From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   When Your Neighbor Is a Farm With 2,500 Hogs   
   By Shannon Najmabadi, July 7, 2023, WSJ   
      
   Hogs outnumber residents by about 7 to 1 in Iowa, the top pork producer in the   
   nation. Hog farms and pork processors directly employed 36,070 workers in the   
   state in 2021, according to the National Pork Producers Council.    
      
   The number of hog farms in Iowa fell by nearly 90% between the 1980s and 2017,   
   according to federal data. The number of animals on each farm has risen   
   significantly during the same time.   
      
   The average hog farm in Iowa had 4,000 animals in 2017, compared with 300 in   
   1982.   
      
   A glut of pork has recently caused steep losses in the hog industry, with some   
   farmers losing $30 or more on each hog they produce.   
      
   A typical hog farm around the Lappes is capable of producing enough feces and   
   urine to fill one-and-a-half Olympic-size swimming pools a year. The   
   animals’ manure breaks down in pits, emitting ammonia, methane and other   
   noxious gases. It is then pumped    
   up to be used as fertilizer.   
      
   The manure can contain pathogens and antibiotics given to prevent illness from   
   spreading through densely populated pens, according to the U.S. Environmental   
   Protection Agency and multiple studies. Critics of the operations and   
   environmental advocates say    
   the manure can run off fields and foul waterways.   
      
   Pork industry representatives said the manure is an alternative to commercial   
   fertilizer, and that such fears discount regulations the barns must abide by.   
      
   Landowners have sued to stop livestock confinements from operating near their   
   homes. City or county officials have sought to add restrictions but are often   
   unsuccessful.    
      
   A March 2023 court ruling in Missouri upheld a state law that bans local   
   governments from regulating the facilities. A 2022 Iowa Supreme Court ruling   
   made it far tougher for neighbors to sue hog farms as nuisances.    
      
   All states had a right-to-farm law that gives farmers some form of immunity as   
   of 2022, according to the National Agricultural Law Center. Before that year,   
   Iowa had been an outlier in ruling that immunity could be unconstitutional   
   under certain    
   conditions, the court said.   
      
   Lawmakers in Nebraska and other states have considered bills to shield   
   agricultural operations from nuisance lawsuits. A similar law passed in North   
   Carolina in 2018 after a jury awarded 10 hog-farm neighbors $50 million in   
   punitive damages. The amount    
   was later reduced because of a state law limiting punitive damages.   
      
   “We’re trying to be proactive,” said Nebraska Sen. Beau Ballard, a   
   Republican who represents parts of the city of Lincoln and Lancaster County.   
   The lawsuits-shielding bill he proposed didn’t pass this session but he   
   thinks the state can find a    
   balanced approach that will be approved.    
      
   “The opponents of the bill say, Hey, we don’t want PETA or other   
   environmental groups to come in and file suit against small farmers,” he   
   said. “But at the same time we want to protect neighbors that didn’t   
   necessarily sign up to live by a    
   large hog operation when they bought their property.”   
      
   Of seven nuisance cases tried in Iowa between 2008 and 2019, all but one found   
   there was not a nuisance, said Eldon McAfee, a lawyer who has represented the   
   Iowa Pork Producers Association and individual hog producers. In some, other   
   neighbors testified    
   they were unbothered by the operations and their smell.   
      
   “Even though people were saying how terrible it was other people said it   
   wasn’t,” McAfee said. “The juries heard the evidence.”   
      
   Hog barns must comply with regulations and have “good management   
   practices” to be protected from nuisance lawsuits, he said.   
      
   Jean Lappe said she helped raise up to 240 hogs at a time with her sisters   
   while they were growing up in the Morning Sun area. Sows and piglets stayed in   
   small huts with straw bedding. They’d eat fermented oats or table scraps the   
   family threw out to    
   them.    
      
   She and her husband now keep their windows closed to block the odor and flies   
   from confinements located within 2½ miles of them. The couple run air   
   purifiers and don’t hang laundry outside to dry.   
      
   “I know what hogs smell like,” Jean Lappe said. “This is something   
   totally different.”    
      
   Gordon Garrison, 81, a landowner whose lawsuit prompted the 2022 Iowa ruling,   
   kept notes of odors he smelled and which direction the wind was blowing after   
   a confinement began operating near his farm in northwest Iowa around 2015.    
      
   “Hog stink in yard @ 8:00 a.m S wind,” Garrison wrote on Dec. 13, 2018,   
   the 110th day on which he’d noticed the odor.    
      
   The Iowa Supreme Court ruled against Garrison, writing in its opinion that   
   protecting livestock production is “a legitimate state interest, and   
   granting partial immunity from nuisance suits is a proper means to that   
   end.” The Lappes were among    
   numerous families and a town that sued the operators of large hog barns in the   
   Morning Sun area. They lost their case.   
      
   Adam, whose family houses thousands of hogs owned by meatpacking giant JBS   
   Foods, stood outside one of the barns one afternoon as hogs shrieked and   
   squealed behind him.    
      
   The hogs inside the barns stand and lie on concrete slats, their excrement   
   draining into 1.2 million-gallon manure pits beneath them, he said. A control   
   panel tracks the humidity and temperature in the pens—89.5 degrees   
   Fahrenheit on a recent visit—   
   and has pipes and tubes that send antibiotics, electrolytes and water down to   
   about 2,500 hogs in each barn.    
      
   Adam’s family decided to start operating the facility for a stable supply of   
   manure to spread on row crops they raise. Adam said it also offers an economic   
   boost to an industry where young farmers can struggle to raise the capital   
   costs to break in,    
   and that the general public doesn’t understand how much labor and paperwork   
   is involved.   
      
   It is “all things that you have to do to continue to survive,” he said.   
   “And to not only survive—thrive.”   
      
   https://www.wsj.com/articles/when-your-neighbor-is-a-farm-with-2   
   500-hogs-2f9e8dc2   
      
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    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)