Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation

CAFOs are environmental disasters that hide behind the face of what is commonly referred to as The Family Farm. Industry giants are the ones that advertise ‘Save Our Family Farms.’  We’ve seen the man behind the curtain. It’s always just been lipstick on a pig.

Our Goal

With help from The Transfarmation Project, we are converting a small, unused building on my father’s CAFO property into a fruiting chamber for growing oyster mushrooms.  If we furnish a quality product to farmers markets and restaurants that come into demand, we plan to depopulate 1 (750 head) out of the 10 swine barns and move the mushroom operation into that larger space. Occupying that designated hog space will annually keep 1,875 animals off the market. It will allow us the opportunity to expand and grow a variety of mushrooms to accommodate demand. If this project is well received and supported, we will continue to depopulate more buildings and renovate. Barn to Greenhouse conversion, Micro Greens and Storage are just a few ideas being discussed.

Currently, the 10 barns provide an estimated 19,000 hogs (5,700,000 lbs of pork) to market each year. 19,000 per YEAR seems like a lot, until you realize these ‘processing plants’ slaughter more than 20,000 animals per DAY.  There is NO food shortage. These animals are raised for profit, not food. My goal is to transition our FAMILY FARM from a MEAT farm to a USDA Certified Organic PLANT based operation, which is more sustainable and a healthier option for consumers and the environment.

Once the hogs are removed, our land can begin to heal.

When the barns are completely depopulated, our land will slowly begin to recover from years of ‘free fertilizer’ and toxic herbicides that are currently being applied to the Bermuda hay.  Coastal Bermuda is a plant that can handle most nitrogen rich waste as long as it isn’t over applied. This liquid fertilizer is swine manure and urine that has undergone an aerobic or anaerobic process. You’ll often hear folks say, “Smells like money to me.” The odor isn’t the only thing that lingers. Heavy metals are left behind in the soil. Zinc and Copper are commonly added to feed to reduce the use of antibiotics, due to growing global antibiotic resistance. We would have to wait 3 years before planting anything certifiable organic in those fields.

*Despite the antibacterial and anti-inflammatory activities of zinc and copper salts, their wide use has raised many concerns related to environmental pollution, especially soil and groundwater contamination [6]. Mainly because the bioavailability and digestibility of Zn and Cu sources are limited, the metals are thus partially digested by animals, and the excess is eliminated by excretion in feces and found in the manure [26]. Several studies indicated that Zn and Cu are widely found in pig manure [17,27,28,29,30], cattle [30], and poultry livestock manure [27,28] as a result of their high doses in swine diets (Table 2).

*https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7956449/?report=classic#