Why?

Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations are designed to make money for their controlling integrators and industry giants while secretly leaving the family farmer owing enormous debt along with the liability and responsible management of millions of gallons of animal waste.  The Family Farmers were often sold on the idea by the integrator that they would be helping FEED THE WORLD, but were NEVER told of the environmental nightmare they would be helplessly left with.  These animals are raised for money, not food.  When the integrator only showed interest in feed conversion/money with little to no consideration for the welfare of the animals, the environment or their contract family farmer, I completely lost interest.

My father and his brother signed the CAFO contract in 1995. They had worked in construction for many years together and decided they wanted to spend their retirement on the family farmland where they were reared. Soon after the realization that the semi-automated operation was less like a hobby and more of a full time job , I was called home to help.

I have always been an animal lover. During the first few weeks of operation, and never being around pigs before, I was thrilled with the opportunity to be surrounded by THOUSANDS. When you walk into a barn full of young pigs, they all go silent for a few seconds. Then one by one the little grunts add up (750) to a chorus of some of the cutest sounds you could ever hear. Each one had an individual personality. They were skittish at first, but quickly warmed up to my presence sensing I wasn’t a threat. They were ALL friendly, loving beings that simply existed. I named several during that first ‘turn.’ But, one gorgeous creature stole my heart. Her name was Disko. There’s a photo somewhere around here of her reaching up to give me a kiss. I used to let her follow me from barn to barn (just like a dog), which later I discovered was against protocol. When market time approached, I begged to keep her. The thought of her being slaughtered and butchered was devastating. I put a lot of love and care into those animals. The integrator does not. They only see dollar signs from weight gain and feed conversion. I did my best to find solutions to rescue my new friend. But, before I could even say goodbye, she was gone. They were all gone and it broke my heart. They were food. They weren’t considered to be living creatures that felt emotion and pain. They just weren’t considered. I didn’t eat pork for a year.

At our farm, young ‘feeder’ pigs (7,500-8,000 head) are delivered at about 40 lbs. (two and a half times per year). They reach market weight of 300 lbs. within 20 weeks (140 days). The strong feed causes some animals to develop ulcers. You can identify these animals because they lose their pinkish color and turn white. This is often referred to as a ‘bleach-out’. With an average of 3-5% mortality, the handful that die (around 400 per turn), to the integrator, are worth the loss compared to the money they will make from the speedily grown survivors. The farmer is left with those 400 hog carcasses (1,000 annually) to dispose of. Our farm uses a forced air composting system (paid for by farmer) where the carcasses are stacked in bins filled with wood chips (paid for by farmer) with the end product being mulch. The mulch (bones included) is applied to areas of the property that are out of reach from the waste-water irrigation system. The wastewater storage pond is called a

Lagoon:

1. a stretch of salt water separated from the sea by a low sandbank or coral reef.

2. an artificial pool for the treatment of effluent or to accommodate surface water that overflows drains during heavy rain.

The CONCRETE FLOORing systems of the hog barns have small openings so that manure can be stepped on and pushed through to a holding pool filled with several inches of wastewater. Once a week, the barns are drained of all wastewater and solids into an outdoor open holding pond called a Lagoon. The pits beneath the hogs are then refilled with wastewater from the same lagoon to hold another 7 days of urine and feces before being ‘flushed’ again.

Draining thousands of gallons of gravity-fed wastewater from a barn that splashes into an open pool of the same, is where most CAFO odor comes from. These open ponds are susceptible to filling up quickly or overflowing due to major rain events from storms or hurricanes. Wastewater irrigation is another cause of odor, but the smell isn’t the main cause of concern. There is a lot of attention now on the long term effects of swine effluent wastewater land application. It is sprayed through the air using high powered irrigation systems. One of the biggest concerns with this method is Drift. Mist from the wastewater can sometimes travel through the air onto neighboring properties. Imagine a giant sneezing on you or your property, but with urine and feces. Most farmers plant trees to border their spray fields intended to reduce the amount of drift, but some could still potentially leave the property which puts the irrigation operator and the farm in violation. These open pit Lagoons are considered to be the most ‘cost effective’ option. There are more than 3,000 of these lagoons in operation in the state of North Carolina.

In 2008, the Butler brothers took advantage of grant opportunities and covered their two lagoons in an effort to lessen their environmental impact. The methane captured under the covers was flared off, converting the methane to a less harmful byproduct and greatly reducing their unintentional contribution to global warming. A few years later, an opportunity to generate electricity with methane was presented and pursued. The initial set-up was flawed and didn’t perform well. After many years of trial and error, the system is fully functional and is connected to the state’s only on-farm Microgrid.

All of the efforts to lessen our CAFOs environmental impact has had very little, if any, support from the integrator or the industry. Instead of our farm being recognized and praised for attempting to be better environmental stewards, we are called traitors to the industry. There are several people in the Swine Industry that cringe at the mention of my father’s name. Tom Butler will forever be a hero in the eyes of many.

You can read more about my father in the book WASTELANDS: The True Story Of Farm Country On Trial.