Day 233 - 26 03 96 - Page 3


 
 
                                                                  DAY 233
 
                                                  HOWARD LYMAN, Examined:
 
 
 
     1        was the time that we were talking about better living
     2        through chemistry:  get bigger, get better or get out.
     3
     4   Q.   Can I just ask you to try and go a little bit slower, so
     5        that people can keep up with you?
     6
     7   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Yes.  You may be very anxious to say what you
     8        want to say, but it is much easier for our procedure if you
     9        just answer Ms. Steel's questions.  She may well take you
    10        through the statement and supplementary statement which
    11        I have, but do not take offence if I say that it is not an
    12        occasion for making a speech.  We have our own procedures
    13        for getting your evidence out, Mr. Lyman.
    14        A.  I will do my best.
    15
    16   MS. STEEL:   Sorry.  It is probably my fault; I asked a very
    17        wide question.  If you can take it fairly slowly.  So, what
    18        that you were taught at the Montana University?
    19        A.  When I went to Montana State University, I was taught
    20        in the use of herbicides, pesticides, hormones and
    21        medication in enhancing the production features of
    22        animals.  When I came back to the farm, those were the
    23        practices that I employed.  Prior to that time, the farm
    24        had been organic.  After I came back, we became a very
    25        large business, chemical farm.
    26
    27   Q.   Can you tell us what size the farm became?
    28        A.  When I came back from the army, the farm was less than
    29        500 acres, the maximum size of the farm.  Prior to the
    30        liquidation, I owned over 12,000 acres; I probably leased
    31        another 100,000 acres altogether.  So the total was about
    32        112,000 acres.
    33
    34   Q.   What was the maximum number of cattle that you had at one
    35        time?
    36        A.  The most that I had was 1,000 cows and calves, 5,000
    37        head feedlot; and so at one time I would have as many as
    38        7,000 head of cattle.
    39
    40   Q.   Was that all you were raising, cattle, or -----
    41        A.  No.  At that time, we were raising wheat, barley, corn,
    42        corn silage, alfalfa silage.  We had 30 employees at that
    43        time that were involved both in grain and livestock
    44        production.
    45
    46   Q.   Can you just explain how it was that you decided that that
    47        was the wrong way to go about -- how you basically became
    48        critical of the modern agricultural practices?
    49        A.  I enhanced what I learned in Montana State University,
    50        using the chemicals.  In 1979, I ended up paralysed from 
    51        the waist down.  My doctor told me that I had a tumour on 
    52        my spinal cord, that I would have less than one chance in a 
    53        million that I would ever walk again.  Just prior to that,
    54        my brother had died -- who was a partner with me in the
    55        farm -- had died of Hogkins Lymphoma.  When I was in the
    56        hospital, contemplating a life in a wheelchair, I looked at
    57        what had happened on that farm from the time that I had
    58        taken over the management of it.  With the chemicals we had
    59        used, we had eliminated most of the birds in drifts; from
    60        the herbicides we were using, killed most of the trees, the
 
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