Articles Health and Beauty CAFOs Kill Communities, Sept. 05
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Hog Confinements Kill CommunitiesHow Industrial-sized Hog Lots are Destroying Rural IowaBY CHRISTINE SCHRUMPeggy Birchmier lives in a lovely, pastoral home near Milton—surroundedby five industrial-sized factory farms. Ask her to describe the stench whenfarmers spread six months’ worth of hog slurry on the 156-acre fieldright outside her yard, and she’ll just about retch. “It’s like rotten eggs . . . you can’t describe it. It’sreally intense,” she says, holding her stomach. Peggy lived eight contentedyears in her countryside home in Davis County before the factory farms settledin around her. Now the fumes have forced Peggy, her husband, and their asthmaticson to live in the basement. Last month, The Iowa Source published an article on the humanhealth risks posed by toxic air emissions from CAFOs, concentratedanimal feeding operations (CAFOs,August 2005). Thismonth we’re taking a closer look at how hog CAFOs are tearing apartIowa’s rural communities. The Sulfur, My Friend, is Blowin’ in the Wind…Obviously, the most common complaint about industrial-sized hog lotsis their horrific stench. Operations that manage tightly packed hogs bythe thousands store animal waste in massive underground pits and outdoorlagoons. After fermenting for six months to a year in these holding centers,the putrefied manure is spread en masse upon pastures—either on-siteor on the crops of interested farmers. The ready-made manure, which is known to give off toxic ammonia and hydrogensulfide emissions, is a commodity rife with controversy. “It’scoming out that this manure really isn’t a natural manure anymore,it’s a toxic compound,” says 2000 Master Farmer Ron Kielkopf,citing recent Iowa State research. “With it, crops don’t handlestress very well. All manure and fertilizer have to be broken down byother bacteria that’s in the soil before the plants can use them.And these bacteria really sometimes don’t know what to do with thatmanure—especially when they put on as much as they do.” CAFO owners can’t technically sell the manure to neighboring farmers,since it would be extremely difficult to measure and regulate the nutrients—nitrogen,phosphorous, etc.—that it contains. So instead, many opt to “give” farmersthe toxic manure “for free,” but charge an application feeand make a little extra cash. At times, the phosphorous content of theslurry is so high, crops are better off without it. And then there’sthe smell. “It’s like someone sets up a million dollar home in yourneighborhood and then vents his sewage slime in your living room,” saysKielkopf, who is an at-large member of Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement(Iowa CCI). “It’s so rude, having someone else smell somethingyou’re making money off of.” Says Birchmier, “The cure-all there was supposed to be that themanure would be knifed into the soil, and they’d plant trees, whichwould cover up the smell. Well . . . .” Unfortunately, CAFO farmersdon’t always make good on promises to reduce odor emissions. Eighty-two-year-old Olive Jones has lived with her husband in their DavisCounty home for most of her life. Since a 16,000-head hog confinementwas erected a few miles from their home approximately six years ago, theputrid fumes have kept them up at night. “When they run that irrigation system up there,” says Olive, “wereally get it bad because they spray it out in the air. It bothers myhusband because he has a lung problem. He’ll start coughing beforeI can even smell it. To live out in the country and have to live withthat smell! I have sinus trouble all the time.” But the smell doesn’t really trouble her lungs, Olive says. Itjust makes her mad. Employment and Economy: Promises, PromisesCAFO owners looking to establish facilities in rural areas often promiselocal residents an employment boom and a more prosperous economy. Unfortunately,it doesn’t always pan out that way. “Nobody works in there very long,” says Birchmier, of peopleemployed by the factory farms near her. “No matter where they’refrom, they’re almost always transient.” CAFO workers typicallyendure low salaries, long hours, and extremely high health risks. A whopping58 percent of all swine confinement workers manifest chronic bronchitis,according to the American Lung Association, and nearly 70 percent experiencesome form of respiratory irritation. Each year, several workers—andoccasionally children—actually die from falling in manure pits. Birchmier finds the working conditions appalling. “I think theworst thing is that the people that are running the business aren’tthe ones that are playing with the manure. They get the Mennonites andthe Amish, a lot of immigrant workers. Anybody who can’t work anywhereelse.” “If the owner of a Davis County confinement lives in Mount Pleasant,and his father, who owns the land, lives in Illinois—if they makea million dollars, how much good is that going to do the local economy?” saysfamily farmer Garry Klicker, of Davis County, vice chairman of Iowa Citizensfor Community Improvement (Iowa CCI). Two studies from 1983 and 2001 found that when farm size and absenteeownership increase, social conditions in the local community tend to deteriorate.Said 1983 study author Dean MacCannel, “We have found depressedmedian family incomes, high levels of poverty, low education levels, socialand economic inequality between ethnic groups, etc., associated with landand capital concentration in agriculture. Communities that are surroundedby farms that are larger than can be operated by a family unit have .. . a few wealthy elites, a majority of poor laborers, and virtually nomiddle class.” So if CAFOs create low-paying, high-turnover jobs that create high gainfor absentee owners, thereby funneling money directly out of the region,where’s the community payoff? Certainly not in tax breaks. Taxing on CommunitiesCAFOs can be incredibly taxing for rural communities—quite literally.Industrial farms generate a fair amount of extra truck traffic, and asa result, bridges and roads require more upkeep to handle the weight ofsemis brimming with oversized swine and their feed. The annual estimated cost of local road maintenance around a 20,000-headhog confinement is said to be $6,447 a mile due to heavy-duty truck traffic.One Iowa community recently estimated its costs for gravel road upkeepincreased by approximately 40 percent due to excess truck traffic fromhog CAFOs. Ironically, while citizen taxpayers are shouldering the costs of CAFO-causedroad damage, the CAFO owners themselves are being granted tax abatementsfor implementing “pollution control” measures at their facilities—suchas the reeking manure pits and lagoons, which are scientifically provenenvironmental hazards that cause air, land, and water toxicity. “In reality, that’s government money coming into their pocketsthat shouldn’t be there,” says an angered Klicker, recallingthat some CAFOs receive as much as $80,000 per site worth of federal taxdollars to establish manure containments for their factory farms. “Theycan get all kinds of money. If you’re putting up, say, four or sixbuildings for $1 million, $2 million, $3 million, why do you need governmentassistance? Is that where taxpayer money should go? Subsidies were originallydesigned to help the small farmer. In reality now, they are just usingtaxpayer money to pay big corporations to sell out small farms.” Valuable, Valueless Land: Clearing Out CommunitiesThere is some dispute as to whether CAFOs depreciate or appreciate thevalue of land nearby them. One obvious side of the argument is that noxiousfumes from factory farms create an ambiance that few homeowners want tosettle down in, and few businesses want to set up shop in. “Who would ever build a home in this part of the country?” asksKielkopf. “That’s what’s happening everywhere in ruralIowa now. All of a sudden, everyone’s waking up and saying, ‘Webetter not build a home outside of urban areas.’ ” “When you get in neighborhoods like this, people can’t renttheir homes anymore,” says Klicker. “My farm’s for sale.If I could leave, I’d leave. But it hasn’t sold.” In a 1999 University of Missouri study of 99 rural land real estate transactionsof more than one acre, researchers found that CAFOs lowered land valueswithin a three-mile radius of approximately $2.68 million, or $112 peracre (Hamed, 1999). On the other side of the coin, land near CAFOs becomes more valuableto some—namely, factory farmers who are looking to expand. SaysBirchmier, “My property values actually went up because they [CAFOowners] were paying so much to build.” Either way, the end result is a clearing out of a community of residents. “Peoplehave to move out,” says Klicker. “No one buys the home, sothey knock it down; CAFO owners buy it and expand. It absolutely clearsout the middle class.” Widening Social GapsNaturally, a diminishing middle class in rural Iowa causes existing socialgaps to widen further. Families whose financial constraints prevent themfrom quitting CAFO janitorial positions (i.e., hosing out slurry) tendto face a certain amount of inadvertent social ostricization. “You don’t want to sit in a restaurant near somebody who’sbeen working in a confinement,” says Klicker, “Trust me, youdon’t. They have special soaps that they use, but if they work thereday after day after day, it gets in their skin. You cannot wash it away.” Indeed, the indoor manure pit fumes are so strong that the sensitivesnouts of baby pigs cannot tolerate them. Piglets must be housed in separatefacilities that are washed out daily—with their liquefied sewagestored in outdoor lagoons—otherwise, the odor would kill them. Says Birchmier, who owns and operates a local truck stop, “TheCAFO workers come into the store and they can clear it out in a heartbeat.But they have no idea how odorous they are. It’s the same with thedead-pig drivers,” she says, referring to those who make their livingdisposing of the thousands of baby and full-grown CAFO hogs that die ofvarious causes before slaughter. In addition, it’s not unheard of for some CAFO laborers to toilsuch long days that they have little time for socializing and communityinvolvement. A Question of Ethics“At what point does the will of the people enter into the equation?” GarryKlicker wants to know. “Because the majority of people, nobody actually,wants CAFOs. Nobody who lives near ’em now, and nobody who thinksthey’re going to live near ’em in the future want the thingsbuilt. So why should a very small minority of people be able to make moneyoff the misery of the majority?” “Today’s consumer really wants to purchase meat that’sbeen raised in a responsible way,” according to Kielkopf. “Butthe retailers are all in bed with the factory farmers. The small guy,he can’t get shelf space in Hy-Vee.” To make matters worse, it’s becoming increasingly difficult forsmall farmers to form contracts with meat packers, who can make largerprofits when they do business with CAFO operators. Finding themselveswith little say in the matter, independent farmers are careful not to “makea stink,” as Kielkopf says, because “they could get blacklistedand then nobody would buy their hogs.” If They Build it, More CAFOs Will ComeUnfortunately, at present, Iowa law does little to protect independentfarmers and their neighbors from the perils of CAFOs. But if Iowa’srural citizens join together, they can follow the lead of communitiesin states like Pennsylvania and North Carolina—and even right herein Iowa—who are banning together to “say no” to factoryfarms. (For more information, see factoryfarm.org/). According to recent reports from the DNR, permits applications for buildinghog CAFOs in Iowa are up this year. “We’ve received 160 applicationsin the first half of 2005, more than the 122 we received in the entire2004 calendar year,” said Wayne Farrand, supervisor of the DNR wastewaterpermits section. Thousands of rural Iowans are concerned. They should be. To them, Birchmieroffers these words to the wise. “Try to stop them before they’rebuilt. Because once one’s there, the rest will come.” Sidebar: CAFO Water PollutionAside from the obvious air pollution, CAFOs pose a threat to our state’swater supply. Underground concrete manure pits don’t always offerstalwart groundwater protection. Joints can leak and cracks can form inconcrete. If a pit building’s concrete is laid in sand or gravel,leaking manure can easily migrate to water tables. Outdoor lagoons posesimilar leakage problems. Shockingly, in Iowa, a 7-acre lagoon may legally leak as much as 16 million gallons of liquefied manure annually. At present, 70 percent of Iowa’s streams are polluted, largelydue to agricultural runoff. CAFOs certainly do little to remedy the problem.A recent survey of Iowa’s 5,600 manure pits found that 18 percentwere built over alluvial aquifers, which are widely used drinking watersources that are highly vulnerable to contamination. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, 70 percent of all antibioticsproduced in the U.S. (25 million pounds) are fed to chickens, turkeys,pigs, and cattle in CAFOs. According to the EPA, as much as 80 percentof antibiotics administered orally to livestock pass through the animalsunchanged into manure pits and lagoons, after which they are spread oncroplands where they may run-off into waterways. For Christine Schrum's article on the health hazards of CAFOs, see HogConfinement Health Risks. For excellent resources, visit the JeffersonCounty Farmers and Neighbors website. Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites
         
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written by Julie, March 13, 2008  The only thing that smells like rotten eggs is the misinformation in this article. Quality journalism uses facts and research from substantiated sources. This uses fear and emotional ploys. Your excellent sources at the bottom are the most bias and unsubstantiated available on the subject.
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... written by Lynn, March 14, 2008
Have you been to Bloomfield, Iowa? Now there's a town that's been ruined by hog confinements. No one wants to live where the air smells so bad, and no one can sell their homes. Obviously, Julie doesn't live within smelling range - if she did, she wouldn't be so enthusiastic about them. I wish the legislators who allow such air and land pollution to take place would be required to live next to a CAFO. That would change their minds
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