An on-line publication called Gourmet News recently did a story on fracking that caused Jeff Heller to offer some much needed perspective on how real farmers feel about fracking. Here is what he told the editor:

My name is Jeff Heller and I am the president of the Steuben County Landowners Coalition in New York. Neil Vitale is our vice president and I understand he has already talked to you on this. He may have told you that we have 1,700 families in the coalition who own 225,000 acres of land and are anxious to lease for gas drilling.

Most of our members are farmers. They all feel that fracking and farming are compatible. Most of them have farming friends in Pennsylvania across the border and they know how much those neighbors have benefited from drilling and fracking. And, they would know if their friends had any of those supposedly common problems alleged by some narrow-minded environmentalists. (Please try to forgive our negative attitude toward these folks – we consider ourselves conservationists but have been fighting their misleading and false statements on fracking for five years now and it has been extremely frustrating.)

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http://naturalgasnow.org/farming-fracking-go-together/