, The Farmer’s Lawyer: The North Dakota Nine and the Fight to Save the Family Farm.
Book by Christopher Jones, The Swine Republic: Struggles with the Truth About Agriculture and Water Quality.
Our next meeting is on November 12th at the Highland Park Library, 1974 Ford Parkway, St Paul at 10:00 a.m. Our book for November is The Demon of Unrest: a Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War, by Erik Larson.
Evening Book Club: Evening Book Club will next meet on Monday, November 10
at 6:30 pm on Zoom to discuss Rise to the Challenge: A Memoir of Politics, Leadership, and Love by Marlene M. Johnson. You are welcome to join even if you haven't finished the book. Email Heidi Kloempken (heidi.kloempken@gmail.com) for the Zoom link.
Our full 2025-26 reading list is now available on the St. Paul Public Libraries BiblioCommons site! Check it out here.
If you are interested in joining either one of the LWVSP Book Clubs, contact:
