The environmental and economic impacts of confined animal farming operations (CAFOs)
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Hog farming operations have been changing over time as a result of policies by the government and corporations. Around the 1970s, numerous laws were referred to as Murphy’s laws passed in North Carolina. The laws were meant to prevent the authorities from addressing and preventing issues related to odor using authority. Upon the passing of the laws and other bills similar to the laws, operations of hogs increased in the state with the number of hogs increasing to between nine and ten million geographically (Furuseth, 2001)
There has been increased change in the scale of production units individually and a shift in production control as the years pass by. Most of the large corporations are no longer directly involved in rearing the hogs, but they instead use the contract rearers. The contract growers are hired by the corporations to feed and tend their hogs after providing them with the hogs, management, veterinary services, and food for the hogs (Key, 2011). The legislature puts much effort in regulating such kind of contracts to ensure that prices received by independent producers are not affected
The government plays a key role in confined farming operations. For example, in North Carolina, the government has been involved in a range of activities for the promotion, and it has been long-standing. The state back in the 1960s fueled money into research programs entailing pigs. All the efforts were focused on developing technology and designing agricultural services that are extensive to assist the large scale producers of hogs and farmers in raising hogs. The state government also provided tax incentives and regulatory standards that were friendly for the past decades (Furuseth, 1997).
The state legislature gave a wide array of regulatory and financial advantages to the hog agribusinesses and producers, which even exceeded the benefits extended to producers of other commodities. The benefits include exemption of tax for buildings and equipment, exclusion from taxes on gasoline used for feed delivery trucks, and elimination from local state taxes on the livestock feeds (Furuseth, 1997). Therefore, it can be said that the actions of the government are the reason for the ongoing growth in hog farming operations.
For the past decades, hog farming has been transforming radically, organizationally, geographically, and corporately (U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2007). The scope and speed of change are unprecedented in the United States’ agricultural geography. Organizationally, the traditional operations, which include all hog production phases, are not prevalent today, but instead, operations specializing in only subsets of the stages are prevalent (Parcel, Schroeter, & Azzam, 2017). The impacts of hog farming are both positive and negative. The fact that hog farming is beneficial to the economy while leading to environmental problems like water and air pollution makes it a significant matter that needs to be discussed.
In North Carolina, hog farming has impacted its economy significantly. To the many hog farmers in North Carolina, raising hogs has provided a significant source of income. North Carolina adopted the model of industrial-type production way quicker than any other region or state. Today, hog farming has grown from a supplemental farm income source to dominant agribusiness in the region, which has brought the region a lot of economic benefit through contributing to revenue. In North Carolina, pork production resulting from hog farming has been estimated to lead to the creation of over forty-five thousand jobs.
Hog farming operations in North Carolina continue to be an economic powerhouse through its generation of over ten billion dollars in the states’ economic output (Guidry et al., 2018). The economies of the surrounding counties and the rural counties in North Carolina have been identified to benefit from the production of hogs, their slaughter, and their processing. Counties such as Sampson, Wayne, Duplin, and Bladen have benefited from hog farming through the creation of jobs and income acquired from the operations. The county’s hog farming operations benefit the economy through GDP. In North Carolina, the ration of hogs to people is 29:1, meaning that there are twenty-nine hogs for every person in North Carolina.
Environmental Costs
The environmental costs of confined animal farming are the threats posed to the environment by the large scale intensive farming. Industrial hog farming, which is a subset of CAFOs, has significant threats to the environment. The confined animals release waste such as feces, which mostly spread to the neighboring areas. One of the environmental costs is water contamination from the chemicals used in the animals’ farms and feces. The toxic wastes from the animals’ feces pollute water, mainly because they carry bacteria, heavy metals, and pathogens, which are dangerous to the body of a human being if ingested (Wing, Cole, & Grant, 2000).
The hog waste is usually stored in big vats known as lagoons. The lagoons contain some pathogens like salmonella, pharmaceuticals such as antimicrobials and antibiotics, as well as phosphorus and nitrogen (Nicole, 2013). The waste leads to widespread pollution within the water reservoirs where the CAFOs are located within, especially when the water from the lagoons leach out into the soil and trickles into the water tables beneath. Usually, the waste from the lagoons is not treated. Hogs’ waste contributes to groundwater pollution in the form of waste spray and groundwater seepage that is the usage of sprinklers to spray vats of the hog waste into the neighborhoods (Ponette-González & Fry, 2010).
The problem has been so persistent because of inadequate treatment of sewage and inefficient developing technologies. Most of the hog farms lack systems for wastewater treatment that are adequate that release wastewater that is untreated into the environment in contamination form, especially when they overflow (Pierre-Louis, 2018).
Another environmental cost is air pollution resulting from the spray and odor from the animal feces. The content s in the waste and spray have been identified to cause respiratory ailment, mucosal irritation, decreased life quality, high blood pressure, and increased stress (Guidry et al., 2018). Usually, hog waste is similar to waste by human beings, filled with high quantities of ammonia and bacteria. In the CAFOs, the hog waste is stored in lagoons where it is broken down by bacteria, after which it is sprayed as fertilizers onto crops. Even if the system is legal in the United States, including North Carolina, there are still many lawsuits in such states with people aiming to eliminate hog farming due to the odor associated with the farms.
The waste sprayed usually reaches the towns neighboring the hog farms, which result in people not even wanting to leave their houses to avoid the air filled with hog waste. The bad air that the people breathe in these areas leads to the diseases named above.
Social Costs
It has been identified by studies that the nuisance smell emitted by the hogs, ammonia, bioaerosols, hydrogen sulfide, and particular matter from the hog operations facilities, have significant effects on the mental and health effects of the low income earning factory workers as well as the neighboring communities (Kim, Goldsmith, & Thomas, 2009). Around twenty-five percent of the people who work in CAFOs in the United States have been said to suffer from chronic bronchitis. In North Carolina, households within three kilometers from a hog operations farm are exposed to over forty times ammonia levels compared to the average and have elevated rates of gastrointestinal symptoms, skin and eye irritation, and upper respiratory illnesses. Most people affected are the elderly and people from minority populations (Ogneva-Himmelberger, Huang, & Xin, 2015).
Increased blood pressure, stressed, and altered mood has been caused by the pollutant and malodor concentrations from the hog operations. It has also been identified that people living near the hog CAFOS have high mortality rates due to kidney diseases, perinatal conditions, infections, and anemia. Infants, especially, record higher mortality rates due to maternal trauma and length of fetal growth and gestation (Kravchenko et al., 2018).
Proposed Solutions to the Problems
Since the greatest problem that arises from confined hog farming operations is environmental, which leads to water and air contamination, the solution to the problem is technology. Technology that reduces odor should be developed. The technology should be one that treats and manage the waste from the hogs better so that odor and gas such as ammonia can be reduced hence reducing health problems (Barnes, 2018).
The technology should be augmented with effective wastewater and water treatment practices to prevent contaminants’ consumption, including anabolic hormones and antibiotics (Ponette-González & Fry, 2010). Minimum separation distance should also be maintained, and animals should avoid being fed fecal matter, contaminated water, or tissues. Solid storage tanks should also be developed for manure storage and treatment of style wastes to limit contamination of water and soil by microbial, prevent waterfowl in excess, and limit disease’s spread. Such art-technology is needed even to prevent the many lawsuits that face hog operations (Devore, 2018).