"If anyone is going to raise hogs around here it's us," says a manager for
the world's largest hog producer.
For the past year, I've been discussing American agricultural trends with a
diverse group of people from around the country. Very large-scale,
concentrated feeding and ownership of livestock is the dominant trend these
days. As part of our research, we visited Duplin County, in eastern North
Carolina's beautiful coastal plains, the home of over two million hogs,
tens of millions of chickens and turkeys and Wendell Murphy Family Farms -
the world's largest pork producer. One of his feed mills, as well as a
turkey processing plant there and a nearby hog slaughter house are, for
now, also the largest in the world.
Pigs are raised in groups of several thousand in long, tin-roofed sheds.
These are surrounded by lagoons and grassy fields which are the current
technology for dealing with the tremendous volumes of hog wastes flushed
from the sheds with water. Although there are several large producers
active in the area, Mr. Murphy runs the biggest operation. He owns some of
the pig houses, and contracts with small farmers to raise other hogs for
him. As what's called an "integrator," he provides the pigs, feed,
medications, and advice. The farmer provides labor and waste disposal and,
in theory, makes enough money to pay for the fancy buildings and his
services.
The pigs are raised in three different places. Sows give birth and nurse
for just 17 days. The prematurely-weaned piglets are raised on another
so-called "farm" for several months before being shipped off to finishing
houses, some of which are in Illinois. In five-to-six months, the pigs are
slaughtered, and their meat, with or without further processing, is shipped
all over the globe.
Although some of the corn and soybeans the pigs eat is grown in North
Carolina, there is no way the state can produce all the needed feed, so
long trains of hopper cars bring corn and soybean meal from Indiana,
Illinois and other Midwestern states. There, increasingly-expensive,
high-tech seeds, large tractors, energy-intensive chemical fertilizers and
pesticides produce crops that are bought, shipped and sold by large global
corporations.
After the pigs have eaten, much of the feed's nitrogen and phosphorus,
which farmers applied as fertilizer in the Midwest, is left in North
Carolina in the hogs' feces and urine. After sitting in a lagoon, these
wastes are sprayed on the land. In theory, plants absorb these nutrients.
In practice, some lagoons leak into the region's sandy soils. The
sprayed-on effluent sometimes runs off into ditches and streams, and
eventually finds its way to rivers and estuaries along the Carolina coast.
These wastes have been connected with outbreaks of the severely-toxic
microscopic organism, Pfiesteria. Open, bleeding sores on fish, and
cognitive dysfunction, memory loss, nervous and immune systems damage in
humans are associated with the presence of Pfiesteria.
So many hogs, and the enormous problems with their wastes and odors have
caused deep divisions in these communities. Wendell Murphy himself, known
as "Boss Hog" in the Carolina press, paved the way for rapid expansion of
hog production in his state with self-serving laws he voted for during his
five terms as a state legislator.
The astounding number of hogs raised by this large-scale factory system,
coupled with Asia's financial problems, have caused hog prices to fall to
well below the cost of production. The current wholesale price of 33 cents
a pound for live hogs, when adjusted for inflation, is the lowest ever!
Recently, the government tried to help by buying over 30 million dollars
worth of pork for free distribution. It also uses our tax dollars to
provide generous export subsidies. Cheap pork is a boon to the fast-food,
convenience-store and supermarket chains which increasingly sell us pork in
small, ready-to-eat portions. However, after all this expensive and
damaging overproduction, more than 25 percent of the food produced is
wasted.
This hog production trend causes severe community and ecosystem disruption,
requires lots of energy as well as generous taxpayer subsidies. It
encourages excessive pork consumption. Yet the political and financial
power of large agribusinesses is so great that our only effective response
may be to eat less meat and to buy directly from local independent, small
farmers.
This is Bill Duesing, Living on the Earth
(C) 1998, Bill Duesing, Solar Farm Education, Box 135, Stevenson, CT 06491
Bill and Suzanne Duesing operate the Old Solar Farm (raising NOFA/CT
certified organic vegetables) and Solar Farm Education (working on urban
agriculture projects in southern Connecticut and producing "The Politics of
Food" and "Living on the Earth" radio programs). Their collection of essays
Living on the Earth: Eclectic Essays for a Sustainable and Joyful Future
is available from Bill Duesing, Box 135, Stevenson, CT 06491 for $14
postpaid. These essays first appeared on WSHU, public radio from
Fairfield, CT. New essays are posted weekly at http://www.wshu.org/duesing
and those since November 1995 are available there.
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