Corporate swine and capitalist pigs: A decade of Environmental Injustice and protest in North Carolina.

• Date: 22 September 2002
• Author: Ladd, Anthony E.,Edward, Bob
• Published date: 22 September 2002
• Author: Ladd, Anthony E.

Introduction

SINCE THE 1970s, AGRICULTURAL GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT IN NORTH AMERICA have become more closely linked to a wide range of social and environmental problems. Soil and water resources have been degraded, wildlife habitats have been destroyed, and rural communities have been dissolved and uprooted due, in part, to various changes accompanying the industrialization of farming and food production (Gertler, 1992). The scale, mechanization, specialization, capital-intensity, and chemical-intensity of agricultural production have dramatically increased, with the result that large agribusinesses and individual farm operators have come under greater environmental scrutiny associated with the broader "greening" of public opinion since 1970 (Buttel, 1992). For many observers, the growing corporate control over the nature of land use and food production in the U.S. constitutes a major crisis for independent farmers, American culture, and the larger ecosystem (Berry, 1977; Dalecki and Coughenour, 1992; Rifkin, 1992). Such e vents are also becoming integrated into the emerging theoretical framework of the "new environmentalism" and its social justice focus on the struggles of grassroots movements against racism, sexism, and classism (Belkhir and Adeola, 1997; Belkhir and Butler, 1998; Taylor, 1997).

Perhaps nowhere are the socio-environmental implications of agro-industrialization and corporate control better illustrated today than in the case of North Carolina's swine industry (Edwards and Ladd, 2000; Furuseth, 1997; Molnar et al., 1997). Since the early 1990s, North Carolina has been the fastest growing swine producing state in the country, as well as the national innovator in industrialized pork production (Diforio, 1996; Furuseth, 1997; Swine Odor Task Force, 1995; Whittle, 1996). The number of hogs in North Carolina soared at an unprecedented rate of growth--from 3.7 million in 1991 to almost 10 million by 1997 -- before a statewide moratorium temporarily capped the growth of large swine operations (Clean Water Network et al., 2000). Nevertheless, industry expansion catapulted the state from sixth to second in swine production, surpassing poultry and tobacco as the state's top agricultural commodities (Nowlin, 1997; Shiffer, 1997; Silverstein, 1999; Whittle, 1996). Clearly, the state's booming swine industry has allowed it to close the distance on Iowa as the "Porkopolis" of the U.S. Had it not been for the passage of the 1997 moratorium on hog farms and increased public opposition to the swine industry, North Carolina could have been headed toward as many as 16 million head by the early part of the 21st century. In some counties, hogs already outnumber humans by more than 50 to 1 (Edwards and Ladd, 2001; Whittle, 1996).

Moreover, the state's explosive growth in swine has also been marked by a dramatic restructuring and industrialization of its mode of production (Furuseth, 1997). The recent transformation of hog farming in North Carolina, beginning in the early 1980s, from small, local enterprises to large, multi-million dollar "hog factories" has paralleled national and global agro-industrialization trends and become one of the most contentious political conflicts in the state's recent history (Cecelski and Kerr, 1992; Ladd and Edwards, 2001; Lyson and Geisler, 1992; Molnar et al., 1997; Warrick and Stith, 1995). The average size of swine farms in the state has risen sixfold since 1989, while the number of farms dropped from at least 11,400 in 1982 to less than 2,400 permitted facilities (Edwards and Ladd, 2000). Moreover, about 95% of all production occurs on large, concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) of over 2,000 hogs (Benjamin, 1997; Schaffer, 1997; Shiffer, 1999: 3A). In turn, swine operations have also beco me more geographically concentrated in the eastern coastal plain, which is now home to almost all of the state's regulated hog facilities (Edwards and Ladd, 2000). Economically integrated corporate pork producers in North Carolina, as in other states, now own the hogs from "birth to bacon" (Bryce, 1997: 12).

The growth and concentration of corporate pork production in North Carolina has come to represent, for many constituencies, an industrial invasion of "environmental carpetbaggers." These agricultural factories are seen as endangering the future of the small independent farm, the economic health of rural and minority communities, the vitality of the state's recreational, commercial fishing, and tourist industries, the quality of air, and the safety of ground and surface waters throughout the region (Cecelski and Kerr, 1992). Compared to humans, for example, hogs can produce as much as two-to-five times as much waste and a large swine CAFO of 10,000 mature pigs can produce a sewerage output comparable to a city of 25,000 people. Overall, 20 million tons of hog wastes are produced each year in North Carolina out of over 116 million tons nationally (Silverstein, 1999: 30). These wastes are pumped out of the hog confinement buildings into adjoining football field-size cesspools, termed "lagoons" by the industry, f or anaerobic decomposition and liquidification, which then often evaporate or are sprayed on crop fields as fertilizer. North Carolina has approximately 4,000 active and 650 abandoned inactive waste lagoons tied to hog production (Clean Water Network et al., 2000).

This article examines the growth of the controversy over swine production in North Carolina and the role that environmental justice concerns and grassroots protest played in its evolution to date. The implications of these recent developments are discussed in terms of how community concerns over corporate hog production are converging with wider environmental justice and anticorporate, sustainable agriculture movement goals.

Social and Environmental Impacts of Swine Production

The environmental, economic, and health impacts of industrial swine production are extensive. Airborne emissions from hog houses, waste lagoons, and crop fields can contain ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, carbon dioxide, volatile organic compounds, dusts, and endotoxins, which nearby residents experience as sickening and noxious odors, and produce mood-altering symptoms like tension, depression, fatigue, and anger. CAFO workers can also contract various types of respiratory and pulmonary disorders (Schiffman et al., 1998). Atmospheric deposition also occurs, as much of the nitrogen in hog wastes evaporates as ammonia and is then carried and redeposited on nearby lands and waterways in the form of precipitation (Marks, 2001). Water pollution is another major problem as waste lagoons, spray fields, and even dead hog carcasses can contribute to the nutrient pollution, pathogen content, eutrophication, and oxygen depletion of ground and surface waters, local aquifers, and private wells through spills, leaching, seepag e, and runoff, especially during storms or heavy rains. Pathogens in hog and other livestock wastes have also been identified as contributors to outbreaks of pfiesteria-induced fish kills in several mid-Atlantic states (Ibid.). Nutrients from animal wastes have also contributed to a hypoxic, 7,000-squaremile "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico that cannot support most aquatic life. Human health risks stemming from the threat of pathogen transfers between pigs and people can lead to such human diseases as salmonella, giardia, chlamydia, meningitis, worms, "baby blue syndrome," and influenza, as well as viruses such as E. Coli. Finally, socioeconomic devaluations from the siting of hog operations in rural communities can include the displacement of small, independent farmers, lowered property values, the disruption of recreational and tourist industries, and the impeding of future community development (for more details on the environmental and human health impacts of swine operations, see Clean Water Network et al., 2000; Furuseth, 1997; Harris, 1997; Nowlin, 1997; Marks, 2001; Schiffman et al., 1998; Swine Odor Task Force, 1995; U.S. EPA, 1998).

Given these direct impacts on the local ecology, economy, and community, it should not be surprising that opposition to industrial-style hog production has been one of the fastest growing environmental controversies on the American landscape (Edwards and Ladd, 2000, 2001; Silverstein, 1999; Williams, T., 1998). Moreover, many environmentalists, minority groups, and low-income residents have framed the growth of corporate hog operations as an "environmental justice" and/or "environmental racism" issue. Broadly defined, the goal of the environmental justice movement is to stop the disproportionate burdens of pollution and "development" from being placed on people of color and the poor (Stephens, 1996; Wing et al., 2000). In particular, the movement's ideology charges that "black communities, because of their economic and political vulnerability, have been routinely targeted for the siting of noxious facilities, locally unwanted land uses, and environmental hazards" (Bullard, 1990: xiv). Similarly, activists in North Carolina argue that poor and African-American residents and farmers of the eastern Black Belt have been bearing more than their fair share of the hog industry's pollution, economic costs, and land displacement pressures (Burke, 1997; Diforio, 1996; Edwards and Ladd, 2000, 2001; Harris, 1994, 1997; MoInar et al., 1997; Tursi, 1997; Wing et al., 1996, 2000). As large, vertically integrated corporations and intensive hog operations have moved into the state's eastern coastal plain, the various negative social and environmental impacts associated with industrial swine production have become increasingly visible and contested in the public arena (Edwards and Ladd, 2000). Indeed, the controversy has emerged as North Carolina's most dramatic environmental justice conflict since the landmark struggle in Warren County against a PCB landfill in 1982 (Bullard, 1990; Bullard et al...