been spraying, and the water had come across the road and had damaged their property. We had to get the SBI involved with that one. We took pictures. And the guy was literally putting a big white pipe from his lagoon right across a green field into the state road ditch. We took those samples and those people paid for that test privately and went to a lab in Wilmington. And I

remember the fecal coliform count was like, 975 one day, 978 another day. And the SBI took a roll of pictures. I couldn’t believe it. It was the most flagrant disregard of the law and breaking of the law against everything there was, and it happened, and we sent that report off, and later the head of the SBI would call me back, Mr. Jim Coleman, and said, Representative Watson I am so sorry, but all that report went to the local DA in Duplin County and they haven’t found that it was really a violation of the law. And I said you’ve got to be kidding? And he said, no, but I can tell you I’ve done many cases throughout my career and I have been disillusioned many times in all the hard work that I’ve done. But don’t forget that the governor is the head in this state and that’s where it stops.

CCV: So the state in effect discouraged him from doing the right thing?

Watson: The state will not allow you, the way the law is written right now...And anything that comes out of N.C. State... None of it can go out unless it’s economically feasible.

CCV: So you’re saying that first Murphy Farms and now Smithfield Foods is managing all of this with the state of North Carolina behind it, in effect?

Watson: Yes. Or they control all the state agencies, is the way that I see it. The industry in the state of North Carolina basically controls the state. And jobs and economics are number one.

CCV: So the state buys into the whole legend, the ideal picture of the hog farm industry?

Watson: Whether they buy into it or not, they have jobs and they are in agencies and they don’t want to lose their jobs. And they can only do what they can do. At the time I was in when all the spills were happening I understood that each time anything from the Murphy Farms, and maybe there are a few being managed by some of the individuals, but I can tell you that the individuals from our agencies would say that their hands were tied, and that they had to call those corporations before they left Wilmington to come up and look at one of those farms, because they wanted one of the industry people to be there when they got there.

CCV: And what did you go into the State House for? When you campaigned, what is it that you were seeking to accomplish?

Watson: Basically to create a two party system. After a hundred years of Democratic reign, I had been a conservative, ran on the ticket as a Republican.

CCV: So you went in to the State House as a Reagan supporter, conservative Republican?

Watson: Absolutely, always have been. I was the only woman, and the only conservative ever elected from this district in history. And probably ever will be.

CCV: And how long were you in office before this hog farm issue took off?

Watson: The day that I took my seat. The minute I took my seat. The following Sunday was when the Boss Hog series was in the N & O. so it hit me immediately. And I think two weeks later, all the environmentalists, they had environmental day at the General Assembly. And asked the new legislators to step outside and speak to them. And I went out and here were these people who had “hog heads” on them, and they were booing the hog industry. And I didn’t know what to do. And I asked several people that I had campaigned with if they would go out with me to stand with me, because I was so new I didn’t know how to approach these people. And none of them would go...

CCV: So by the time you got to Raleigh, the emotions were pretty hot?

Watson: They were hot. And if you will look... this was the heat of it. It had been brewing and brewing. And the spraying was everywhere and the citizens were just in an upheaval. And once I went, I was someone new. And I did focus on a solution because I believed sincerely that’s what our political leaders should do. I think they should do it in Wilmington, they should do it in Raleigh, they should do it in Washington. And it is not about a re-election. It should be about the integrity of upholding the Constitution.

CCV: So you identified with the public and saw yourself as a public servant?

Watson: Yes I did.

CCV: Just wanted to do the right thing?

Watson: An ordinary citizen. But a civic leader... I saw an area that needed some change, and I had just lived in an area where good health care, good education, paved roads, anything that we needed, a diversification of employment—was in Wake County. And I had hoped to see that I would be able to have some influence or find someone that would bring their business to Duplin County that would give our children a better life.

CCV: And when would you say the small family farmer went down the tubes in Dublin County?

Watson: I would say the statistics and most of the people that have worked in this would say that it started in the 1970s...diminishing in the 1970s, when the corporates, or the large families began to integrate these farms. I’d say probably during the 1970s, and during the 1980s and 90s. And I’d say we have fewer farms than we have in the history of Duplin County, and look at the size of the farms and they are all larger farms, and they have to be to compete. The small farmer cannot compete with your farm integrations. And unless you are larger, and unless you do contract, and you grow for someone else, you cannot make it. I think my neighbor in the back, King Farms over off Highway 11 was one of the last to try to hang in there. And he had found a market in Pennsylvania, and was having to truck his hogs all the way to Pennsylvania for people to buy them. And finally he just could not compete. There was an article in one of the farm magazines about Craig trying to compete with the big boys. And he just finally gave up.

CCV: So all the small farmers, the mom and pop operations and the part time farmers who just had a few hogs for extra money on the side...

Watson: That’s gone.

CCV: Gone completely?

Watson: That’s gone completely because of your larger operations.

CCV: Why did that happen? Is it a question about not being able to market your hogs?

Watson: It’s a control of the market by larger individuals.

CCV: How do they control it?

Watson: It’s just the marketplace. The larger people control the Tar Heel processing plant because when you grow anything you’ve got to have a processing plant to have a market for it. And so Tar Heel processing over in Bladen County is the closest, so they do however many they can do, and there is no place else to process them. Where are you gone sell your hogs?

CCV: So when the small guy shows up, the processor says, “I’m sorry we can’t even, we’re not gonna buy your hogs?”

Watson: That is exactly right. That is right.

CCV: That was happening, and I think it was the intent of the larger groups to do this. That’s the part that I don’t like. I wish it were so that all the people in America, in a free enterprise, that all the people could farm. And there had been other processing plants, because as I spoke to the smaller farmers that went out of business in my time or were trying to hang on, they just could not compete with the ones that were larger because they had no where to process their hogs.

CCV: You as a legislator must have heard from some of these small farmers. Did they not come to you and say, “Look, the processor won’t let us... they won’t buy our hogs. We can’t compete?”

Watson: Absolutely. I talked to them. And they were looking for markets. One had to go to Pennsylvania to get his hogs marketed.

CCV: And did you try to address that problem?

Watson: I asked the question, what about our small farmers? You know, when we’re doing corporate farming. Where are they going? And the sad part was, if you can’t compete, and you can’t hang in there you just go out.

CCV: So, you raised the question in the General Assembly, you said, “Hey, look, these small farmers can’t compete. What are we going to do about that?”

Watson: As a matter of fact I ran a bill one day, and we were trying to determine what is a family farm. And I said, “What is it?” I said, “Why don’t we say a hundred acres or less.” That was my language in that bill. The guy from the farm bureau stepped out in the lobby, he says, well thank you Mrs. Watson, for injecting that language, you know I wasn’t in there at the time, but somebody said you did this. I said, well, I’m trying to determine what is a family farm. I grew up on a farm of a hundred and fifty acres. What is a family farm? Is it fifty acres? Is a hundred and fifty? What are we saying in this state? That you can’t farm unless you’re a certain ... you know, I’d never heard of such. In a free enterprise country as an American citizen, not being able to do what you want to on your land—and if you can find a marketplace for your goods, then go do it. If you want to live on ten thousand dollars this year, and that’s what you earn and you’re willing to do it. But, it was a mode, it was paradigm shift in farming. It’s a corporate mode.

CCV: How did the legislature respond? Weren’t there other legislators across the state who were willing to work on this?

Watson: Yes. And at the time there were farmers coming in from the Piedmont area. And they were having a fit because they were losing all the dairy herds up in the Piedmont in Greensboro, Winston-Salem and everything to urban sprawl.

CCV: But they could not address this problem?

Watson: They could not. And the money that was offered them for their land was enormous. They were tired of fighting the elements. They couldn’t get money for their milk to compete against the giant diaries. It was competition.

CCV: So the state of North Carolina did nothing. But somewhere along the line got on board with the Murphys, the Smithfields and the big corporate farms?

Watson: They got on board with the corporate mode of farming. Yes. Yes. They did nothing to protect the family farmer to keep these farms at all... But it’s a change. And we can fight change or we can go with change, but the paradigm shift in this country has gone to the corporates, and to the larger, and if you don’t go that way, you’re in left field... It’s sad that the individual has lost their rights in a democracy. Whether it be farming, or whatever business. But farming is one of our last preservations...

CCV: Let me ask you about the political side of it. Once you started getting involved, you started taking up the problems of the small people here, not just the farmers but the ordinary people who’s lives were being affected by massive pollution. And you stated taking that problem to the General Assembly. What came out of that?

Watson: We passed some laws that I felt were good sound laws. House Bill 515. The Clean Water Responsibility Act, I’m not sure the exact title. We passed a distance bill, don’t remember the exact number. Fifteen hundred feet. You could not build a corporate house, a corporate hog house closer than that to someone’s property line. That was absolutely nothing, but it was a measure...So that distance bill was passed. And the next thing I think was really the heat of everything happening. And that’s when I asked for the moratorium. And it passed both houses. It passed the House and the Senate. And the governor upped me one. I had asked for a one-year moratorium and the governor came in with a two-year moratorium. So, I visited with Governor Hunt and talked with him.

CCV: And then, what happened after that? You did these things and then you started to take the heat for it?

Watson: Yes I did. And by doing that though we left a directive with the moratorium that the Department of Agriculture would come up within the next few years with a solution and work with N.C. State with Dr. Mike Williams and that they would come back to the General Assembly and to the environmental review commission with systems that could be proven to be better. But we could not get out of there without the lobbyist putting in “economically feasible.”

CCV: So, built into the moratorium legislation was the understanding that we would search for a new solution?

Watson: That’s right. And implement some of the systems that we had paid for with tax dollars and the corporate money and the farm money to devise a different system than the lagoon system. Because the citizens don’t feel that the lagoon system is the better system. I don’t believe from the environmental impact we have had in Eastern North Carolina from the lagoons and from the flood that we had with hogs going down the Neuse River into the ocean ... is a good system. We don’t believe it is a good system in the area in which we live. Managed or unmanaged. I don’t believe that. And so therefore—a different system. And we would love to see hog waste treated, just like human waste is treated before it is put into the creeks and the rivers. And that it be regulated so that we know that we are not killing all the seafood and closing our shellfish beds like we have for two years because of over agriculture and over growth and over building.

CCV: Weren’t you hearing from the fishermen? Weren’t they up in arms during all this?

Watson: Absolutely. We ran the fishery bill. They were up in arms. They came. We dealt with the fisheries that year.

CCV: What I’m getting at is at some point you were targeted by the political opposition. And they decided to get rid of you, now I want to hear that part of the story.

Watson: Yes. Absolutely. They formed a group called Farmers for Fairness. Using what I said was corporate money. Because I saw all these giant families down here as corporations.  The size that they were. They would spend millions of dollars, and I would wake up every day on WECT, on television and on the radio. And all over the state they were lambasting me. And showing pollution and water. And saying, call representative Cindy Watson. And then they would come out and Farmers for Fairness would show these beautiful farms with thick green pastures and family farmers enjoying a good way of life. And Cindy Watson was against their way of life. And they would put the number up there. My question—I went to the House speaker and I said, how can this be? Because these are corporations and they are using money to defeat me? And then the brochures came out in the mail. And then this company put up Johnny Manning, another hog farmer that was a Republican to run against me in the primary. He as a matter of fact had approved my first speech when I went to run and at one point was a good friend of mine. And I assumed that we were good friends. But he took the opposition. And that’s when I heard that they bought him a truck, put him on the payroll for six months and let him go all over the county campaigning, and he didn’t have to work. I was in session... Anyhow, I asked the State Board of Elections to investigate. And they did. And I went before them. And I would learn when I was there they had a high dollar lawyer from New York that had come in, that this was just “issue advocacy” they claimed. It was not to defeat me. But we would prove, and the board did, that it was to defeat me. So I won.

CCV: So, they at some point broke the laws of the state? How did that happen?

Watson: Absolutely. Well, they spent corporate money and these five families went together and I’m sure they threatened every contract farmer and they got lots of money to pay for all these ads they ran for millions of dollars. I don’t know. It was two or three million dollars. Nobody’s ever heard of that. To come up and defeat me in an election. And put out brochures. They painted me as being anti-hog. Although they couldn’t find out any way I’ve ever been against them at all. But I had spoken out because of the system and I had exposed the issue of the individuals and their damages. I put them in the paper. I educated the whole thing. Everything that came to me, I printed in the paper. The local paper printed all my attitudes and my speeches. The speeches that I made all over the country. They targeted me. They followed me. There were representatives of Murphy Family Farms that followed me all the way to Oklahoma. I went in to meet with Governor Keating. Taking the maps from down here in Eastern North Carolina working with their department of agriculture and environmental board showing them what had happened in these counties here and encouraging them to enact the moratorium until they could get their laws in place. And when I walked out to get in the car to leave to go to the airport, there was the vice president from Murphy Farms and another young lady that I knew from right here walking right in front of the car as I got in.

CCV: So you went to Oklahoma where the farmers were fighting the very same things that were happening here?

Watson: That is correct. And Iowa too. They had big billboards up and down the highway in central Iowa saying, “Murphy Farms Go Home.” And I thought, Oh my. Then I would see some operations in Iowa where their were range hogs, very few left. But they let the hogs grow outside and had little houses that they would go in. And there were few of them. And they were just so upset because they were being pushed out of their mode, second or third generation farmers, into the corporate mode. And then you would see barns as long as you could see that were painted mint green...Because I stood up for the individual and addressed the corporate problem and tried to focus on solutions. And was successful in getting some laws passed. And so they were determined I wasn’t coming back. So Farmers for Fairness did defeat me. I didn’t lose the war. I lost the election. And then later would have the opportunity of being honored with the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award which I had no idea that I would ever be nominated for, but over the years had the privilege to talk to Bobby Kennedy, Jr. who has done a lot of work through his Pace environmental law group out of New York. Where he has cleaned up the Hudson River, fish are coming back now and they have spent millions of dollars. But, he went to work on that solution, and has worked with Rick Dove and now I think they have done nine other rivers...But we are focusing on clean water and we are trying to make industry and agriculture and the municipalities all do the right thing so that we will have clean water. And we will all be able to save the environment and work together. That was basically what the intent was and along the way Bobby Kennedy would ask me about some of these site damages and the targeting that I experienced...I’m sure he must have nominated me or Rick Dove one, or put my name in there and then they looked at all the papers and all the heat that I took and ended up having a weekend with the Kennedy family at the time of the award...

CCV: Were there election laws that were violated?

Watson: Absolutely. Yes there were. You can go to the North Carolina Board of Elections... they, they were voting people that were dead....

 

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Carolina Civic Voice

                             Winter 2006-07  Vol.  6, No 4