Doug Baird

This bio should to start here:

“Early Sunday morning, June 4, 2017, I was sicker than I had ever been before. Too sick to even bend over, as I vomited all over the toilet, myself, and the bathroom floor — and I didn’t even care.”

This was the aftermath of being engulfed in a cloud of Roundup from a giant agricultural sprayer while I was mowing my lawn the previous afternoon.

The resulting NYSDEC investigation ignored weather records showing wind speeds in excess of 20 mph, merely stating that the applicator “disputed the wind speed,” and characterized me as someone who "expressed views that was politically active against farming" in spite of my having rented that field to a farmer for the last 25 years.

Helena Chemical was only issued a warning for “application of pesticide to non-target area” and the report ended with an unequivocal “Case closed!”

This incident motivated me to write “You Know You Live near a Factory Farm When Your Kids Go Fishing with a Pool Skimmer” — a picture book with large print and cautionary captions. The “Family Farm Fun” book is the second in the Factory Farm series.

“Cornithaca County” casts a much wider range of shibboleths into the trash heap of myths and elitist policy making.

The Rural Social Justice thread in these books is the armature that gives structure to pieces intended to provoke, inspire and feed the reader’s thinking and imagination.

I’m not passing a torch — I’m just holding the door.