Hog industry must make haste on waste systems.

• Position: ECONOMIC OUTLOOK - Interview

Hogs are North Carolina's top agricultural product, bringing farmers more than $2 billion in 2004. That total might have been bigger if not for a nine-year-old moratorium on starting or expanding farms with more than 250 hogs. Waste spills helped prompt the cap and want of a better way to handle hog waste will keep it in place until at least September 2007. Mike Williams, director of the Animal and Poultry Waste Management Center at N.C. State University, studied alternatives and found five that work well enough. But they're all too expensive.

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BNC: What's wrong with the way hog waste in handled?

Williams: There are environmental issues associated with the current system--emissions of ammonia, concentration of nutrients in an area that may have a limited amount of land on which to put the nutrients for crop uptake. And of course you hear about the odor issues. I don't think we're in an environmental crisis with the current system, but I think it is one that is not sustainable for the long term.

Isn't the big problem waste spills?

I'm not sure how productive it is to get into finger-pointing, but the industry has many times pointed out that it is responsible for only a small fraction of the releases. Municipal and other waste systems are responsible for a much bigger share of the total. There was, of course, the one waste-lagoon rupture in 1995, in which there were several million gallons released in a short period of time into the New River. That, of course, captured a lot of attention. And then floods did result in some waste lagoons overflowing.

How has the moratorium affected the Tar Heel hog industry?

It has resulted in a plateau of production. Since about 1997, when that moratorium was enacted, the inventory of hogs has fluctuated a little bit, but it has remained at about 10 million. Some who raise hogs say that a moratorium has been a good thing. However, there's no question--because I've had these people contact me--there are people who would like to expand. There are people, especially some people who historically have derived their main agricultural revenue from tobacco, who are interested in phasing into other forms of agriculture and would be interested in raising hogs.

Describe the most environmentally friendly waste system you've found.

It is a system that is similar to a small municipal waste-treatment system. It has a process where it separates the solids from the waste stream and also removes all of...