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Megafarms provide jobs and cheap food, but the cost may be too high
By Ben Sutherly
CLARION, Iowa | Along U.S. 69 amid the gently rolling landscape of corn, soybeans and occasional farmsteads of north central Iowa, Austin "Jack" DeCoster's hog and hen houses hem the horizon by the dozens.
They line up like barracks: seven per hog farm, up to 18 per egg complex. The larger egg complexes each have more than 13 acres under roof.
Wooed by Wright County officials in the 1980s, the Maine native brought jobs and a profit strategy built on volume to the Iowa prairie.
And he brought something else: trouble.
DeCoster's farms have had so many environmental problems the Iowa attorney general in 2000 labeled him a "habitual violator" of the state's laws.
"I don’t think the community really comprehended the size of the tiger when they grabbed the tail," said Ron Swanson, who farms land across the highway from DeCoster's 2.5-million-bushel feed mill.
From Oklahoma’s red clay riverbanks to North Carolina's piedmont to Pennsylvania’s Amish country, Americans are weighing the benefits of modern livestock farming against the costs to the environment and rural way of life.
Megafarms are in 46 states, providing jobs to rural impoverished communities and an efficient source of cheap food to the supermarkets and fast-food restaurants that keep America fed. But the farms also are forcing states — and, in a growing number of cases, small communities — to overhaul megafarm regulations to better protect the air, water and fast-disappearing rural tradition of generations of farm families living off the land.
The tug-of-war between those who want more regulation and those who don't has erupted along country roads, in voting booths, among state lawmakers and in the court system.
In Iowa, debate about megafarms has become so polarized a state Department of Health official said, "It's almost like talking about abortion."
In Kentucky, the nation’s largest environmental group sued the nation’s largest poultry producer.
And in Arkansas, farmers in the "food basket for the world" predict ruin because of an Oklahoma law designed to protect the water quality in six scenic rivers.
"There will come a day when our industry in this area will be destroyed by all the regulations," Arkansas chicken farmer Bob Tharp said.
Iowa
Jensen builds large hen houses. Like a lot of people in north-central Iowa, he depends on the farm economy for a living. And like a lot of people here, he thinks giant farms run counter to the state's populist roots and agrarian interests.
"They're getting too many of ’em," he said. "Enough's enough."
Many Iowans have had enough of Jack DeCoster.
State records show manure from DeCoster's farms polluted Iowa's water at least 10 times between 1993 and 2000. A 1997 manure spill into a well that drains into Wright County's groundwater led to a $10,000 fine under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act — the first time the federal government fined a farm for breaking that law.
DeCoster was ordered in 2000 to pay $150,000 to the state for environmental violations, and he was prohibited from putting up more animal farms until 2005.
The "habitual violator" label also subjects the farm to more severe penalties for future infractions.
DeCoster, the nation's fifth largest egg producer, has 7.5 million chickens in Iowa and another 5.5 million in Maine. He expanded into hogs after coming to Iowa, and now has 27,000 hogs in and around Wright County.
"We've had some problems," DeCoster's 39-year-old son Peter said. "Hog manure's a liquid manure, a little bit different to handle than dry chicken waste."
Although DeCoster's environmental record in Iowa is unique, the enormity of his egg and hog operations is not. The state leads the nation with $3.1 billion in hog sales; two years ago, Iowa also dethroned Ohio as the top egg-producing state.
Wright County's 358,616 hogs outnumber residents 25 to 1.
The Iowa Department of Natural Resources estimates that 12.9 million hogs are concentrated on 3,500 farms — an average of 3,700 hogs per farm.
The concentration of so much livestock has put Iowa front and center in the debate about America's giant animal farms. In fact, state and local government efforts to police the farms may signal what's to come in Ohio.
But many of those efforts have been controversial. In February, Iowa State University and University of Iowa faculty drafted a report recommending that standards be developed on odor, hydrogen sulfide and ammonia emissions from Iowa's large livestock farms.
"The phones basically rang off the hook for two months," said Steven Hoff, one of the 27 co-authors of the report. "Some felt that maybe the scientific evidence wasn’t there in the first place to even make a recommendation on ambient air-quality standards."
Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, who commissioned the report, signed legislation in April giving the Department of Natural Resources authority to develop air-quality standards for large farms. The legislation also gives the state the final say on whether farms can expand, a blow to local officials who wanted more control of farms in their communities.
"It's probably the worst public policy legislation I've seen come out of Iowa in 10 years," said Ron Osterholm, Cerro Gordo County Health Department director. "Really, they’ve left a window of opportunity for uncontrolled growth."
Osterholm spearheaded a one-year moratorium on farm expansion in Cerro Gordo County until air-quality tests are completed. Six other Iowa counties put the same hold on the growth of livestock farms.
Worth County, just north of Cerro Gordo County, also passed a public health ordinance requiring megafarms to test workers for respiratory problems, and to monitor surface water beginning in 2012.
But the moratoriums and the Worth County health ordinance are raising questions about whether counties are infringing on the state's authority to regulate megafarms.
Six hog farmers are challenging the Worth County ordinance in court, saying the county has no legal authority to regulate agriculture. Doug Tempus, who raises 2,800 hogs a year on a farm near Northwood, fears the ordinance will burden him and other smaller farmers with unnecessary costs, such as installing monitoring equipment and testing workers for respiratory illnesses.
"I live 500 feet away from my buildings," Tempus said. "I have an 11-year-old girl and an 8-year-old boy. I'm not going to hurt their health by doing something bad."
David Vestal, general counsel for the Iowa State Association of Counties, said he knows of at least three other lawsuits challenging recently passed local laws that regulate megafarms.
The actions by county health officials reflect a growing concern about the quality of Iowa's water.
E. coli outbreaks closed half the state's beaches during the summer of 2001. And nitrate levels in the Raccoon River this spring reached a record 18 milligrams per liter, nearly double the maximum level allowed in drinking water.
Fertilizer runoff from corn and soybean fields upstream of Des Moines — not livestock farms — are the biggest source of nitrates in the water, said L.D. McMullen, general manager of the Des Moines Water Works.
But livestock operations are having the same problems of discharging waste into water that municipalities had a generation ago, McMullen said.
"A lot of it depends upon the operator," he said. "We need to focus on those people that aren't doing the job right."
Des Moines, a city of 200,000, draws its drinking water from the Raccoon and Des Moines rivers, which are among the top five contributors of nutrients to the Gulf of Mexico's "dead zone," according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Both rivers feed the Mississippi.
After exceeding the maximum nitrate level for drinking water in 1989 and 1990, the city spent $3.7 million for a new filtration system.
Peter DeCoster said his family has made a considerable investment to avoid future pollution problems.
At a hog complex outside Clarion, down the highway from the company's headquarters, DeCoster pointed out safety features of a 15-foot-deep lagoon capable of holding 27 million gallons of manure.
"What you cannot see is . . . what is called a slurry wall," he said. "That is an impermeable wall underground so that, if anything did happen to the lagoon, there's no way that (manure) could spread."
He said the operation "easily spends" $250,000 a year for farm upkeep.
The company launched its good neighbor campaign in July, with farm employees serving breakfast and offering the community its first look inside two DeCoster egg houses.
But two months later, the company's image took another hit when DeCoster Farms and a recruiting company agreed to pay $1.53 million to 11 Mexican women who said they were raped or sexually harassed by DeCoster supervisors in Iowa.
The case added to the resentment many already felt toward DeCoster.
"If I sold a piece of property to Jack DeCoster, I don't think I'd dare come into town," said semi-retired farmer Butch DeVries, 58, of Thornton.
Still, others here feel rural Iowa can't afford to turn its back on DeCoster.
"Mr. DeCoster pays approximately $750,000 a year in property taxes," said Larry Olson, a Wright County supervisor. "That's not really chicken feed."
Olson said the county did not object this fall to a Sparboe Co. plan to build an egg farm with 2.5 million chickens.
"When somebody comes in and wants to put a $45 million to $50 million industry in your county and you're hurting bad for tax base, it's pretty hard to turn something like that away," he said. "It's another 70 jobs."
Oklahoma
"I remember drinking this as a kid when the water was clear," said the 57-year-old Peyton, who runs a rustic riverside resort near Tahlequah. "It’s still a beautiful river, but the water has gone bad."
The water quality in the Illinois and five other scenic rivers has families along the Oklahoma-Arkansas border squaring off over an issue near and dear to farmers: manure.
More than 3,000 poultry houses, each holding 20,000 to 25,000 chickens apiece, litter the Arkansas countryside. The birds — many of them owned by Tyson Foods Inc. — produce hundreds of thousands of tons of manure that is spread on nearby fields or sold to farmers for fertilizer.
It's a key reason why Arkansas farmers like Bob Tharp call this region the food basket for the world.
But it's also a key reason why the Illinois River is now green. Manure contains phosphorus, which promotes algae blooms that deplete oxygen in the water and threaten fish and other aquatic life.
Just as Arkansas farmers depend on manure for their livelihoods, the Oklahoma tourism industry and people like Peyton need clean water for their businesses.
The Illinois River starts in the foothills of the Boston Mountains near Hogeye, Ark., and winds 145 miles across the state line to Webber Falls, Okla. The river helps draw an estimated 400,000 visitors to the area each year, and tourism and recreation in Cherokee County generate about $11 million annually.
"Oklahoma and Arkansas got to work out some deal to get rid of that green color," Peyton said.
In July, Oklahoma imposed a regulation that limits the phosphorus levels for the Illinois and five other scenic rivers. Because four of the rivers start in Arkansas, Oklahoma officials expect them to meet the standard at the state line. The U.S. EPA is currently reviewing the standard.
If approved, the standard would force Arkansas chicken house operators to limit the poultry litter they spread by 20 to 50 percent, they say, and strip them of the income they earn by selling excess manure to other farmers.
For people along this border, the phosphorus standard stirs the same passion as football.
"You see this?" asked Ron Ramsey, as he reached down to the floor of his chicken house, grabbed a fist full of manure and let it sift through his fingers. "This has made this whole area. Without the litter to use on the fields, hay and cattle farmers couldn’t do what they do, and companies like Tyson and Wal-Mart wouldn’t be around here."
As a poultry grower for Tyson in Siloam Springs since 1977, Ramsey, 57, has watched northwestern Arkansas explode in growth. There are no skyscrapers here or even a city with more than 60,000 residents, but two of the nation’s corporate giants call this area home.
Tyson, the world’s largest poultry producer, is headquartered in Springdale; Wal-Mart, which led all U.S. companies in revenue last year, is based in Bentonville. But for those cities and others like Fayetteville, Rogers and Siloam Springs, the thousands of poultry, cattle and hay farmers remain the pulse of the economy and community.
Those farmers credit the abundance of chicken litter for softening up soil once considered too rocky and hard to grow hay or provide grazing grass for cattle.
Ramsey spreads litter from his 88,000 Cornish hens on the 285 acres he owns or leases. He also earns about $2,000 a year selling truckloads of litter to other farmers.
Farmers here say it's income they can't afford to lose.
"My farm is not in a position where I can give up $1,000 a year," said Tharp, who has two chicken houses in Decatur, Ark., about 12 miles from the Oklahoma border.
Oklahoma poultry farmers also said the standard is unfair.
"What about the cattle farmers, the sewer plants, septic tanks, the golf courses and everyone who uses fertilizer to keep their lawn green?" said Larry Emerson, whose Oklahoma turkey farm is just a few miles from the Illinois River.
Unlike Oklahoma, where large poultry operations need a permit and must file a waste management plan, Arkansas doesn't restrict or monitor the amount of manure farmers spread on their fields.
Oklahoma regulators said restrictions are necessary in both states because the land is already saturated with poultry manure. But it is particularly critical in Arkansas, they said, because its poultry houses generate four times the phosphorus as those on the Oklahoma side.
Together, thousands of Oklahoma and Arkansas poultry operations generate phosphorus equal to what is produced by 10.7 million people, according to Derek Smithee, water quality chief for the Oklahoma Water Resources Board.
"The phosphorus standard wasn’t created to hurt poultry farmers," said Smithee, who proposed it to the water resources board. "It’s there to protect the scenic status of our rivers."
Oklahoma and Arkansas officials are no longer actively negotiating the standard, and both sides have threatened legal action.
Arkansas offered to require those operating in the scenic river watersheds to face fines if they don't file comprehensive waste management plans. The state has also said it would compile an inventory of where farms are located in relation to the rivers and other water sources.
But that won’t solve the problem of having too much chicken litter and phosphorus near the scenic rivers, according to Oklahoma officials.
"We can regulate the (poultry) growers all we want, but in the end you are left with a big pile of chicken litter," said J.D. Strong, spokesman for Oklahoma’s secretary of the environment. "You need to do something with the litter besides applying to the land in those areas."
Oklahoma officials also want Arkansas’ giant poultry companies — including Tyson, Simmons Inc. and George’s Inc. — to assume responsibility for the excess litter and pay for its disposal or removal.
That got Tyson's attention.
"They want us to retain ownership of the manure, but the growers don’t want that because it is an asset for them," said Tyson spokesman Ed Nicholson. "Most growers don’t want us to have more control of their operations. They want to retain ownership."
The phosphorus standard has the support of at least one farmer.
Ed Fite is a small cattle farmer, a state ranger and administrator of the Oklahoma Scenic Rivers Commission. Most days he can be found along Route 10, which winds through the hills along the Illinois River.
If the river has a true guardian, it is Fite. For years, he pleaded with environmental groups to pass some limit on phosphorus discharges. He is not popular with other farmers. But he has their respect and not just because he weighs 228 pounds and carries a shotgun in the back of his pickup.
Fite thinks the border war will end only when environmentalists and farmers come together.
"We have done a terrible job of reaching out to the farmers," he said. "You can’t just take away their litter, and at the same time you can’t have them write up a manure management plan and not follow up.
"If we don’t figure this out together, Arkansas, Oklahoma and this river all lose."
Kentucky
It is here where his ancestors are buried. It is here where he built a new farmhouse. And it is here where he looks out each day at six long silver-gray chicken houses, each holding more than 20,000 birds.
Bates is a thick man with hands resembling a catcher’s mitt and a voice that runs as deep as his ties to his 213 acres. The Sacramento, Ky., coal miner grew up on a farm, earned a college degree and resents the argument that a few country hicks are trying to stand in the way of agricultural progress.
"People here live in fear that someone is going to build two or more of those things next to them," he said. "These things are not farms."
More than 600 broiler chicken houses slice through the rolling green hills of a rural four-county area in western Kentucky. But they've divided much more than the countryside.
Families that held Sunday evening dinners sacred now eat alone. Neighbors who vacationed together turn their grocery carts in the other direction at the supermarket. Those who shared tobacco crops and borrowed each other's tractors have "no trespassing" signs along their property lines.
The national Sierra Club, the largest environmental group in the United States, chose to make its most significant stand against "factory" farms here, by filing a federal lawsuit last April against Tyson Foods, the nation’s largest poultry producer.
The lawsuit alleges that 80 Tyson chicken houses emit so much ammonia from manure they should be regulated like industrial facilities. Noxious odors, flies and rats from the farms also destroy the quality of life for neighbors, the lawsuit states.
If the Sierra Club wins the suit, it could have a major impact on how chicken farms and other large livestock operations are regulated.
"These are not farms. They are large factories that are polluting our water, our air and destroying our quality of life," said Aloma Dew of Owensboro, Ky., the Sierra Club's associate Midwest representative. "That 99 cent chicken sandwich from a fast food restaurant costs a lot more than people realize."
Tyson officials called the lawsuit "misguided."
Ed Nicholson, Tyson’s spokesman, pointed to a National Academy of Sciences study that said the evidence that ammonia emissions pose a threat to public health is inconclusive.
"Tyson regrets the Sierra Club’s attempt to politicize agriculture," said a written statement released by Tyson. "In its misguided lawsuit it wants the public to believe the 7,500 independent farmers who grow chickens for Tyson Foods around the country are running factories and not family farms."
Kentucky has about 250 permitted megafarms — many of them established when jobs in the western Kentucky coal mines and tobacco fields disappeared in the 1990s.
Local officials, thrilled by the potential for new jobs, invited companies like Tyson and Hudson Foods to come in. Local farmers were recruited like high school basketball players to operate two or more chicken houses for the big companies. But if the farmers wanted to be part of the corporate team and become growers, they had to borrow about $125,000 per chicken house.
For the local farmers, the results have been mixed.
"I think the people that came to Tyson thought they found salvation and believed they were going to get rich," said Karol Welch, a Hopkins County magistrate who lobbied against the chicken houses. "Some growers have done well and others have gone under."
Today, Tyson employs 1,300 workers at its Henderson County chicken processing plant, which opened in 1996. About 120 farm families also serve as growers for the company's 575 chicken houses, 56 breeder houses and 20 pullet houses.
Paul Kauffman is considered one of Tyson’s top chicken growers. When the Dayton Daily News asked Tyson officials for access to some of their growers, Kauffman was their first choice.
It's easy to see why.
Kauffman, 39, is a Mennonite who runs two chicken houses with the help of his two teenage sons. He and his sons dress in black work pants and dress shirts, suspenders, and black hats. Kauffman’s young golden-haired daughter stands in her green dress and bare feet holding her father’s hand next to the chicken house.
Kauffman said he doesn’t understand why so many people oppose chicken houses.
"I take care of my birds, my family, I don’t bother anyone, and I take pride in knowing that I am helping feed people in the world," Kauffman said. "Isn’t that what any farmer tries to do?"
Jeff Power, a manager for Tyson in western Kentucky, said the poultry giant has brought life to the local economy. Power, who used to be heckled at times when he went out in the community, said the perception of Tyson has evolved since he moved to Kentucky in 1999.
"Some people have the impression that we are the bad guy, but a lot of that has changed," he said. "We not only provide jobs for people, we do a lot with charities, and folks are starting to accept us. I really believe that."
Not everyone shares Power’s view.
"It breaks my heart to see what is happening around here," said Norma Reynolds, 65, a resident of Beech Grove, Ky. "Everyone got along with one another before those chicken houses started going up."
With the rapid escalation of huge animal feeding operations, the Kentucky Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Cabinet proposed regulations on the handling of manure, and provisions to keep animal farms away from public areas.
It has turned into a five-year fracas between state regulators, the farm lobby and legislators, who have repeatedly rejected the cabinet's rules.
One of the biggest fights centers around "integrated liability," which essentially means that Tyson, Perdue Farms or other companies would be held responsible for any environmental violations and cleanup generated by their growers.
Democratic State Rep. Mike Cherry said he would support integrated liability if it was adopted as a federal rule. But he believes Kentucky would lose much of its agricultural base if the state enforced such a regulation.
"All of our business would go right over the borders to Indiana, Tennessee and other states that didn’t have that," Cherry said. "I would love to have cheap food with everyone raising 100 chickens each. That’s just not possible. When God starts making perfect people we will have perfect farms."
Pennsylvania
Known for its Amish, barns with stone walls and scenic byways clogged with bumper-to-bumper traffic, the county also is home to nearly half a million people and 20 megafarms. It ranks first in egg production and eighth in dairy cows among all U.S. counties. The county's large farms benefit from easy access to vast markets such as Philadelphia, Baltimore and New York. So do organic farms that serve niche markets.
As in the northern Miami Valley, many of Lancaster County's large-scale farms are homegrown and have turned to livestock as a way to generate more money from limited acreage. Many big farmers in the county are Mennonites whose families have been raising livestock for generations. Companies like Wenger's Feed Mill, which contracts with 100 hog and egg producers in Pennsylvania and Maryland, are locally owned and operated, much like contractors in Ohio's Mercer and Darke counties.
And Pennsylvania townships want control of their livestock to remain local. But as in other states, legislation here has traveled a rocky road.
To keep out corporate outsiders, Lancaster County's Pequea Twp. this summer proposed an ordinance to limit water use. Water restrictions are common in the West, but rare east of the Mississippi River. And although it's meant to target big farms, some say the proposal would hurt the very farmers it is meant to help.
Dale and Ruth Ann Stoner milk only 80 cows, but they fear the ordinance could affect any future expansion of their small dairy. The ordinance, now tabled, would limit usage to an average of 5,000 gallons a day. Farms that used more would have to prove through expensive studies the additional usage wouldn't diminish water supplies or quality within three miles of the farm.
"Water is one of the most important assets to the farmer," Dale said. "If we don't have that, and we're restricted, we're going to be in a tough spot."
More than 40 Pennsylvania townships either have considered or passed ordinances that limit agricultural expansion, according to PennAg Industries Association, which bills itself as the voice of state agribusiness.
Paul Wolgemuth, a Lancaster County egg farmer with 180,000 chickens near Elizabethtown, said the flurry of local activity seems rooted in an unfamiliarity with agriculture.
"Everyone wants a nice green pasture next to them with horses that don't sweat and don't defecate," he said. "That's some people's idea of living next to agriculture."
Local efforts to regulate farms have touched off a legislative battle similar to the one being waged in Iowa courtrooms. This year, the commonwealth's general assembly considered legislation that would have strengthened Pennsylvania's 20-year-old "right to farm" law. The legislation would have sheltered farms from local restrictions that go beyond state law. And it would have let farmers or other affected parties sue to invalidate any ordinance inconsistent with state law and recoup legal fees and court costs.
Supporters of the legislation have said it would free farms from unnecessary meddling by local officials who don't want livestock farming to change.
"Why should agriculture be required to farm like they did in 1950?" said Walt Peechatka, PennAg's executive vice president.
Opponents of the bill see it as a power grab by monied interests. "The real big deal is whether local communities are going to retain their ability to control their own fate," said Thomas Linzey, staff attorney for the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund.
The legislation passed handily in the Senate, but stalled and died in the House last week. It may be reintroduced when a new general assembly convenes in January.
Another bill could start a price war about chicken manure.
Introduced in September, the bill may be Pennsylvania's answer to Maryland's manure transport project, which gives farmers up to $20 per ton to move their chicken manure out-of-state to head off further pollution of the Chesapeake Bay.
Some of Maryland's manure is turned into compost and used by mushroom growers in Chester County, Pa., which leads the nation in mushroom production. Chester County traditionally has been a market for manure produced by Lancaster County's broilers.
"I don't know if we can afford to start a price war with government-subsidized trucking," said Leon Ressler, Lancaster County's extension director.
Still, in a county where the old and new exist side by side, farmers like Luke Brubaker have struck a balance. The 61-year-old dairyman has plenty of faith that a dairy and a subdivision can grow side by side.
Brubaker's father milked eight cows in 1929 when he bought the family farm on the southwest side of Mount Joy, Pa., a borough of 6,800 in western Lancaster County. Today, the 61-year-old Brubaker and his two sons, Mike and Tony, own and run a 600-cow herd. Each son manages a broiler house on the side, raising 25,000 chickens at a time on contract for Tyson Foods.
As houses sprout around him, Brubaker hasn't shunned new neighbors. Instead, he gives them cheese as gifts, keeps the dairy's baby calves within view of neighborhood children and plants trees at the edge of his farm as a buffer.
On a mid-September morning, he was off to play golf in a Rotary tournament, and noted that Brubaker Farms was sponsoring a hole.
"You must be involved," Brubaker said. "We're surrounded. We're surrounded by community." [From the Dayton Daily News: 12.05.2002]
Dayton Daily News
Donnie Jensen, his blue eyes fixed beneath a green Pioneer farm cap, said megafarms "hurt the little guy" as he nursed a beer at Dave's Bar & Grill in Thornton.
Archie Peyton frowned as he cupped the murky green water of the Illinois River in his hands.
The faded gravestones in the small family cemetery date back to the 1700s, when some of Charles Bates’ family members fought and died in the Revolutionary War.
Few places must balance modern and traditional agriculture with the needs of nonfarmers like Pennsylvania's Lancaster County.
