Author targets big ag

While Sonja Trom Eayrs knows she has hit a nerve with her newly released book, it’s not with the people one may suspect.

Through her book, Dodge County Inc., which exposes the antics of corporate farming targeted at those she believes are involved in the demise of rural America, Trom Eayrs has opened the eyes of many other people not directly connected.

“The book has truly touched a nerve,” said Trom Eayrs. “For many of the readers, they can identify with the book, and it hits them emotionally.”

Trom Eayrs is a family law attorney in the Twin Cities but is still involved in the family farm operation along with her siblings. She has now added author to her long list of accomplishments. Her parents are deceased.

She wishes she had started a list of every person who has told her “Thank you” for writing the book. “It resonates not only with readers in Dodge County but across rural America,” she says. “There are so many families who have been negatively impacted by the actions of a handful of multinational corporations. The installation of corporate factory farms and greed has turned neighbor against neighbor, family member against family member, and hollowed out rural areas in the process. And, for what, a little money?”

The Blooming Prairie native released the book in November and is now spending considerable time promoting it around the Midwest and nationally. She will be at Barnes & Noble in Rochester for a book signing on Saturday from 1-4 p.m.

The praise she has received since its release has been overwhelming and beyond what she ever expected.

“Local citizens are banding together, regardless of political affiliation, to protect their communities from multinational giants and the adverse consequences of industrial agriculture,” Trom Eayrs said, adding, “Community matters.” 

She has received enthusiastic reviews from Kirkus, Booklist, and others, as well as blurbs from Sen. Cory Booker, authors Corban Addison and Christopher Leonard, Humane Society president Kitty Block, and others. Her book has received significant media coverage, including Forbes, Farm Aid, Farm Action, Civil Eats, Minnesota Star Tribune, Barn Raiser, Land Stewardship Project and others. 

In her book, Trom Eayrs shares her family’s compelling legal drama recounting three rounds of litigation against the Dodge County Board in their efforts to prevent a corporate factory farm from going up across the road from their intergenerational family farm in Westfield Township. The Troms have been on the frontlines for decades fighting industrial agriculture and the transformation of rural America. Today, their farm is surrounded by 12 hog operations within a three-mile radius.

With the factual rigor of an attorney and the passion of a farmer’s daughter, Trom Eayrs weaves together her family’s struggles to fight corporate injustices in rural America and the larger story of corporate livestock production in the U.S. She touches on air and water pollution, the cancer clusters, the destruction of local communities and economies and the erosion of the democratic process.

She shares a story that breaks her heart still today. She recalled going to church in Blooming Prairie with her father at a time when he was snubbed and given the cold shoulder by other parishioners. “He needed support,” she said. “The pain and the hurt my family were experiencing brought tears to my eyes.”

But not everyone acted in a snobbish way. At the same time in the fall of 2014, a man at church came up to them and told her, “Thank you for your work on behalf of your family and on behalf of our community.”

And that’s what inspired Trom Eayrs to move forward.

“Those words have powered me for over 10 years,” she says. “I know my family is not alone.”

That same man reiterated his feelings just a few weeks ago.

Trom Eayrs’ target audience with the book is the general public. “My goal is to inform and educate the public,” she said. “I want to motivate people to take action,” she added.

Some ways in which people can take action, Trom Eayers said, are to join local organizations to fight industrial agriculture like Land Stewardship Project or make better choices when purchasing meat. “People can make educated choices about the food they buy. Vote with their fork,” she said.

She expects interest in her book to continue growing. “I believe there will be people that realize there is a fire storm of rural activists fighting multi-nationals and corporate takeovers of our food supply,” said Trom Eayrs. “The multi-nationals thought they defeated us, but they actually activated us. As my father would say, ‘enough is enough.’”

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Book Signing Event

Who: Sonja Trom Eayrs, author of Dodge County, Inc.

Where: Barnes & Noble, Apache Mall, Rochester

When: Saturday, Jan. 25 from 1-4 p.m.

More info: www.sonjatromeayrs.com.