Hog confinement stench

I was reading about the 3 law suits that have made their way threw the court system in North Carolina against Smithfield foods. The jury has sided with the plaintiff in all 3 cases and has awarded amounts in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
With over 20 more cases waiting for a trial date this could get ugly real quick.

The plaintiff's have argued that Smithfield could do more to prevent the smell from their contractors farms.
Smithfield has argued that no laws have been broken and all the farms have been inspected and found to be within state laws.

A couple of observations I have made.....

Since these are contract farmers I can not see how the farm owner was not even named in the suit.

Seems odd a China company buys Smithfield in 2013 and then over 20 law suits are filed against the company starting in 2014.

How could a state have laws that allow farms in rural agriculture areas to be sued on nuisance and smell when no state laws have been broken.

If the first 3 cases are a insight to the pending 20 cases what does this mean for Smithfield; and what does this mean for hog confinement systems in general for those in other states.

Is this a start of a new era and it is just a matter of time before it spreads to chickens; dairy; and cow feedlots.

I can see this getting ugly real quick and the future of farming in jeopardy.
North Carolina jury awards neighbors 473.5 million
 
Agricultural odors, dust, etc. are a difficult issue. I spent 31 years with the agency in Texas that deals with them. When I started TAMU and Ag Extension were telling livestock feeders to build their pens on hillsides so rain would flush the manure out. Then came many and sometimes massive fish kills and other issues. Containment structures were built to contain the wastewater. Then odor and fly complaints came in, many justified. The harder problem was when folks began moving to the "country" to get out of cities and all of a sudden realized they were next to a feedlot. It is complicated and adding foreign owners into the mix makes it more difficult. I'm glad I'm out of it now and just play with my tractors.
 
Laws dont always make sense to 7s and odor/noises are a touchy subject. Had an attorney where I used to work that argued a odor complaint in Texas. Judge commended him for putting up a stellar defense with expert witnesses and all the reminded him they were discussing the laws of Texas not the laws of nature. We lost.
 
Way too many animals in a confined area. Cities way to many people in a confined area. It all depends on your perspective. If your trying to make money or you are trying to create the best product you can. We used to have FARMS not Factories. We now have mono culture type of farming because it's more profitable. We are getting lots of food cheap but not quality.
I was raised on growing our own beef chicken and pork, our garden was an acre. When we went to town once a month we bought flour sugar ect. Soda juice was a rarity. Never knew we had it so good, untill I grew up.
 
Then odor and fly complaints came in,[b:654c4848f0] many justified.[/b:654c4848f0]

But was any laws broken that made this justified or is that just a personal observation?

The problem I am having with this is the plaintiffs are saying that Smithfield could do more to control the odor by installing new and more modern closed system lagoons. Problem is open lagoons and spraying the lagoon water on fields is allowed under current state laws.

I believe the plaintiffs have a case.
That case is just with the state and its outdated laws and not the farmer that is following current laws.
But then again there is no money in suing the state to have the laws changed.
 
I would bet that a group called "Water keepers" is involved in this too. Robert F. Kennedy is the leader of this out fit. abundant Dem rich playboy. Totally anti agriculture outfit. They are using anything they can to stop animal confinement style livestock raising. Actually livestock raising in general. Many of the same supporters as PETA. Here in Iowa they tried to influence the state laws on water run off and manure management. When that did not get the results they wanted they switched to air/smell rules/laws. Really nice when RICH people from 1000 miles away come and mess around in your state. Then run back to the MANSIONS on restricted islands/land. Kennedy has many speeches and interviews stating his anti faming views. He is rich and good looking to lots of women. They flock around him. Our family members at the state universities, says his group is very active on the campuses. They are shaping the views of many non farming background people with a very anti farming view point.

Here in Iowa you have to have all livestock sites registered with the state. Then depending on the number of animals and what type/kind/size there are set back rules for how close then can be to homes, wells, other livestock building, and etc. This is a good thing. I do not want to have someone build a "new" building right next to some homes but I also do not want some houses built right next to a livestock operation either. If you have a lot/building of much size the set back is going to be 2375-2500 feet away. Basically a half mile.

Here is a link to a PDF file that lists the rules regulations:
www.iowadnr.gov/Portals/idnr/uploads/afo/fs_distreq_constrctn.pdf





I have a two 2500 head hog barns North-West of me that are just over 3/4 of a mile away as the crow flies. That is the way the majority of our prevailing winds come from. In the fifteen years we have owned this house, my son the first 12 and us the last three, neither of us have had any odor issues from the barns them selves. When they apply the manure in the fall you can smell it for a day or so after application.

This fight will not follow science in most cases. Lawsuits will be won with ignorant juries that "FEEL" they should be doing something. These suits with Smithfield will just cause the entire operation to move out of SC and possibly the US.

Smithfield has some of the best swine feeding technology and research in the world. The Chinese bought this company mainly for the information it has. The blood lines of its hogs,the building designs, and feeding tech are world leading. This technology can easily be taken to other countries and used. Does anyone here think China can not take this to Mexico or South America and raise hogs???? Heck even Africa.

South Carolina had better watch this closely. I know there was unregulated confinement growth in the 1980s-1990s. A total manure management disaster. Buildings dumping manure down the hill into streams. So the modern history of hog production there is not good. So it is needed to be regulated with common sense and scientific rules/laws. There are millions od dollars of infrastructure tied to the hog industry there. Smithfield does not own much of it. It is mostly independent growers. So if they just say the heck with it and leave SC. The economic fall out will be HUGE. Then take in the jobs lost and the ripple effect on other businesses too.
Livestock confinement rules in Iowa. PDF file
 
The poultry business provided the model for how those companies operate. When you grow animals under contract to a large agribusiness company, you are no longer a farmer. You are a low-level contract employee. The corporation owns the animals and provides the feed and medications. The contract specifies virtually everything the former farmer can do or not do, and how the facilities are to be constructed, organized, and operated. That's why the corporation is subject to the lawsuits.
 
You think pigs stink, check out a gator farm....

The problem is all these "city folks" that want to move to "the country", then they want to change "the country" to what they want. It's certainly happening where I live just north of Nashville. When the patriarchs of the farming families that own the land pass on, the kids sell the land to developers. Nobody can afford to buy a place right around Nashville so they're all buying lots on these old farms, that are surrounded by farms, and then griping and complaining about noise, and dust, and smells. Life as we've known it is gone.

-Scott
 
JD,

You are saying a lot of truth here, but another reality is a LOT of Iowa agriculture is owned by people outside of Iowa or outside the country.

I think Iowa has pretty good management of this, some more technology can help the odor mitigation.

I have no idea about regulations in other states.

Remember, most of the JD dealers in our area are owned by a Texas doctor.
 
From what I read Smithfield is already doing this in North Carolina.
Each of the 3 farmers that cases have made it threw court and Smithfield lost have had their contracts pulled.
One farm; I think it was the one with the biggest jury award had their 1/2 grown pigs picked up the next day.
The other 2 were told they will not receive new pigs once this batch is butchered.
This has left these farmers with houses they can not use because their is no real hog market without a contract and even if their was another company in the area looking for growers they would be a fool to sign these farms up.
Smithfield has also released a statement saying they are considering just pulling out of North Carolina all together.
With a bad taste in their mouth already not to mention new tariffs I can also see them moving to Mexico or even Africa rather than Iowa or another state.

The long term fall out to this could be devastating to the farm industry nation wide no matter what state you live in.
 
Smithfield likely has to import animal feed in from the Midwest to feed that many hogs in confinement in an eastern market. They go belly up it could affect commodity producers over a wide area not just Smithfield.
 
The goal of many Americans is to eliminate farming in the USA, and have all production of everything come from other countries. They have had some success in doing so with autos and computer and electronic parts. Agriculture is next in line.

The goal is to have us commoners live off govt stipends and play on our cell phones and 4K TVs and not cause any environmental footprint at all.

Pure nirvana.

Paul
 
That is total BS, I do not know of anyone that wants to eliminate farming in the US.

I do believe that farmers will need to adhere to better water management in the future due to public demand for clean water.
 
I've been thru the hog areas of NC right much and can tell you a lot of the time its no problem figuring where they are located thru the sense of smell,there have also been water issues especially when they have heavy rains.Confinement operations can be pretty good in the Shenandoah Valley where the poultry operations have come under the Chesapeake Bay rules
they don't smell that bad,manure is required to be composted under cover for a certain amount of time before being spread too.BTW in NC many of the people complaining were there before the the hog confinement operations.A lot of the areas are mostly populated by minorities that used to not have much say in things but that has changed.Chinese owned Smithfield isn't
going to get a lot of sympathy in this part of the World.
 
There are many groups who want to end animal agriculture in the US and they will use whatever tactic they can to stop it just like what you see happening here just look at the hippies and the whole feral horse dilemma and it will only get worse
 
Actually the goal is to have better quality food for the USA and not have food grown in the USA to feed folks like the Chinese slave labor and military subsidized by US Taxpayers.
 
jacksun65: The era your where talking about had 35% of the population living in rural areas now that is under 25%. In the 1950s 12% of the labor force was farmers. Less than 2% of are farmers now. There are less than 2 million farms in the US too.

There are fewer farms now than the prior low of 1860.
Rural pop. verse Urban
 
OK city people-bury all of YOUR own garbage within Your city limits and stop Flushing Your toilet in the Rivers and creeks with out treating and farmers will take care of our own problems and they will be a LOT less than YOURS-You out numbers us.
 
They are doing a wide array of things,cities,construction of any kind has water run off rules to go by about every new construction site has to have a runoff pond(s) Lots of things most
are just common sense really to keep erosion down.MD and PA have stricter rules than VA for the most part.Its helped the Bay according to everything I have read. Its an ongoing project for sure.
 
What do you think China does with the grain they buy from the US? And grain growing is subsidized by the US Gov't,thru direct and indirect ways like Federal Crop insurance.
 
I, like many of you, was raised on a small dairy farm that also produced hogs, chickens, etc. Our hog lot was about 100 yards from the house, (no ac), and I never smelled anything I'd consider overwhelming. Fast fwd 30 years: When I peddled freight to the south and west of Butler, MO. and the wind was in the wrong direction, "Murphy Farms" hog lots created a smell that was almost more than I could stand and I never even got with-in sight of them. In some circumstances, I think people have every right to raise Cain about the "stink" of corporate farms, especially family farmers that have lived on and honored the land for years and are getting "stunk" out of their life-long homes.
 
Paul ..... someone else said BS to your reply, I won't venture there but I think you are guilty of exaggeration to some degree. Would you agree that word fits your analysis?
 
There has been a tremendous amount of work to clean up cities sanitary sewers and landfills the last 40 years, so pretty hard to blame them.

I believe little to nothing has been done in cities to mitigate storm and lawn runoff, I see this as a big issue.

Industry is tightly regulated, and very little polluting is possible without someone going to jail.

Regulations on farming, and practices of the farmers is all over the map, some have meaningful regulation and some farmers really practice it with or without regulations. I live in Iowa and our rivers and lakes are basically dead from agricultural runoff. We have mandatory regulations for feed operations over a certain size and "voluntary" regulations for the rest. It does not work, we need regulations on all farming, just like industry has.
 
I had to break my last post.

I think cities need to take nutrient runoff seriously, currently they are just handling volume issues with retention.

Doing this for farms and cities is not that tough.

I think most of you would have suggestions.
 
I read an article in a regional farm paper that China has a hog barn that is six stories tall and all of the exhaust air is directed to a large room where it is cleaned by some sophisticated electrostatic air system. I'm condeming it or condoning it, just passing info. along.
 
In North Central Mo. Mercer Co. back when Smith-Field was PSF was sued multiable times for the smell. Some were people that sold PSF land to build on.
 
If you think cities do not have to meet specs, you have not been paying attention.

The consent decree is a legal agreement between the city, state and federal government to fix problems with Lexington's (KY) storm water and sanitary sewer systems by 2026. Over the years, Lexington had failed to properly maintain both the sanitary and storm sewer systems.
Cost will be $600 million.
 
The largest city in our state cannot hand .20"in 24 hours of moisture without flushing into the river happens 50 times per year-their fix is storage, nest large city to north does same, next 3 cities south same thing without storage-been going on for 100 years-millions of gallons won't be fixed by 2026, but let a farmer have some smell or a little run off from a mother nature storm and they get excited.
 
So the city folk that have now inherited the farm, grew up on the farm and were "farm folks" before they moved to the city and became money loving "city folks"? If your daddy left you some valuable property in the city, what would you do to protect your city neighbors?...Or would you just sell it to the highest bidder?
 

What are you talking about?

The point of my post is the influx of people that move out here because they like the "country life" with no thought about these things, and then want to change it, not that the "farm kids" are selling. It's their land and they can do what they want. If it was me and I had no interest in carrying on the family farm I'd do the same thing.

If I had a point in that, it would be that farming is dying off with the passing of the "old guard".

-Scott
 
JD, I usually respect your opinions, but you are on both sides of this one. Farming is a business, pure and simple. The little family farm that we love to think of as the "model" is increasingly extinct. You sure don't run an 80 acre operation anymore. The big big farms are multi-million dollar operations, they want to play by the big boy rules when it suits their needs for loans, and the Mom and Pop farm rules when it gets them the sympathy vote. There is a lot of talk on this site about farmers feeding our population, but the soybeans and pork, and cotton, and rice we grow for export is not feeding Americans it is a business, pure and simple. Just like Boeing jets built for export.

If a factory, or mine was pouring toxic waste into the streams flowing into the Des Moines River. We would all be yelling for the EPA to fix it. So what is the difference if the polluter is a soybean, corn or pork factory?
 
No one will ever rid the farm of all odors no matter how hard they try. Packing plants even put out odors. We want to eat so we smell the farms that raise our food. Hard to have it both ways. I have ate a meal with hog, cattle,chicken manure under my finger nails and still living at 78. Just a smell of good money.
 
I think there are many groups that do not even understand what they are accomplishing. What will happen is agriculture will be impossible to fit into their agenda, and will leave the country. Essentially they will ban agriculture in this country, but even they don?t understand that is what they are doing.

The rapid acceleration of mega farms is because of the regulation and restrictions and govt ?help? that these groups are demanding.

I would venture many of the responses I have gotten are from people who don?t see themselves in the mirror, and I?m not gonna bother trying to fight that darkness.

It is there, none the less.

When I was a kid every third farmer had 40 hogs, and every third stop of the bus it stank like crazy. But no one noticed because it was so common, everywhere.

Now a days I can see 5 hog barn setups of 5000 hogs each from my yard. It smells 3 days a year; when my one neighbor summer applies hog manure to another neighbors alfalfa fields, can?t incorporate.

Only way to clean up the air was to get rid of the little hog farms and make rules that only a super large operation can afford to follow.

Now that is mostly accomplished, so now it is time to go after the big outfits, there are so few easy to shut them down and let hogs be imported.

New tractors have $15-20,000 pollution control equipment on them that requires more fuel use to cycle the system. How many of you can run a 40 acre 40 hog farm with that overhead?

What markets are left, who buys the farm stuff? Who gives a darn, just buy groceries from the store anyhow, can drive there and back without those darn farmers on the road.

It?s a better world without them.

Paul
 
The family farm is dying off because the kids generally do not want to take over it, and the big money is willing to pay for the land.
 
I will qualify my statement.

Conventional farming is a LOT of work, kids just not willing to do it anymore.

So, yes it is a business now, and should not be allowed emissions in excess of permit levels. Farms get away with it because the are not regulated as point source emissions, like smokestacks. The are considered non point source emissions, which is much more lax. A factory has to list every exhaust port and drainage pipe out, and these are regulated. This is not practical on farms, but it could be if they considered tile and waterway outlets as a point source.
 
Here?s a novel solution for this smell/ manure problem. Let?s have all the hog farmers go back to only keeping 20 or so sows, and finishing 300 or so fat pigs a year. Dairy farmers will only keep 30-40 milk cows. And farms will not exceed 200 acres. Will spread the smell over a wider area, and have less concentration of manure per square mile. This will also increase the number of farmers, and decrease unemployment. Only down side, your food will cost dramatically more. Sounds like farming in the 50?s. Didn?t stink so bad
 
The bottom line is that large scale operations can be run with reduced emission, I would bet per capita the old way emitted way more, just less people to produce for.

I put controls on industrial facilities, I know how to make a confinement not smell, just gotta do it.
 
Back when PSF owned it, the stench was TERRIBLE, and land prices were CHEAP - mainly because everyone wanted out of the area, and nobody wanted in. It's not as bad now - but there are fewer hog farms, and the ones here now are more regulated. Lawsuits helped clean things up. The closest hog operation to us is about 8 miles "as the crow flies". We smell it occasionally, but it's not TOO bad. I wouldn't have a hog on the place - and don't eat pork - so don't much care about the price.
 
If you think a 20 sow confinement building doesn't stink and won't bother your neighbors you haven't been around one.
 
And they haven't spent a dime on actual construction.


Kansas City is looking at the same thing - I believe their price tag is over a billion dollars. They haven't spent a dime beyond "regular" maintenance of the existing system either. If a farm tried the same delay tactics they'd probably put someone in jail.
 
for all the know it alls you need to read the nc s#^t polices rules if Smithfield is not breaking any nc rules they are working hard, I have kin that are dairying and what they go through compared to my corner of the woods is almost crazy. Have friends that have worked for years at the hog farms and if you can make it farming in nc you can get by anywhere except maybe the Chesapeake bay area.
 
Hayhayhay: In SC case they had terrible manure handling systems in place when the hog confinement system exploded in the 1980s. This needed regulated. I think they have really worked on doing that better. Now we are going to Smell. That really gets arbitrary real fast as smell is something you can not measure very well.

As for farm size. Father and several of his kids farm together. Guess what. That is a multi million dollar business. 650 fat cattle are a million dollars in todays market.

As for your export comment. On Soybeans your correct. Roughly 60 are exported. On corn your wrong, only 17% is exported as grain. We are an importer of rice. We export the majority of the cotton grown because there is almost none turned into cloth/cloths in this country any more. The textile industry is 95% gone over seas. On pork only about 25% of the total production is exported. Only 13% of the total US beef production was exported.

So if it is like Traditional farmers says that the US farmer does not feed anyone, I guess we must throw a bunch of food away here each year.
 
My understanding is when liquid manure is spread it can be injected into the ground and you then retain 40% of the nitrogen that otherwise goes into the air. Is my understanding right? Are there machines that will do this?
 
Actually my buddy used to run a 30 sow barn, and I finished most of the pigs his barn produced. So yes I do have a pretty good idea of how small scale pig barns smell. And there is a world of difference between the level of stink coming from straw bedded pig barns than liquid manure barns. Years ago the farm next to ours had 160 sow farrow to finish operation, all liquid. I could smell their pig barn while I did chores in my dairy barn. No question large scale hog farms stink!!
 
Your understanding is correct that there are indeed manure injection applicators. Though there is still a lot of hog smell blowing out of the ventilation system of the barns themselves. I know there is some kind of formula that can be applied to the number of pigs on a farrow to finish operation and the amount of manure produced, compared to a small town with sewage production of the human population. The human sewage is generally piped along ways away from the populated centres , and given some form of treatment and combine with large quantities of water. This helps to lessen the smell. So theoretically if you had a town of 1,000 souls living next door to you, and all the sewage that was created was stored untreated in a big tank on the edge of town for one year. Then agitated then applied to a few surrounding fields, towns would stink too. That is basically what happens with a hog farm.
 
BigPapa has it right about NC. Just yesterday NC was reported to be either the fifth or seventh fastest growing state in the US depending upon the source. Newcomers want to be in the country. They do not check with builders or land records to see what or who may be their new neighbors. Then they complain and ultimately bring with them what they left behind.
 
Here in MI, MDARD (Michigan Department of Agriculture/Rural Development) has to do an impact study and open meeting of sort for an area where a new large scale confinement or dairy operation is being planned. Unfortunately, they always side with the farmer in cases where it should have never happened. There is a town north of me, been there for 150 years, so it's not new. A proposed foreign owned mega dairy bought some land half a mile west of town. Obviously, they weren't as huge as they are now, and they keep adding on, but they've always been big. Keep in mind prevailing westerly winds. No one wanted them around, as well stated by every resident in the town it seemed, but they got the go-ahead anyway. On the rare day the wind doesn't blow from the west, it doesn't smell too bad. On the 95% of days it does blow from the west, the whole town from one side to the other smells like shirt. The general practice of the large dairies around here is the more you can make it stink, the sooner you can buy the family homestead land away from the little old lady that's lived there her entire life, after she can't deal with the trucks, cows mooing, smell and wrecked roads that came along in the last 15-20 years from Europe.

Flame me up folks, ask DavPal how he enjoys it.

Ross
(A fellow farmer)
 
Yes, but if Joe and a couple of his kids own and operate 3 car dealerships we call it a "business" even if it's gross sales is the same as the mega-family farm.

My point is that lots of people on this forum state that without us farmers you-all would starve. Yep. But we both know that farmers are doing it for the money, because when and if the money stops the farm is sold. And even though there are less and less farmers, the overall acreage being farmed has probably not shrunk very much. At least I don't see a lot of idle crop land. Maybe you know the statistics. Fewer operators, same amount of land. (except for that being swallowed up by urban areas). One of my pet peeves.


My point is that farms are businesses, operated for profit, not for some altruistic desire to feed fellow Americans. Therefore the oft used argument that farmers deserve some special treatment due to their generosity falls on deaf ears with me. I did not say that all corn or pork is exported, but a lot of it is, especially the pork for Smithfield. And The USA is the worlds 3rd largest rice exporter in the world, or 8.8% of all the worlds rice exports. And a cotton or tobacco farmer is still a farmer, even if you can't eat his product.

I just think the whole argument that since we are farmers we don't need rules, we know what to do, and we can inconvenience anybody we want to because we were here first, is unlikely to get very far, even with this administration.
 
NOPE! Even back when I used to think pork was ok to eat, I never could stand the taste of bacon or ham....especially ham - it was just plain slimy and disgusting!
 
I am getting mixed signals from you Bruce. Are you saying we should have smaller hog farms or that hog farms should be bedded with straw?
 
The way we used to raised hogs out in pastures and running in woods you hardly knew they were there plus the meat was a WHOLE lot better.Nothing like some Acorn fatten pork.
 
This is along the lines of a joke for citidiots around there, they build a house in a swamp or marsh, then turn around and complain about mosquitoes.

I myself see anything that heads us back in the direction of mixed farming as a great thing. Same idea as Bruce, I grew up with true mixed operation, around 30 head of Herfords, 7 or 8 Holstiens selling the cream, maybe 60 hogs a year finished on a whole milk slurry and layer and meat chickens. Stable has been empty for twenty years when I gave up on cow/calf just before BSE(madcow) hit. You would almost think that BSE was engineered because it created huge profits for the supply chain.

Some nieghbours used to fill the cattle pens with hogs when the cattle went to grass, but now all you see is the red ink even thinking about raising hogs.

I can't see many beef herds being here within a few years, most guys still at it are in their later years and no one can compete with the BTO's for land.

I could go on in several directions, the basics are mixed farming provides better stewardship of land, higher food safety and self-employment to help economy.
 

We sell tractor parts! We have the parts you need to repair your tractor - the right parts. Our low prices and years of research make us your best choice when you need parts. Shop Online Today.

Back
Top