Not in my back yard. Or, as many like to say, NIMBY!!

I wrote earlier how the city fathers of Nickerson, Nebraska, my home state, voted to not allow Costco to build a $300 million facility to slaughter and process chickens for their rotisseries, a facility that would bring 1,100 jobs with it and annual revenue of 1.2 billion dollars.

And that amount does not consider the increased income for financially strapped farmers who would put a grow-out facility on their farms to provide those chickens and to buy other local farmers’ corn.

NIMBY won out that time, but Costco has not given up.

As readers of Meatingplace know, Costco got the City Council members of Fremont, Nebraska, to not only change some zoning plans for farm land near their city but to also provide a loan to Costco to build the plant.

Despite some opposition, it looks like Costco will be moving forward.

And then into the foray jumps a new Democratic leader in Nebraska named Jane Kleeb. Ms. Kleeb lives in Hastings, Neb., a small college town where I did my undergrad studies located about 200 miles SW of Fremont. Ms. Kleeb is a force not to be taken lightly in largely conservative, Republican Nebraska. You see, she was just elected the Nebraska Democratic Chair, a spot not held by a female for a very long time.

And she was the founder of Bold Nebraska, a group that was very instrumental in blocking the Keystone XL pipeline from going across Nebraska’s Sandhills. I am certain she uses petroleum products, but likes the status quo for access to same. She claimed she was worried about the ecology and contamination if an accident should occur, so we continue to get our petroleum from up North via tankers like the Exxon Valdez.

NIMBY

Move to the current issue, and she claims she is afraid the plant may cause contamination to Nebraska’s waterways and eventually the Missouri river. Please. Nebraska has hundreds of beef feed lots located along the Platte, Elkhorn and Republican rivers all draining into the Missouri. She knows that.

So why the uproar over chickens, something previously not playing a role in Nebraska agriculture with one exception? Tecumseh has a chicken plant AND the Nebraska State Penitentiary. They look at both as economic engines.

Perhaps her thinking is influenced by the fact that her husband, Scott Kleeb, with his PhD from Yale, used to be a ranch hand for the McGinn Ranch in Custer County up in those Sandhills where beef is king.

Or maybe Ms. Kleeb was actually worrying about the accessibility and price of corn for feedlots and ranchers if all those new chicken farmers also started buying up the quantities used for finishing cattle and pigs in Nebraska. Or maybe she just likes saying Not in My Back Yard, even though that would be a mighty big back yard.

One last thought and I am out of here.

My mother had some Kleebs in her family tree. I know nothing more than that. Maybe Scott and Jane are not in my back yard as we sure think differently on many things.

Not in my back yard

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