When Your Neighbor Has 2,500 Hogs.

"MORNING SUN, Iowa -- Jean and Thomas Lappe rolled down the window of their 2010 Ford F-150 as they drove to one of the more than a dozen industrial hog farms that surround their home.

A hog's carcass was visible in the dumpster outside the facility. The stench of animal feces filled the truck.

"Every day, every hour, this is what they put out," said Thomas Lappe, 70 years old, about the hog farms built near his home in the past decade.

Most hogs today are raised in barns that house thousands of animals, often owned by a company contracting with a farmer. The factory-style operations are an economic driver in agriculture-dominated states such as Iowa, and a boon to many smaller pork producers.

But they can be a nightmare for those living nearby, after several court rulings and state laws have left residents with fewer avenues to stop their expansion.

Shawn Adam, who owns six hog barns in southeast Iowa with his family, said the operations offer a way for him and his children to continue farming. "We're not going to get Microsoft to build warehouses here. We're not going to get Firestone to put a tire plant in," he said. "We're a small rural community with a packing house 50 miles away."

Hogs outnumber residents by about 7 to 1 in Iowa, the top pork producer in the nation. Hog farms and pork processors directly employed 36,070 workers in the state in 2021, according to the National Pork Producers Council.

The number of hog farms in Iowa fell by nearly 90% between the 1980s and 2017, according to federal data. The number of animals on each farm has risen significantly during the same time.

A glut of pork has recently caused steep losses in the hog industry, with some farmers losing $30 or more on each hog they produce.

A typical hog farm around the Lappes is capable of producing enough feces and urine to fill one-and-a-half Olympic-size swimming pools a year. The animals' manure breaks down in pits, emitting ammonia, methane and other noxious gases. It is then pumped up to be used as fertilizer.

The manure can contain pathogens and antibiotics given to prevent illness from spreading through densely populated pens, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and multiple studies. Critics of the operations and environmental advocates say the manure can run off fields and foul waterways.

Pork industry representatives said the manure is an alternative to commercial fertilizer, and that such fears discount regulations the barns must abide by.

Landowners have sued to stop livestock confinements from operating near their homes. City or county officials have sought to add restrictions but are often unsuccessful.

A March 2023 court ruling in Missouri upheld a state law that bans local governments from regulating the facilities. A 2022 Iowa Supreme Court ruling made it tougher for neighbors to sue hog farms as nuisances.

All states had a right-to-farm law that gives farmers some form of immunity as of 2022, according to the National Agricultural Law Center. Before that year, Iowa had been an outlier in ruling that immunity could be unconstitutional under certain conditions, the court said.

Lawmakers in Nebraska and other states have considered bills to shield agricultural operations from nuisance lawsuits. A similar law passed in North Carolina in 2018 after a jury awarded 10 hog-farm neighbors $50 million in punitive damages. The amount was later reduced because of a state law limiting punitive damages.

"We're trying to be proactive," said Nebraska Sen. Beau Ballard, a Republican who represents parts of the city of Lincoln and Lancaster County. The lawsuits-shielding bill he proposed didn't pass this session, but he thinks the state can find a balanced approach that will be approved.

Of seven nuisance cases tried in Iowa between 2008 and 2019, all but one found there wasn't a nuisance, said Eldon McAfee, an attorney who has represented the Iowa Pork Producers Association and individual hog producers. In some, other neighbors testified they were unbothered by the operations and their smell.

"Even though people were saying how terrible it was other people said it wasn't," McAfee said. "The juries heard the evidence."

Jean Lappe said she helped raise up to 240 hogs at a time with her sisters while they were growing up in the Morning Sun area.

She and her husband now keep their windows closed to block the odor and flies from confinements located within 2 1/2 miles of them.

"I know what hogs smell like," Jean Lappe said. "This is something totally different."

Gordon Garrison, 81, a landowner whose lawsuit prompted the 2022 Iowa ruling, kept notes of odors he smelled and which direction the wind was blowing after a confinement began operating near his farm in northwest Iowa around 2015.

The Iowa Supreme Court ruled against Garrison, writing in its opinion that protecting livestock production is "a legitimate state interest, and granting partial immunity from nuisance suits is a proper means to that end." The Lappes were among numerous families and a town that sued the operators of large hog barns in the Morning Sun-area. They lost their case.

Adam's family decided to start operating their facility, which houses thousands of hogs owned by meatpacking giant JBS Foods, for a stable supply of manure to spread on row crops they raise. Adam said it also offers an economic boost to an industry where young farmers can struggle to raise the capital costs to break in, and that the general public doesn't understand how much labor and paperwork is involved.

It is "all things that you have to do to continue to survive," he said. "And to not only survive -- thrive."" [1]

1. U.S. News: When Your Neighbor Has 2,500 Hogs. Najmabadi, Shannon. 
Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 08 July 2023: A.3.